Steam Frame: A Place For Weirdos

Last year, as part of my hype/optimism for the Steam Hardware announcements, I wrote a post called My Hopes for the Steam Frame. The digest version: I was optimistic that Valve’s VR headset and “Steam Deck For Your Face” combo could help undo the damage of the Metaverse mentality, by encouraging more weird, smaller, and sustainable projects in VR. A lot of that was based on the same underlying assumption: that the headset would end up costing in the $700-$800 range at most, and you’d be able to get it bundled with the Steam Machine and controller for in the ballpark of 1600 bucks. As we’ve seen, that did not happen. The Steam Frame is priced similarly to the Steam Machine in the US, at $1059 for a 256 GB model. But it also feels like the Steam Machine sticker shock ripped off the band-aid, and so the higher-than-hoped-for price for the Steam Frame isn’t met with a gasp of surprise, but a sigh of resignation. Turns out that handing the global economy over to a bunch of sociopathic…