Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs

(store.steampowered.com)

63 points | by Philpax 6 hours ago

9 comments

  • dgrin91 3 hours ago
    > When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).

    Oof.... sounds like they are all going to be $$$. That sucks and really steals the thunder from the steam machine. Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.

    • xbmcuser 2 hours ago
      Hopefully China catches up in node size and crashes the market for ram and SSD.
    • InitialLastName 2 hours ago
      > Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.

      Not just gaming hardware, everything where the electronics are a predominant part of the unit cost (read: all gadgets) is going to be seeing a big crunch in the next ~2 years (optimistically).

      Approximately 100% of RAM manufacturing capacity on Earth has been reallocated to feed the slop machines; anything consumers get is effectively a production cast-off.

  • oxguy3 2 hours ago
    > Can I play non steam games with the Steam Controller? > The controller can work with any game compatible with the Steam Overlay.

    Ughhhhhh. Looks like they're doing the same nonsense as the last controller, and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment; have to hope someone makes an open-source driver.

    • PrivateButts 1 minute ago
      It'll probably work like the steam deck in desktop mode when steam isn't running- a basic default profile takes over. To change anything on that profile or to have any advanced features would require steam input.
  • danpalmer 3 hours ago
    > Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed.

    This goal was previously stated as "early 2026". I think they're retconning a bit here.

    That said, they're in a very tough situation. Most other manufacturers are either: hedged, have long term supply contracts, past their peak sales, or haven't announced a product yet. Valve are in a particularly awkward spot having announced and (implicitly) extent set expectations about pricing, while likely not having all the contracts finalised to meet that pricing.

  • saidinesh5 4 hours ago
    > Will Steam Frame support other streaming services? >SteamOS has a built-in browser, and we expect streaming services to work in a theatrical browser mode.

    Does this mean they're actually bringing a touch/controller friendly browser tab to SteamOS finally? (Yes, i know about the decky browser plugin)

    Since there's not enough info on the steam controller release date, does anyone know how well the PS5/PS4/Clone controllers with trackpad work with the steam os ui?

    • bsimpson 3 hours ago
      I wonder if there will be PIN support.

      Security seems to be less considered on headsets, but I definitely don't want anything in unlocked SteamOS Game Mode to have access to my Google/Chrome credentials (which are also what logs you into YouTube).

      I have a Legion Go, which has a touchpad on the controller. Any questions I can answer for you?

      • saidinesh5 3 hours ago
        Good point about the pin.

        I'm looking at buying https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/d/B0D3LK3DYX/ for my living room "diy steam machine".

        I was waiting for the steam controller because it would let me play point and click games using it's touchpad and also do some light web browsing and even be useful in the desktop mode (like how it works now on my deck).

        But with this playstation clone controller will i get the same functionality?

  • ggm 5 hours ago
    I don't understand how foveated tracking won't cause a sense that peripheral vision is fuzzy. Or how it will track saccades, and so avoid fringe effects.

    But, the "I don't understand" is strong in this. it doesn't mean "it can't work" but I don't understand how it avoids the problems.

    Maybe the size of the computed foveal coverage area is made big enough, to cover the movement? But if you move your eyes suddenly, there's got to be some lag while it computes the missing pixels. So you'd see the same as when Netflix ups the coding rate: crude render becomes clearer. Banded would become smooth transitions.

    • ggirelli 0 minutes ago
      [delayed]
    • itishappy 3 hours ago
      Imagine watching Netflix out of the corner of your eye. You wouldn't notice those transitions at all. Your eyes and brain are mind bogglingly good at making stuff up.

      Do you know you have a big hole in your vision in each eye where the optic nerve is? It's about half the size of your fist at arm's length, and 35 degrees to the side. Your fovea happens to be roughly the same size. It's the HD part of your retina, and it's where essentially all of your vision happens. It's the only section of the retina that sees color, for instance. The periphery sees motion and that's about it.

      Saccades top out at around 700 degrees per second. At 120 frames per second that's only about 6 degrees in either direction. Compared to the FOV, that's tiny. Overfill it!

    • jasonjmcghee 3 hours ago
      Look at this shadertoy to get a sense. It’s crazy.

      https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM

      • chii 1 hour ago
        if at first you don't see anything, try making it full screen!

        And then you should notice some movement/rotations. Look around, and find out where that rotation is!

        • sowbug 39 minutes ago
          I had to edit the code and change scale from 90 to 300 to see it easily in full screen landscape on my phone. I have presbyopia and often need reading glasses to see small things.
      • Gigachad 2 hours ago
        This is incredible. One of the most shocking optical illusions I've seen.
    • Philpax 5 hours ago
      Sufficient additional coverage + predicting the trajectory of your eyeballs. As far as I know, all of the journalists invited to try it were unable to see the low-res periphery, despite actively trying to break it with fast eye movements.
    • nialv7 4 hours ago
      > won't cause a sense that peripheral vision is fuzzy

      it won't because your eyes literally doesn't have enough sensors in those regions to see it.

    • fooker 4 hours ago
      > it doesn't mean "it can't work"

      I don’t have an answer for you, but take some applause from me for spelling this out :)

      It’s very difficult for most people to intuitively understand that what they could not figure out after five minutes of thinking might not necessarily be impossible.

    • plagiarist 2 hours ago
      What I don't understand is how this will work with every game automatically? Wouldn't this need support from the graphics pipelines in each games?
      • cbarnes99 1 hour ago
        You're thinking about foviated rendering. They're just doing foviated streaming. So it renders at full resolution, and only streams the parts that you're looking at with full resolution on the stream.
    • ece 4 hours ago
      Your eye is just another input source, if you don't feel the controller lag from streaming games otherwise, you're probably not going to feel it here either. It's not like an additional round trip or anything, your eye is here and the joystick is here can be sent at the same time, and you get back the rendered frame in return.

      As for peripheral vision, any gradation being smooth probably helps, but there might be more tricks to make it look normal. I'm reminded of how jpeg images and some sound codecs only store information that we can actually perceive.

    • wiredpancake 3 hours ago
      [dead]
  • systematizeD 3 hours ago
    this also aligment Stable Mesa RADV 26 (RT Improvement) and Proton 11 (NTSync) Possibly Default
    • snvzz 4 minutes ago
      And hopefully 64bit Steam Client.

      (which isn't a thing yet on Linux)

  • shmerl 3 hours ago
    > In the meantime, we are working on HDMI VRR

    I wonder how they plan to work around HDMI cartel's refusal to provide documentation on terms that are compatible with open drivers. If they reverse engineer that garbage it would be very cool though.

  • nice_byte 3 hours ago
    I would take all the ai-related research and infrastructure destroyed forever in exchange for just the steam frame alone getting released at a price that it actually costs.
  • canada_dry 1 hour ago
    TL;DR no pricing. no launch date