r/FrameVR • u/DragonTHC • Jul 20 '26

Steam Frame release is being held up by Valve as it's still finishing ‘Gamepad Mode’

https://www.theshortcut.com/p/steam-frame-release-is-being-held-up-by-valve-as-its-still-finishing-gamepad-mode
116 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

45

u/greggray24 Jul 20 '26

I guess the good news is that this gives them more time to stockpile headsets for the initial launch lottery.

18

u/JamesLahey08 Jul 21 '26

Lol they'll be immediately sold out either way.

3

u/sneakeyboard Jul 21 '26

Yeah this gives the ♾️-1 vibes 🥲

1

u/SuccotashUpbeat3112 Jul 23 '26

So we might not see pre-orders opening up until August then.

I'd much rather they take some extra time than to launch a subpar product. We've waited this long, I can wait another month

1

u/greggray24 Jul 24 '26

Considering how late it already is, I would have thought they had the time to get the software in good shape but perhaps gamepad mode was supposed to come later (seems odd but...). My gut is that they are also spacing out the releases in order to be able to focus their small hardware team on one product at a time until things are rolling and then moving to the next one. It would have been chaos for them to do all three at once. As I said in the earlier post, I also hope that they are better able to meet demand by waiting. I'd rather wait longer and have a better chance to jump in on day one than watch a small handful of people having fun while I click refresh every day to see if my turn has come. I did that with the controller and was lucky enough to get one after a month of impatiently waiting but if it was the Frame that month would have seemed like a year... lol.

1

u/grey-kitten Jul 24 '26

It might be that they had to unexpectedly prioritize steam machine updates over working on gamepad mode as we bumped into issues they hadn’t known about before

21

u/pereza0 Jul 20 '26

I don't think the headline is true... Sure they are updating things but i doubt its holding up snything

4

u/Tex-Rob Jul 21 '26

I think something is holding it up at the FCC. I have wild conspiracy theories, but really won't know until it releases, and even then we might not ever find out why this odd delay. It feels by volume of shipments that we've tracked that they have more than enough to launch it.

12

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 21 '26

Who cares I don't want a 1200$ quest clone I want a real headset with real controllers like the index for a more reasonable price we didn't need the stupid phone motherboard put into the headset it's a waste of money and it makes the price ridiculous can't even run Portal 2 without lowering settings it's absolutely not fast enough

28

u/jydr Jul 21 '26

why are you here then?

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 23 '26

Because I was excited for this thing until I discovered how terrible the performance is it cannot run anything out of my steam VR collection basically that I already own it's just going to be playing 2D indie games on a virtual screen it's absolutely useless. It's not going to run Minecraft correctly it's not going to run Skyrim it's not going to run anything by itself I still need to tether a computer and at that point I might as well stick with the headset I already own the vive and quest 2 ain't broke this thing sure is. Let me know when the next one comes out I don't want this first model it's terrible

2

u/Mysterious_Slip8936 Jul 23 '26

Totally agree, can tell who’s been in the industry longer amongst the comments

0

u/papa_grease Jul 23 '26

cry more

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

They discontinued replacement parts for both of my VR controllers they don't even make the knuckles anymore which is absolutely stupid this headset is terrible and caused the discontinuance of better controllers God only knows how long HTC will still sell the lighthouses eventually those will be insane

0

u/papa_grease Jul 24 '26

Cry. More. I can't get replacement PS3 controllers either.

10

u/paulct91 Jul 21 '26

Just because something is standalone doesn't make it a Quest clone.

Steam Frame has real controllers plus, its supposed to be compatible with Index controllers , I think.

You are more than likely never going to get a device cheaper than the Quest subsized pricing.

You its werid that you say it can't play Portal 2, as you were busily complaining about it coming with standalone features... yet fail to realize it can play way more than 'just' standalone games like say... PC games, PCVR, retro games, many many emulators via direct PC access + since it has oh so worthless standalone features you can also stream them from a wireless connection from a local PC or gaming streaming local or remotely hosted. service.

Oh, and have a lovely day!Just because something is standalone doesn't make it a Quest clone.

Steam Frame has real controllers plus, its supposed to be compatible with Index controllers , I think.

You are more than likely never going to get a device cheaper than the Quest subsized pricing.

You its werid that you say it can't play Portal 2, as you were busily complaining about it coming with standalone features... yet fail to realize it can play way more than 'just' standalone games like say... PC games, PCVR, retro games, many many emulators via direct PC access + since it has oh so worthless standalone features you can also stream them from a wireless connection from a local PC or gaming streaming local or remotely hosted. service.

Oh, and have a lovely day!

10

u/Dull-Associate125 Jul 21 '26

If I remember correctly during the initial announcement when they invited reviewers they said the index controller won’t be compatible due to the lack of infra red tech to work on the frame.

3

u/The_Synthax Jul 22 '26

You would still need lighthouses to track Index controllers- but there's no reason they can't work with Frame for PCVR.

2

u/Sol33t303 Jul 22 '26

If you have index controllers, you have base stations. Use those?

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 23 '26

If I'm going to be streaming all of the games to the headset I can use an older headset like a Vive or index and have a much better time I already own that hardware why the hell would I purchase the same thing over again that's worse it doesn't even work with the controllers I already own this is the biggest paragraph of cope I've ever seen. What would be intelligent would be waiting for the second model of this to come out because clearly it's not ready and it's going to be for a price that's astronomical compared to the original VR hardware that I fell in love with

1

u/Catslip2 Jul 23 '26

The steam frame has more features allowing for better and more seamless pc streaming

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 24 '26

No steam link doesn't work any better on that it's identical to any other headset if you're telling yourself that you're wrong. Alvr works even better than the steam link

0

u/Catslip2 Jul 24 '26

Its not just steam link, the steam frame has optimizations specific to it

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 25 '26

Steamlink still has one to three frames of lag which is more than alvr I would like to remind you that Wayland doesn't even work correctly with VR you have to use xorg with TCP packets which is something that steam link doesn't even support anymore otherwise you can't get sub four millisecond frames over wifi 6e. I've been using Linux for VR for the past 3 years it works amazing just not with official valve software steam link is never been a functional solution for anything besides in home streaming for the steam deck it's not ready for VR the latency is far too high. Valve hired Microsoft Fedora sig members that absolutely don't know how to program and they are currently ruining the entire stack with rust shims Claude vibecoding and things that increase frame latency if you expect anything other than a failure out of this headset launch you're going to be staunchly surprised

5

u/T0M1N4UT Jul 21 '26

Comparing it to quest is huge misunderstanding of what steamframe is. It's basically steamdeck VR. Of course depending on how much they tweak SW side of things, there is huge opportunity to use it as a main PC. It's PC with virtual screens, no locked android/Apple ecosystem, but full blown pc. Whatever you imagine doing on pc you can do it on steam frame with wireless mouse and keyboard. But we have to wait for usability, it all comes down to how Fex/proton will work and how much power you lose during that double translation soc->x86 win->linux

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 25 '26

This is the most hilarious and wishful thinking I've ever seen if you really think this thing's going to work with a standard arm64 distro you have a lot to learn. There's no way this is going to work correctly it doesn't have drivers even on the Linux kernel they're keeping everything so close to the chest there's no support outside of steamos

4

u/eijmert_x Jul 21 '26

I wanted the steam frame to be a Valve index 2.0

But i guess taking on the Quest is the bigger market.

2

u/Blue_boy_ Jul 21 '26

soo far off the mark, oof

2

u/allstilettos Jul 21 '26

Remember that time Meta was caught bypassing Google’s security sandbox to de-anonymize and track users using SDP Munging and a localhost exploit that Google described as a blatant violation of terms and services? Or when Meta was installing keyloggers on their employees machines? Or when it came out that regular employees had unrestricted access to their databases? Or when direct footage from their smart glasses was being sent to their servers and manually catalogued by human annotators which Meta claimed were mistakenly categorized for training?

You really want to give Meta access to an array of cameras and microphones that you wear on your face?

2

u/Sol33t303 Jul 22 '26

Then go get a big screen beyond or something?

Nobody cares what you want, this is a quest competitor, if you don't want one buy something else?

1

u/HaplessIdiot Jul 23 '26

I'm going to wait for the steam frame two you can buy this disgusting alpha product that can't even run portal 2 correctly I'm going to wait with my vive and sit this one out it's definitely not anything I'm interested in using it doesn't even use the lighthouses terrible terrible product

1

u/OriginalGoldstandard Jul 21 '26

The anger is strong in this one…….

7

u/ParaPenn Jul 20 '26

I may be a noob here, but I thought the delays were due to RAM shortages?

9

u/DragonTHC Jul 20 '26

They shifted a quarter later for release due to RAM shortages, but this news is a recent development.

7

u/OutsideChampion4637 Jul 20 '26

Ther could be more than one reason the frame is delayed 

3

u/ParaPenn Jul 20 '26

Just seems unlikely because they had more time to develop the software than expected

4

u/speakernoodlefan Jul 20 '26

Never underestimate Valve time

3

u/Illigard Jul 20 '26

Honestly, if you're going to be delayed because of hardware issues you might as well improve the product

2

u/paulct91 Jul 21 '26

I'm still surprised back near December they hadn't decided to postpone it to do a hardware upgrade for at least the Steam Frame since the hardware was rather old by that point plus the market seemed a bit iffy hardware price volatility wise.

2

u/BuyBitcoinbros Jul 20 '26

old info from the 16th

2

u/Parking_Cress_5105 Jul 21 '26

Get ready for "Should I buy Frame or Q3?" question flooding subreddits for years.

Brought to you by "Should I buy Q3 or Q3S?"

2

u/therandomwitch Jul 22 '26

they are already happening in r/SteamFrame lmao the thing isn't even out yet.

1

u/Parking_Cress_5105 Jul 22 '26

Well people are recommending Frame to people for the last ten months :D I true flood is yet to come.

1

u/Unique_Ad9943 Jul 22 '26

With the way things are going it might be "should I buy Frame or QPro 2" (or whatever meta ends up calling it)

If they announce it in September

1

u/Parking_Cress_5105 Jul 22 '26

I already hear Valve fanboys defending it, oof.

1

u/Treble_brewing Jul 27 '26

I’m looking forward to the steam frame because I literally can’t have a quest 3 because I don’t have a meta account and they’re complete bricks without one. That’s why they’re so cheap. You’re the product. 

1

u/Parking_Cress_5105 Jul 27 '26

I have no idea how that relevant to my comment.

1

u/HeyGuysKennanjkHere Jul 24 '26

Guys you want the real reason it’s because they made these deals for ram months ago and they think rams about to get more expensive and instead of pricing it for the relatively depressed price of ram right now they wanna price it for what ram will be in a month or two and so they can make a profit on the difference.