New Valve Release Three New Products: The Steam Frame, Steam...

Following on from the success of the Steam Deck, Valve is creating its very own ecosystem of products. The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all set to launch in the new year. We've tried each of them and here's what you need to know about each one.

"From the Frame to the Controller to the Machine, we're a fairly small industrial design team here, and we really made sure it felt like a family of devices, even to the slightest detail," Clement Gallois, a designer at Valve, tells me during a recent visit to Valve HQ. "How it feels, the buttons, how they react… everything belongs and works together kind of seamlessly."

For more detail, make sure to check out our in-depth stories linked below:

The Steam Frame is a new VR headset. It's wireless and no longer requires a gaming PC in order to play a game. That's thanks to its onboard Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and operating system, Valve's very own SteamOS. Though you can still connect it to a gaming PC using a dedicated 6 GHz dongle for high-fidelity PCVR—that's the bit I'm most excited about after trying the Steam Frame myself.

With an expanded resolution and new pancake lenses, the Steam Frame offers increased clarity and a more compact design compared to the Valve Index. It's also pretty slim and lightweight by more modern VR standards, extending only a few inches from the face and weighing just 435 grams.

The Steam Frame is significantly lighter than its predecessor. Similarly, it's lighter than the Quest 3 or Quest 3S, which I've weighed previously myself at 465 and 464 grams even without the straps.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Valve has been keen to point out that this is not called the Valve Index 2 for good reason. It's no longer just a PC accessory and gone is the clunky set-up process of the past. Valve has opted solely for inside-out tracking here. Four cameras on the outside of the Steam Frame track your surroundings and it can track you in the dark. It also offers eye tracking for both foveated rendering, use in social games, and a new feature called foveated streaming that Valve uses to lower bandwidth requirements over the Steam Frame's wireless connection.

The Steam Frame has a modular construction: the strap containing the battery, speaker system, and microSD card slot disconnects from the core module containing the processor, optics, and everything else.

There's also an expansion slot on the fr

Source: PC Gamer