Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 5 months agoPrice will make or break this thing. Rumors going around its gonna be around 1k which is a tall ask for the listed specs. 500, I’d buy it without any promise of any Valve backed VR game and I’m not even big on VR. For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.
A $1k would break it in this market… The specs suggest a little lower end generally than Quest 3 hardware wise, or in the ballpark (comparable display and optics, lower quality cameras). The only notable improvement is including eye tracking, which is nice, but not $1k nice…
$500 should be a good target, some tradeoffs with Quest 3 (worse ‘AR’, better eye tracking and PC connectivity).
It’s a VR headset so no one really cares about the cameras. The only headset with cameras that are any good is on the Apple Pro which is ludicrously expensive. The quest 3s cameras are fine but you can’t really read a display while wearing it so they’re basically useless for AR stuff.
This is more thinking about material cost rather than relative value. If you save money on the passthrough and incur a few costs above the Quest 3 but nothing dramatic, then I’m just saying the pricing needs to be in the ballpark of Quest 3. Better value by making smarter choices that may not have a cost impact (e.g. using a maintstream high end SoC instead of a niche SoC, putting the battery at the back instead of making it front heavy).
Of course they may be hampered by different business needs. Meta affording to risk more money than Valve can risk might drive higher price point, but it would be unfortunate.
For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.
Agreed. I feel the same.
But then I start to think about an Indie friendly VR platform might give us in six months. It could be very nice.
Yeah, at about £500 I’d have got one. I don’t need the full Steam OS or any of that crap. I just want wireless connection to my PC for streaming.
The use of a second wireless dongle could be a double edged sword as well. Right now I can use a Quest anywhere in the house on Wifi. Works better than wired, in fact. The dongle would limit where I can use it.
I’m sure you can also stream to it over a conventional wifi connection as well, the point of the dongle is so that they can guarantee a direct connection with lower latency and on a dedicated radio frequency to avoid interference, which is especially for non-techies who don’t know what they’re doing and just expect stuff to work out-of-the-box. The headset is just running SteamOS and has a regular wifi antenna, so I see no reason why you couldn’t stream to it using plain old Steam Link or whatever if you already know your connection can handle it.
Sadly agree. I’ve been waiting for years, claiming I’d buy whatever they sell… but honestly right now this would feel like a donation more than something I eagerly want, even less need.
FWIW I’m also NOT the market, I have … I don’t actually know how many but at least 5 XR headsets.
pycorax@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I very much doubt it would be 1K, the Index was 1K and they’ve made it clear that this is not targeting the same premium headset market that the Index was.