… Though the Steam Frame's form factor is a Meta Quest-style standalone headset, its hardware is far more advanced. The Steam Frame is based on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Arm chip with 16GB of onboard RAM, similar to Samsung's Galaxy XR headset... which costs $1,800. …
… But on the software side, SteamOS is preparing to support the upcoming hardware. That's according to the newest preview release of SteamOS, version 3.8.0. …
… And with component prices showing no signs of falling over the next few years, I'm not confident new hardware will get any less expensive anytime soon. …
… The same RAM crisis has pushed the company's new hardware projects, the console-style Steam Machine with its discrete GPU and the Meta Quest-style Steam Frame VR headset, to an uncertain "late 2026" timeline. …
The most exciting hardware for PC gamers this decade is the Steam Deck, a portable handheld gaming PC that's almost singlehandedly created a product category. Valve's console-ish follow-up, the revived Steam Machine, was almost as exciting when it was announced last year. …
… It doesn't take space wizard powers to predict that the redesigned Steam Controller is a hot item, both because it's elusive Valve hardware and it's the first hopefully not the last one available from the trio revealed last year. …
… Valve publishes free builds of SteamOS — arguably the Steam Deck's most competitive feature, now that its starting price is doubled — for competing hardware. …
… We've also seen Steam Controller shipping manifests for the United States, so it looks like the hardware is just about ready to roll out in at least one territory. …
… But it's certainly possible, and this fix could be useful for the growing number of PC gamers on Linux but not SteamOS about 75% going by the recent hardware survey . …
… Steam is an unstoppable juggernaut pretending to be a game store, and with the Steam Deck and Linux-based SteamOS spreading to other handhelds, and soon maybe the very console-ish Steam Machine, Microsoft is feeling the heat. …
