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Valve on the Steam Frame: 'I wish we could have shipped it at the price that we were at last year' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 5 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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t's certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame's launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it's launching the Frame for today.

Here's Lyons on the memory crisis:

"We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we've made choices to make sure that we're making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.

Not exactly boding well of the Steam Deck 2.

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[-] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 4 days ago

I presume it's the onboard computer that does the camera processing for tracking, and managing the wireless stream when streaming. They'd need to get a supply of cheaper chips that can still keep up with the processing, alongside less RAM and minimal storage, and develop a cut down system image that cannot run games and only does tracking and streaming. Unless you want a wired steam frame, I guess.

Which is all feasible, but it would take work, and then you'd get to manufacturing another variant, maintaining another version of firmware/software, how many people would go for it. And I have the impression Valve is already having trouble procuring enough hardware as is.

this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
436 points (99.1% liked)

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