Ep.196 - Steam Frame Pricing + Meta Connect 2026

Emanuel-C (0:04)

Hello, everyone in Podcastland. Welcome to this week's episode.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

On this week's episode of the podcast, we talk about the Steam Frame. Valve finally launches their newest VR headset. We talk about Meta Connect. Meta unveils their brand new AI-powered hardware.

Emanuel-C (0:18)

And we talk about Google Books launching, a new age for Android on PC.

SPEAKER_2 (0:24)

Welcome to We Need to Talk About Tech. Where we talk about the past, present, and future of technology.

Emanuel-C (0:35)

Okay. Topic number one. Valve, about a year ago now, in November of 2025, announced their Steam Frame, along with the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller.

Steam Machine came out.

Now they have announced the price of the Steam Frame, and it is $1,059 for the 256 gigabyte version and $1,299 for the one terabyte version. Now, the hardware is good, from whatever you say. It's pretty good, but I guess in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't solve the main issue with VR headsets. Now, the device is fairly comfortable, balanced weight. I think I saw it at like 440 grams. And compared to something like the Quest 3 or Vision Pro, it is not as front heavy. Now, the Vision Pro, especially, that was made of metal and glass, so that was unusually heavy. But because Valve has put the battery pack in the back of the headset, it kind of helps to disperse the weight a little bit more than everything, just being in the front on the bridge of your nose, let's say.

Now, a bit of a value add. It comes with a copy of Half-Life Alyx. But that is a game that came out in 2018 So yeah, it's a good free game. Some people say it is the best VR game ever, the best single player VR game ever. But it came out years ago. Now, some highlights of the product, FeX Translation Layer is very impressive. The Streaming and Fovated Rendering, you know, when you connect it to a PC, is very impressive, or they are very impressive. The Expansion Port on the front, which they mentioned in their announcement of it, and you know, we saw in some of the early first looks of it. Very cool. There's already something you can buy, like a color pass-through camera, which it seems pretty seamless with how it kind of snaps into place. And normally, the Valve Steam Frame just gives you monochrome, almost like a blue monochrome pass-through. So it's not meant to be used that way. But if you need to, let's say, I don't know, walk around wherever you're living and not kick your coffee stand a million times, it will do the job. But if you actually want to have color pass-through, there are expansions for it. And presumably, other companies, other manufacturers will have different kinds of expansions for it, which is pretty cool. Now, I guess one thing to note or a couple of things to note that should come stock with the device but don't, and Valve's reasoning is they wanted to keep the price down to $1,059, which is an expensive game and headset, especially compared to something like the Quest 3, which I believe is like $599. So, they wanted to keep the price down, so you have to pay extra for a charging brick. I think it just comes with the cable and the ergonomic accessory pack, which gives you a bigger light seal for around your nose and other more comfortable cushion in. You have to pay extra for those, which really from a device like this should have kind of come included in the box, but I mean that's Valve trying to keep the price down.

I think what this kind of highlights, or what I mentioned earlier is the hardware is good, the effects, the effects translation layer, the streaming, foveated rendering, all of this stuff. The fact that it runs Steam OS, so you can run all of your Steam library technically on this device. It's very impressive, but what this headset, and I guess what all headsets, what the industry is really missing is a compelling reason, and most likely a game that makes you want or need to get a headset. Like the Vision Pro, very impressive device, very expensive device. It looked, the optics, the processing of it, everything looked great.

But at the end of the day, there was no compelling reason to get this headset, to get the Vision Pro, to get this Valve Steam Frame.

Yeah, I think the Steam Frame will do better than the Vision Pro, definitely. But at the end of the day, there is still no compelling new reason. You know, maybe Half-Life Alex back in the day, back in 2018, was a compelling reason. But there's nothing that makes people say, hey, I need to go and get a headset now. So yeah, it's, I'm glad they finally announced the price of it. It's, you know, essentially the same price as a steam machine. And I guess I'll leave with two questions for you. One, would you get this Steam Frame over the steam machine or vice versa? And two, what do you think a compelling project or compelling reason to get a VR headset would be?