Who is the $1,059 Steam VR headset for?

Sean Hollister got his hands and face on Valve's new VR headset, the Steam Frame. It's expensive, starting at more than $1,000. It's buggy — he and CNET's Scott Stein both felt like beta testers as they reviewed it. But it's also full of interesting ideas, including the promise that Steam games could one day come to your mobile phone. This week on The Vergecast, Sean and Scott discuss who exactly this device is for, in a world that mostly seems to have moved on from VR. Further reading: Is it time for AI companies to press pause? Waymo pulls over, calls cops on riders with a ghost gun Your car is selling your data LG responds to TV spying allegations The Steam Frame is made for irresponsible hardware nerds like me Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of One Pound VR Headsets. I'm Sean Hollister, and today we're talking Steam Frame with CNET's Scott Stein. He's a friend, and both of us have reviewed VR headsets going all the way back to the original Oculus Rift. We were two of the first journalists to play with it, and now we've been reviewing Valve's new Steam Frame. Today, we're going to give you the rundown, but I also wanted Scott on to talk about what are Valve headsets like to review, because this one feels a bit unfinished. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 14, 2026. Is it time for AI companies to slow down? All of a sudden, a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money from AI think so.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says we should slow down. Anthropic says we should pump the brakes. Even Elon Musk agrees. Microsoft suddenly saying people matter more than AI, that's a quote, and publishing a 37-page code of conduct. It's not clear whether they're actually scared for humanity, or just their liability after the next big AI hack, or if they're just trying to avoid regulation by making a show of regulating themselves. But you know who thinks we shouldn't slow down at all? Donald Trump and the Chinese government, who both seem to be enjoying the arms race. Speaking of AI, cars can now tell if you're armed. Terrence O'Brien is the story of the Waymo robot taxi that called the cops after its riders reportedly stuck a ghost gun to their Google car in San Francisco.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  And Andy Hawkins explains how your own car is probably selling your data, too. And speaking of selling your data, LG has finally responded to the allegations that its TVs are spying on you. It says its TVs do not continuously record or transmit user conversations, but that continuously is doing a lot of work. You can read more at theverge.com, and that's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 14, 2026.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  You're listening to Deepgram Flux TTS. Different voices, same model, all ready to speak.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Flux reads the room. It holds context across the conversation, turn after turn.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  With consistent tone, interruption handling. And plenty of personality.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  So your agents keep it flowing, and customers can just keep talking.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Try Deepgram Flux TTS free now until September 12. Visit deepgram.com/keeptalking. Terms apply.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Companies shouldn't have to choose between speed and control. Amex Corporate connects cards with flexible spending controls and real-time visibility to help teams adapt faster. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is Amex Corporate. Get started at go.amex/ammexcorporate. Terms apply.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Scott, welcome to The Vergecast.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Hey, thank you, Sean. It's good to be on here. This is like a reunion, seeing you again.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  It's been a bit, and we, Scott and I, I think I may have just mentioned, we spent a lot of time playing with VR headsets together over the years. And this one is something that I don't think I expected. This is the Steam Frame, and if you're watching a video of this, this is the Steam Frame with an Arcturus Vision camera at the front. We both got them up here. And this is a VR headset from Valve that's not exactly just a VR headset. Can you tell me the basics a little bit?

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Sure. So Valve has made VR headsets before. They were partners, basically, with HTC Vive, if you know VR history, all the way back when the Oculus Rift launched. They have had Steam VR. But what they're announcing here is, in one sense, if you look at this, it's like a Meta Quest. This is a standalone VR headset that Valve is making at long last. But in the other sense, the Frame, which is an interesting name, is this Steam-compatible gaming device. So it can play 2D Steam games, and it can also wirelessly connect with your PC. So it is a VR headset, but it's also being set up to play other stuff. Your mileage may vary.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  It plays standalone games on its own chip, on like a fairly weak compared to your PC Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, like something that'd be in your phone. And then it also streams games from your PC. It's supposed to do flat games inside of there, like you're playing your Hades 2, you're playing your Tunic in there. But it's also doing your VR expansive games. You can theoretically port VR games from a Meta Quest right over here, take the Android version, and put it on this headset, even though it's not exactly running Android. It's trying to do all of these things in one. And so while it looks like that Meta Quest, it isn't quite that. And so you and I, we've spent this time reviewing it.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  One thing that we know, that nobody else knew outside of the reviewer circle before today, is the price. How much is this, and how much does that compare to those Meta Quests, to that Valve index?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so not surprising, based on the cost of the Steam machine. It is $1,059 for the one with 256GB of storage, which is the entry one, and then it's $1,299 for the one with a terabyte of storage. It's funny, because yes, that's expensive, but then also, if you've been looking at the prices of VR headsets and XR things, I'm not defending that price, but other than Meta, they've all been, like, you know, the Snap specs are like $2,000, the Vision Pro and Galaxy XR was $1,899. So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely not the console price I want, but that's what we're dealing with here. It's $1,059 and up.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  I wasn't expecting this to cost $350, like the Meta Quest 3S, or $600, like the Quest 3. I definitely knew it was going to be more than that, because it's trying to do more, and because it's Valve. But what surprised me is that it's not just the games. There's an entire Linux desktop in here running on that chip. You can run it side by side with the games that you're playing. I'm running Discord in a web browser to talk to my friends over here, while I've got a giant screen over there across my living room, playing SuperBattle Golf with those friends. Like, I can do multiple things at the same time.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Valve exposes a lot more to the power users than Meta does, than anybody else does, right?

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I haven't even really started dipping my toes in that. Like, I've opened the desktop, I've played around with some of the apps in there, I've done some browser-y stuff, and then I've just gone back to playing games. But, you know, it's also partly, like, because it's Linux, and because you're going to kind of have to, like, log in and download stuff, it's not as lazy easy, where you're just going to, like, you know, connect your ecosystem, like a Google or Apple. I mean, Meta, you're starting all over again, because you don't have your work apps or things easily logged in. But yeah, it does expose a lot more. It allows you to fail, which is a very Valve thing, in the sense that, you know, you could launch something that doesn't run that well on it, and you can launch any Steam thing

• 7:12Speaker 04

  on it, you know, even if it's not approved, or, you know, like a great on frame labeled, including VR things. And you can just watch something totally fail out if you want, or you can try to optimize for a better experience, or go the smooth, easier path.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  The whole Steam Frame, it's a stack of technologies to make things work on this phone chip, that almost all of them were not designed to work on Linux on that chip. There's the new Lepton compatibility later. You've heard of the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs Windows games on Linux with a technology called Proton, a compatibility later built on Wine. This one has a new one called Lepton that does that for Android.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  It also has a version of Proton that's been ported over to ARM, so it can run those Windows games on this smartphone chip on your face. So when you put the Steam Frame on your face, you and I have both experienced this, how does this compare to playing games on your flat TV, to putting on a Meta Quest, to putting on a Vision Pro? What do you see in here, and how do you interact?

• 8:24Speaker 04

  So if you've ever used a VR headset, if you've used something like a Meta Quest, it's kind of similar in that what you see is, suddenly, you get this fuzzy camera pass through, like, you can see through these black and white cameras of your room around you. You see the real world while the screen floats in front of you, that you can resize with your controllers, but not with your hands. There's no hand tracking on this headset. So you only use controllers. Not yet. And then... You browse, and if you use a Steam device, like a Steam Deck or a Steam machine, or Steam in general, it's got a very similar layout. It looks like just that monitor, that very familiar interface has popped up

• 9:07Speaker 04

  once you log in and then you've got your games on there, et cetera.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  That's just floating in your living room, that window.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  That just floats in your living room and you can float it near in this little pop-up dashboard, or similar to Meta and others. You can hit a theater mode where it poof pops up far. And then it's a curved screen that you can then also make flat if you want.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  You can make it so big, you can make it so big. It's like my entire living room wall.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a huge room filling thing, which is very fun. And you can also pop up other windows if you want, although it's mainly designed, I think, to be that one screen. You can do others and like you're pointing out, you could, you, you could run other apps at the same time. And then you're using the controllers. So these controllers, which you hold in your hand, for someone who's used VR, very familiar in that your point, you're kind of using them as pointers because there's a laser pointer that activates when you press this button that arcs across and you can click on things that you want from a distance.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  This isn't an actual laser. It's, it's, it's a virtual laser pointer that you're using to move your windows around and select things.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  That's exactly it. But then you can also click that again, and then you're in controller mode. And then this is, these are all just the same as, almost the same as a Steam controller minus the trackpads. So you've got the D-pad and buttons. And so you could just browse around, click around like you would on a Steam Deck and check your menus, et cetera. You could swap between.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  I really love the laser mouse feature on these. I mean, with the Vision Pro, if you're in the Apple Vision Pro, you're using your eyes to look at things. And so, and you've got to like retrain your brain a little bit to be like, the thing I am looking at right now with my eyes, when I pinch that, it will move and make the window bigger, or it will drag a window around and place it somewhere in my room. And with these, instead with the controllers, you, you click this button, and this button is the mode switch. So like, if I press this grip button on the controller, this very clicky button, one time, it will go from, I'm in the middle of my game. They are my hands in the game, or they are my gamepad in the game because they've got all the same buttons as like an Xbox gamepad. They will go from that to becoming this laser mouse. And so in an instant, I can be like, oh, this window isn't as big as I'd like.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Or no, I want this window to be on that wall instead of floating in the middle of my room. And so I'll just be like, okay, I'm going out of gamepad mode, click the button. Now I'm in laser mouse mode, drag that thing over there to that window where I want it instead, resize it a little bit to make it bigger or smaller. Maybe I'll even pick it up and carry it with me to another room. And then let go of it, press that button one more time. And now it's my gamepad again. It's this mode switching. I really like it. Except when the laser mouse disappears and fails to work, which it has for me on some occasions.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Yes, and I didn't even know how to make it work at first. I felt like an idiot because it was a little bit of fumbling where, you know, I saw laser mouse at the bottom and there were these trigger marker button indicators. And I kept pressing the top buttons here and going, oh, is that the laser mouse? And I was like, is this the laser mouse? There is no laser mouse. And then I finally realized, wait, it's the grip button that does the laser mouse and swaps. And then I really liked it.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  I do like that theoretically, and they haven't like mapped all the controls yet. I think developers may have to do these per game. But you can theoretically use it as a mouse in your games too. So when I'm, when I'm selecting, you know, play a new game or changing the graphics settings in the game, I can use my laser mouse, press those buttons on the menus in the screen, and then just tap it again and I'm back in, in a gamepad mode. Again, assuming the gamepad mode is recognized and it goes back into that. And then another, another, another feature, there's this, this, this other, this Steam button at the bottom here of each of the controllers. If you tap it one time, you'll make all of your extra, you know, menus and windows and chromes disappear. So then you've just got your floating windows. If you tap it two times, you can switch between your real world's,

• 12:55Speaker 00

  you know, pass-through vision of your, of your living room. Between that and a, the virtual environment where you're completely enclosed in a bubble of, you know, video game graphics. And so you can, you can quickly swap between those things. If you have to walk around your room, or if you just want to be there with your wife on the couch like me versus I want to be fully enclosed in a space that other people are not intruding in, which I like. And, and there's also, there's also spatial audio. What did you think of the spatial audio? Tell me about that.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  I thought it was fine. You know, I, I don't really think it, like, it didn't shock me and it didn't, um, it didn't. Maybe the fact that I didn't think about it is a good thing. Because when I was playing the 2D games, it felt very fine and natural. And in that sense, maybe the spatial audio applied to the 2D game theater experience was well done. VR felt like VR as I remembered it. The speakers were reasonably loud enough. And yeah, I think, I think, I don't know. I didn't think about it much and that's interesting.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  The thing, the thing I do like, and maybe this is for productivity rather than for games. I ended up writing a bit of my Steam Frame review on the Steam Frame, which I always think is a fun gag when you can do it.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  The windows in your world, if you pull a window out to the side, the audio comes directionally from wherever the floating window in your room actually is. So if I'm watching, you know, Peaky Blinders from Netflix on the screen in front of me, and I turn to the left, well, I still hear the audio coming from that screen over there onto my right, no longer from directly ahead of me all the time. So give you that extra sense that the windows are where you place them in the world. They just don't necessarily stay where I place them for me. I don't know, I don't know if this, this happened to you a lot, but I would be manipulating some windows or be, or switching back to my, my, my, my Chrome so I can control where all these floating windows are in my house. And suddenly one of them would be down in my lap

• 14:45Speaker 00

  or pop up to the right of where I thought it was going to be, things like that.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Oh my God. And that's because I didn't even try opening a huge amount of windows, but I kind of felt, I got the feeling that the frame was struggling if you push it. And that's where I kind of felt like, unlike of, I mean, the Vision Pro is running an M5 processor, you know? So it's, it's got a lot in there. Even the Galaxy XR, um, with its chipset felt, you know, relatively fine. I felt the fan kicking in a lot on the, on the Steam Frame. And sometimes even some basic things, like I kind of finally learned how to record in-game clips and then convert them over to my phone. And, um, it was, it was chugging on that and getting real hot.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  Not all the time, but I felt like there's sometimes a little stuttery slowdown when things like that happened.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  You and I've reviewed a lot of these products. We've, we've played with a lot of headsets. And VR is not in an amazing state right now. I would say, uh, there's, there's, there's not a ton of new stuff to play. And I don't know who this is for, other than really nerdy folks like me who want to push it to its limits and do everything possibly, the thing they possibly can on it. I want to ask you about that. And I also want to ask you what it was like to review this product. It is weird to review a headset and it is especially interesting to review a Valve product. And we'll talk about why. Let me start with the first one though. Who is this for?

• 16:16Speaker 04

  First thought I had was this is maybe for that person who had a Valve index and was thinking, I want a Steam VR wireless headset that could be standalone. And no matter what, and I want it to be made by Valve. There is that person. I think though, there are so many VR headsets out there that work with Steam and with PCs that I feel like, you know, I don't know if you can justify that, that price for that. I don't think it's for the person that wants a portable game system because to me, it has compromises compared to the Steam Deck. And the Steam Deck is already multiple years old. So not only does it not play the whole catalog, it's a subset of things.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Like it won't play, you know, I tried playing things like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, Ratchet and Clank, forget it. Played Baby Steps, you played some, some not authorized for Steam Frame games really well. Baby Steps, Hektori was great on it. Crazy Taxi, the old Crazy Taxi game. You know, some, some like nice surprises in there. You'll find nice surprises, but it's a real scavenger hunt. And, and then Battery Life, um, which I found really limiting on this, even more than, than, um, I felt like other VR headsets. I felt like I was kind of always ready to go for a recharge or to, or to tether it. And then there's the price. Because also like as much as you may, and there are many reasons to be freaked out about Meta.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  The fact is that the, the, the price that they've put it at and the game catalog on The Quest, it can't, it can't touch that right now. So, you know, and The Quest is very versatile. So you kind of have this thing where you go, it's an amazing Swiss Army knife of an experiment.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  But in the current moment, very experimental.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  I think it's absolutely for early adopters who already have a powerful desktop PC and want to stream their games. Like you said, a Valve Index replacement. So the Valve Index, for those who aren't aware of this, this was, I think it was $1,000, right? A $1,000 corded headset, wired headset that came out basically just as the industry had decided we didn't want wired to be the way we do things, that the cord got in the way. And certainly, there were excellent experiences you could have while sitting with a cord, even standing with a cord if you weren't moving around too much. I remember Star Wars Squadrons and jumping in that X-Wing, and that was just amazing to be in the cockpit

• 18:40Speaker 00

  of the X-Wing, playing that in VR, an entire full AAA game in VR that way. That was something special. Half-Life Alyx, very special if you're standing around, and the teleport kind of controls in that game makes it so you don't get tangled in the cord too much. You teleport around with a thumbstick, you don't need it. There's, by the way, there's a standalone version of that here on The Frame. If you're the kind of person who has this beefy gaming PC, and you're like, but my home network, but I don't like the cord, I don't want to trip over a cord, but my home network is not great for streaming things. This comes with a 6 GHz dongle. It's fairly short range. I walked 12 feet away, 12 feet and one wall away, and it kind of cut out. So you have to be kind of in the same room

• 19:24Speaker 00

  or very close outside of the room for that to work. But if you're sitting, if you're standing near your PC, sitting in front of your PC, that gives you a dedicated wireless link, so you're not getting all kinds of lag. You get something Valve is calling a foveated streaming, where it'll track your eyes many, many, many times per second and give you the highest resolution where you're looking and the highest streaming quality, I should say, where you're looking and lower elsewhere. That's super nice. I could imagine doing this with my powerful PC. I'm just not sure about if I don't have that, if I don't have, and if I don't have specific VR titles that I want to play, or if I don't, if I'm not sure I want to have this headset on my head. For me, sitting that 12 feet

• 20:05Speaker 00

  away on my couch, being an irresponsible person who likes to push hardware to its limits and being okay with being an early adopter, I'm like, ooh, I could play those games I'd play on my PC instead of on my 24-inch monitor. I can play them on a screen the size of my entire living room wall, and that's cool. But do I want to pay the extra $1,000 plus for that? I'm not, I'm not sure.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. And also, we didn't even talk about the display, but just in terms of the display, it looks, again, I thought it was good. I thought it was fine. I didn't think it was spectacular. And it was, that's exactly where it's landing, where it's like 2160 by 2160, pri LCD.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Not OLED.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Not OLED. It's kind of like Quest 3 equivalent. It's not Vision Pro, it's not Galaxy XR. And then also, you know, the pancake lenses, which are on there, are really nice and crisp. Sometimes there are a little optical weirdness, and maybe it's also I had used prescription lenses, which, by the way, this doesn't fit my glasses well at all.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  I was going to ask you.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  Yes, I was.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  For the, for listeners, Scott is notorious for having the biggest glasses in the industry of VR reviewers. I'm sorry, Scott.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  It's a shame.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  But, but it is, it makes you an amazing reviewer among all your other talents, because everybody comes to you after they do their review, and they're like, but what did Scott say about glass?

• 21:26Speaker 04

  What did Scott say about his glasses? So unfortunately, and these are not smart glasses, these are just regular, these are my glasses. They're a cram. Now, I fit them in there, but I was jamming them in there, and they stuck when I took them out. Not ideal. Also, would kind of stick in there and fog up the lenses. So it was a miserable experience. And Zeny sent me prescription lenses to try with this, which was great. I didn't get them until this past week. So I've only had three or four days using the lens. Now, it made a big difference. The other bummer is that their official prescription support is up to minus six. I'm a minus eight plus. Now, they modded special versions of the lenses for me that are not available for sale, but they actually work. Maybe I'm

• 22:06Speaker 04

  like a test subject, but I told them, make them, because you can get my prescription on the Quest, you can get my prescription on Vision Pro, things like that. But prescription is a real frustrating thing. So I do, you can, also, the headset's modular, not to get into this too much. They have promises of a lot of modularity with this headset, including new fits and things. I hope there are wider frame fits. I bet people are going to make them.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  There's a dedicated enthusiast kit coming. This is, this is what you're alluding to.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  I talked about this with Valve in my interview. And so this dedicated enthusiast kit, not only is it going to have a head strap, a whole new modular head strap with a new battery pack that's going to be, it's going to be one battery that's the same size as this currently in the Steam frame, which is about 21 watt hours.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  It's in there.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  And it will have a second magnetic battery that will attach to the first one that is also the same capacity. So you can get double the capacity with that. It's also got over ear floating speakers, kind of like the ear speakers for the Valve Index. I've been told that they're enhanced beyond that a little bit. Those were very well received when the Valve Index came out. Everybody was like, oh, this is the best audio you can get in VR. Well, they're doing that for the frame with this kit. And it will come with several additional spacers for the front, so that you can get more or less distance away from the lenses. I actually, being lucky enough to have 2020, I said, I want to be closer to the lenses, to get even more field of view. I think there's actually too much padding

• 23:41Speaker 00

  in mine. With you, you'd probably want a little bit more.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, a little bit more. And it's tough, because I do want to get close. I just wanted to bring that up, but I think it's fascinating, and it gets into that modularity thing we were kind of hinting at with like the Arc Taurus Vision camera that plugs in, and how many more things could emerge? How many more things could people hack? This is like a bridge, like an experimental bridge, and Swiss Army knife, and like Rosetta Stone to all of the other things out there is like fascinating. But you get back into, what is that now? What are Valve's plans with that? What, you know, you could turn that as many directions as you want, but it is, that is interesting.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  Support for the show comes from Blinds.com. Your home should look and feel exactly how you want it to, down to the lighting. Sometimes all it takes to make a room feel finished is investing in good, high-quality blinds. Blinds.com has spent 30 years making exactly that. You can go full DIY if you want, or bring in licensed and vetted pros to install the exact blinds your room needs. They have a huge variety of style options at prices that fit any budget, and you can get samples shipped to your door, fast and for free. If you need help picking the right style, just book a free consultation with one of Blinds.com's award-winning design experts. You don't need to deal with any pushy salespeople

• 24:58Speaker 05

  or awkward in-home visits. It's just helpful advice on your schedule. Right now, Blinds.com is giving Vergecast listeners an exclusive $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Just use code VERGECAST at checkout. Limited time offer. Rules and restrictions apply. See Blinds.com for details.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  Support for the show comes from Horizon 3. You know that feeling when you can tell you're being watched? That's a primal instinct that took millennia to develop. Unfortunately, we don't have anything like that in our digital lives, so we need tools that can help us know when we're in harm's way before the worst-case scenario. They say that in cybersecurity, the scariest thing isn't the attack you see coming, it's the attack path you didn't know existed. Horizon 3 is a proactive, AI-native security platform that wants to change that. Here's how it works. Horizon 3's Node Zero is an autonomous AI hacker that continuously attacks your own environment at machine speed, the same way a real attacker would, finding all the areas that are vulnerable. To see exactly what an attacker would find in your

• 26:05Speaker 05

  environment before they do, go to horizon3.ai/vergecast and request your free Node Zero demo. That's horizon3.ai/vergecast. Again, that's horizon3.ai/vergecast. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  When it comes to your business, you want cards and tools you can trust. Amex Corporate helps put you in control. Set custom spend parameters to help fit your business needs and quickly issue unlimited corporate cash back cards, all backed by best-in-class fraud protection and the powerful backing of American Express. Get started at go.amex/ammexcorporate. Terms apply.

• 26:55Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  But VR is dead, right? Nobody's making new games for VR, are they?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  It's always like half-dead. It's zombified for so long, but it does feel a little more dead now because Meta is backing out of VR so much that, and previously had buried a lot of its stuff with Horizon crapware, that, you know, people felt like their games weren't being seen. I remember talking to developers at Meta Connect, who felt like they were being kind of left out to dry when everything started moving to glasses. And that was the biggest VR console. And Sony, if they stopped doing VR games. Yeah, the question is, it's like, you have to reach an audience. If you have a Steam Deck, those indie games, you could play those a lot of other places, and you can also play them on a Steam Deck. But how many places can you play a VR game? I think this opens up ways, but it depends on how many they sell. And the number of VR headsets is diminishing.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  So I'd like to think that this opens a doorway for headsets and things to run games, to make it worth the while for indie developers to struggle to make a VR game. But I don't know. This is not going to sell a lot of things. And will it encourage other developers? I think it's more like, like you said, it's putting ARM-compatible Steam stuff out there for other things to take advantage of. Some will be immersive, some will not. Though it may not improve the number of VR games.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  I feel like the game industry did bend around the Steam Deck at $400, at $500. That was a really attractive portable. And the game industry was like, yes, we're going to support this thing. We want our games to run on this. We're going to get into that Steam Deck verified program. Here at $1,059 for something that you've got to convince people to wear on your head. I'm not entirely sure all these VR developers are going to come out of the woodwork to support it.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  But I do think the indie games will look great on it.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think it's, I think that's exactly it. But also, Half-Life: Alyx, we got to talk about that.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Okay, so Alyx, which I think several Verge staffers would say is the best VR game made. It came out in 2020. It was one of three promised full-length VR games that Valve said it would make, that Gabe Newell, the company's CEO founder, said Valve would make. And then there was no word on the other two. We have no idea if they're ever coming. Valve dodged my questions on that. But this game, pretty good, right?

• 29:41Speaker 04

  It's pretty good, and it is by far the most impressive experience that I've had in Steam Frame. And I think that it was made for that reason, where Valve is, you know, showing what you could do to push this headset. Like, I mean, graphically reduced, frame rate for animations, like, characters that would be moving around is lower, but the refresh of the whole room is very smooth. So looking around, it's all smooth. It's teleporting. Sometimes you go up a ladder. I don't remember if it was always the case, but you just jump to the top now. Some animations seem like they're a little bit compressed. But I just kept feeling like, wow, I'm in this game and it's standalone. That's really cool. Definitely the hand track, the hand motions and animation were a little wonkier with the controller.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  But I was kind of blown away that I realized like, wait a second, it's tracking the movement of my pinky? And then I started to realize that, wait a second, this controller, I forgot, has capacitive sensors on the grip.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Capacitive touch sensors for every digit.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  It was fascinating. And it's the one where it's really being showcased. Because right now, the games that are being ported at this moment, and that gets to where we're talking about what it's like to review this now. Things feel like they're just being ported over to work as opposed to introducing anything that's particularly Steam Frame. And sometimes even the frame rates are not, or the refresh rates are not even up to the level that I would expect. But that may certainly change. And, but, but, but Alyx, you know, yeah, that's the one where I thought, wow, this is actually possible. This is cool. I would actually play the game like this.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  I know that there is so much more this headset can do, both in terms of what the headset is capable of doing itself. For instance, Valve says they can add hand tracking to this. They're working on hand tracking, not just controller tracking. Both in terms of that and in terms of what game developers can take advantage of. Alyx shows us, Half-Life Alyx shows us, we can do defo-viated rendering. You can make games with the kind of detail you see on PC VR as opposed to just mobile VR. If you add defo-viated rendering and things like that, if you build it for this somewhat more powerful phone-style chip. Beyond that, we know that eye tracking can be used for more than just defo-viated rendering. We've seen on the PSVR2, in the Horizon game,

• 32:01Speaker 00

  that can be used to be like, I'm aiming my bow at a target. I'm aiming my bow at this, at this, you know, this, this, this machine I'm trying to hunt down and save humanity. And it'll, it'll know that you are aiming at that and help guide your arrow there on the Vision Pro. We know that it can help you pick windows without having to swing around a laser mouse. And, and, you know, there's all kinds of things game developers could do here. But the state that this is shipping in is typical Valve. We feel like we are beta testers. We feel, in some cases, alpha testers of this product that is not ready right now for anyone who doesn't consider themselves an early adopter. Talk about what it was like to review this thing.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you don't get a reviewer's guide. You know, there's no setup guide. There's maybe one page of instructions on a couple of things to keep in mind. You're kind of figuring things out, like the laser mouse thing, or, you know, where am I doing game recording? Or, you know, kind of search up an answer or think about Steam? Or what about performance settings? What about, you know, what else? Oh, what is the desktop mode? Where's that at? And so it is like, yeah, you're kind of just wandering and exploring and doing that, and launching games to test them out to see how they work. Not only looking at the, like, like any early console generally to see what, what games start appearing. But, but I was really frantically doing that, checking out the Steam store to go, what's, what's great on frame now?

• 33:28Speaker 04

  It's great on frame. And some of them still wouldn't run. Like, Superhot for me wouldn't start until I turned on a compatibility layer thing in the properties. And then it seemed to work. I don't know why.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  But like, the kinds of issues that we run into when we're testing early Valve. Virtual objects, I've had them just disappear. I've had, I've had the audio of the headset just gone in the middle of a game. I've had the entire headset wink out, like, lose power on several occasions in several different games. Or while plugging in the cord to make, to extend the battery. And, and some of these things, you know, I would report them to Valve, and I would feel like a beta tester, and they would fix them right away. And in the next patch, you know, the next, the next build, two days later. I'm like, oh, well, now when I play Hi-Fi Rush, the, the dialogue, the audio of the character speaking, is no longer missing.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  It's there now. I wonder what happened. They fixed it. I had an issue where, where Space Pirate Trainer, one of my favorite games to test VR headsets with, because you have these responsive, like, blasters, or the Space Pirate blasting away at all these robots. And it requires very responsive aim and very quick controls and so on. That game just completely winked out the entire headset. Lost power in the middle of the game repeatedly. And I came back to it a few days later and was, was fine. So I'm like, so what do I say in my review? Do I say in my review that this headset crashes all the time? Do I say in my review that this headset did crash? What I ended up, what I'm, what I'm ended up doing,

• 35:07Speaker 00

  and, and, you know, you'll, you'll have been able to read my review on The Verge, and you'll be able to read Scott's review on CNET by the time you, you listen to this podcast. I'm writing that I feel like a beta tester. I'm explaining exactly what happened to me. The most exciting thing, I think, about the Frame though, is even if it doesn't, even if it doesn't sell particularly well, even if people are like, I don't quite buy this mix of 2D games and, and, and, you know, lightweight slap games and VR games in the same headset, that some of which are streamed from a PC and some of which are running natively on it. The technologies behind it. Valve has been quietly funding and piping in these technologies

• 35:52Speaker 00

  to play your Windows games. On ARM chips now. And so this could lead to a future where we are, we have Steam on our phones and not just for match three games, but for legitimate, you know,

• 36:09Speaker 00

  deep, deep games that will immerse you in a way that most mobile titles don't necessarily today, because most mobile titles now are built for the least common denominator gamer, which, I mean, I love it. I love a good match three. But this is maybe pointing us at a future where you can do a lot more. And while I'm not going to be buying a Steam Frame every year or two, people do tend to buy phones fairly often, be upgrading those chips fairly often. So I'm very curious to see if that is where we get a lot more immersive games in the future because of the work that they put behind this.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  And handhelds, where I think about, you know, not only the price launching up on gaming handhelds, which you've been covering a ton, and where the Windows handhelds are at, but if you start having ARM powered, smaller handhelds, or like Steam Deck minis, or, you know, enter a space where maybe they're more affordable to make, and they can start running a wider variety of games for the industry, that's really fascinating, because maybe it makes it viable again. Maybe you get to the point where it's like, yeah, you start having these tweener products that can basically run a lot of stuff, not quite the whole bleeding edge thing of where some of the Windows handhelds have been heading, but, but most people would find it fine. And then there's a whole, like, it does feel like the path's running in many directions, because the thing I also think about is the

• 37:36Speaker 04

  whole glasses thing, because this is a VR headset, and we're entering to this world of, of ambitious glasses and glasses like stuff, and you can already connect a pair of display glasses to the Steam Deck. And we saw in this past year, XREAL Aura, which is Android XR based, which is coming out this fall, has a very VR like experience on glasses with a processor puck. And it really wowed me, because it's not the same as full VR, but it's, you know, there's also the reports of Meta and its Phoenix headset are going to be more glasses like. So this feels like a bridge product to something like, you know, in the future, would, would you have a Steam Deck 2 and pair glasses that are more sensor studded and would basically give you a lot of the VR experience? Is, you

• 38:21Speaker 04

  know, and that's modular, like, if, but it does feel like you're saying Valve is opening a lot of the building blocks here, and that's really exciting. And then to offer people a path of compatibility is exciting.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Okay, I gotta ask the last question. We could, we could talk about this for ages, but let me ask the last question. Would you buy one?

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Not in this moment. I think, I think that the price is too high and the compatibility is too funky. However, it reminds me of Steam Deck, where I remember when the Steam Deck, I did not review the Steam Deck when it first came out. And I saw reviews, I was curious about it, and I was like, it sounds like too much of a project. And then it's, I feel like it crossed over to the point where it was like, oh, this is interesting. And then like a year or so later, I started playing around with it, and I was like, oh, I love this. I love this for what it's doing. And I, I feel like that's the point where I feel like when this stuff really unlocks some of those features, and gets that deeper library

• 39:24Speaker 04

  support, I would be like, this is really exciting. And to get to that point of, hey, I'm a, I'm not a PC gamer, I might be a PC gamer someday, it can be my bridge device to that. It can kind of let me grow into that from the other end. And I find that really appealing. Gives you something to aspire into, whereas opposed to the standalones, usually you don't have a, you know, like, you could, you could build a library that is waiting for you on your, on your other PC to come.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  You don't have to wait for Meta to curate and approve all the titles. People can build all kinds of experimental shit. I feel, I feel similar. I reviewed the Steam Deck at launch, I called it a glorious mess. I said it was, I said it was not ready. I said that if it was sold at Best Buy, people would return it in droves. These are, these are almost my exact words at the time when the Steam Deck came out. And, but this is what Valve does. It creates a product. It gets the hardware mostly right the first time, after spending years on it. It ships it unfinished. And so I would not buy this today, but I

• 40:32Speaker 00

  may regret not having bought it in the future if it follows the same trajectory as the Steam Deck, because, and this is the other thing, I enjoyed being a beta tester of the Steam Deck, and I'm enjoying being a beta tester of the Steam Frame. So if you're the kind of person who could see yourself, who think you might enjoy being, paying for the privilege of being a beta tester, if you're the kind of person who think you might enjoy paying for the privilege of being a beta tester of a gadget that is theoretically this exciting, and can do as many things as it can already do, just with some weird quirks, I don't know if you'd regret it.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  I feel like exactly, like you, you go on that ride, and I think it would, this would be a fascinating one to do it for, because there are so many doorways beyond which there could be things happening, things that Valve intended, and things that Valve is opening the door for that they have not directly intended, but as part of the experiment here. Yeah, I asked Valve about like, the name Frame, and it's, it's interesting, because I tell people about it, and they're not, they don't even know what that is, if they not been following it. But I think it's deliberately named, I mean, they may explain a little bit of why they named it that, but I think that it, it feels to me like a framework, you know, it feels to me like a, like a path with many roads going from it. And so I think

• 41:56Speaker 04

  that's really fascinating for it, to watch how that evolves with this headset, that it's not going for just one thing here.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  It's been such a pleasure, Scott. Thanks, thanks so much for being on The Vergecast.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Of course, we have to check in when this thing gets evolved more.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  We will. I think this is a six month, year down the road kind of thing.

• 42:16Speaker 04

  This is a long process.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  That's it for The Vergecast. Let us know what you think. Call the hotline 866VERGE11, or email [email protected]. And to support everything we do here and get ad free podcasts, please subscribe to The Verge. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchek. See you next time, space cowboy.

• 42:42Speaker 07

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 43:12Speaker 08

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claud.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai/spotify.