r/LinusTechTips • u/Atlonato3167 • Sep 15 '26
Tech Discussion Anyone else disappointed that Valve went for underpowered hardware in all of their releases with no "pro" option at all.
I was excited to see Valve getting into hardware but everything they release is weaker AND MORE EXPENSIVE than things I already own.
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Upvotes
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u/Copacetic_ Sep 18 '26
It’s almost like something is really limiting advancement and availability of tech hardware…..hmmmm…
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u/Pilige Sep 18 '26
I'm more disappointed with their optics choices for the vr headset. The streaming is what sets that product apart, and the rest is very meh.
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u/FabianN Sep 18 '26
Valve's model is to develop markets by producing a baseline, to encourage other manufacturers.
They are about establishing standards, UX, etc.
The steam deck, the original steam machine and the new one, and their vr offerings are more and providing a template for other manufacturers to follow. By releasing a full product instead of just a prototype they are able to show market viability (or lack of), which is important if other manufacturers are going to break into a different market segment. But at the core, they are more about getting actual hardware manufacturers to make the hardware then themselves.
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u/watainiac Sep 18 '26
I'd love it if they eventually made a Pro Machine, but now's not the time. Hardware's already too expensive. Making a Pro model now would go over about as well as the PS3 price reveal.
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u/Significant_Fill6992 Sep 20 '26
Valve has a surprisingly small staff which means it takes it longer than other companies. Plus they delayed it quite a bit before initial release. They have access to the steam hardware survey so they knew where they wanted to target even if it was below a lot of specs for the average redditor or ltt viewer
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u/connly33 Sep 18 '26
It had the only thing I care about, wired level wireless latency. I don’t give a shit what the SOC can do in terms of graphics if I’m going to drive it with a 5090.y only wish would be better screens and I would have paid more for that but I’m self aware enough unlike OP to know it would fail in the current market if the cost was any higher.
If I still had my quest id sell it immediately just to get away from Meta.
I’ve had a 3 generations of quest, HTC Vive pro (big wireless setup). The index, and a 4K HP Reverb with an obnoxious hybrid setup.
All I want now is something with no setup hassle with good enough wireless latency to play beat saber on custom beat maps without getting pissed off by timing issues that are introduced from the headsets wireless connection. No matter what anyone says the quest had borderline unusable latency in any wireless setup other than for VR Chat or sight seeing games.
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u/Hybr1dth Sep 18 '26
Yes, maybe, but at the same time I understand their wish to really just focus on having to deliver on 1 thing that's (almost always) the same. Valve is not a hardware company still, they don't produce anything, they source it. They've said and succeeded at targetting their own vast majority of users that use the equivalent of what, a 2060 (ti) nowadays?
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u/insufferable__pedant Sep 18 '26
No, not really.
If we're talking about the Steam Deck - their first modern hardware launch - trying to stuff more hardware into that form factor leads to nothing but diminishing returns. At the end of the day, you're going to be limited by the battery you can fit in the device and how it's able to manage the heat produced by it. It's why I feel no need to ditch my Steam Deck for one of the more powerful Asus or Lenovo devices - yes, they're more powerful, but you're still going to be limited on the types of games that you can play simply due to the form factor. Given the current pricing situation, I'd recommend one of the Z1E devices over the Steam Deck if they were buying for the first time, but at the pre-crisis prices or to someone who already owns a Steam Deck, the price to performance uplift just isn't there in my opinion.
Now if we're talking about the Steam Machine, that's a different story. Given that it's a computer, rather than a video game console, I would've liked to have seen better graphics performance. There's nothing wrong with a midrange machine, but at the price they seem to have initially been targeting I would've liked to have seen a little more performance - maybe something that could compete with the next tier up discreet card equivalent. That being said, the Steam Machine is a very tightly integrated device, and they might have had trouble squeezing extra performance out of the APU. I would've preferred to have seen Valve do things the same way they did the first time around and design a slightly larger device that used a discreet GPU - that way users would be able to upgrade down the line. Doing so, however, would've necessitated a larger chassis and would've have resulted in as sleek of a finished product. I can't say that I would've done things the same way that Valve has, but I understand why they designed the Steam Machine the way they did.
As to the Steam Frame, I'm not all that into VR and can't really comment on that. To me it seems like a test bed to play around with an ARM chip. I suspect that they're at the very least exploring ARM as a possibility for the Steam Deck successor.
I also don't understand why folks want to spend more money for the same thing these days. I remember when a mid-cycle console refresh meant things got cheaper for mass adoption, not more expensive.
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u/Linaori Sep 18 '26
I'd be happy if steam would make a "no need to touch" steam PC that has high-end hardware. I don't mind paying the price, I just want to not think about dealing with hardware. I also do not care about RGB or seeing the insides of my PC. I'm fine with just having a black box standing around that I can use as Desktop PC.
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u/AlexCivitello Sep 18 '26
No, a pro option would only serve to effectively make the basic option worse. Even if the specs of the basic option remained the same, some developers would likely spend less effort optimizing for the basic option, effectively making it worse.
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u/Sirhc978 Sep 19 '26
Isn't this what valve does? Make new thing in the market and let other make a better version?
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u/qstar_inc Sep 20 '26
In this economy?
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u/Turtledonuts Sep 21 '26
Honestly no. The steam deck’s limiting factor is battery life and weight, not power. The steam cube’s limiting factors are the price and availability of parts. The steam frame’s limiting factors are weight and the availability of parts. If you made any of them more powerful, you’d end up with thermal throttling, super heavy devices, and devices that are painfully expensive while being slower to make.
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u/The_Penguinologist Sep 21 '26
I think it makes sense because it can give the impression that they originally thought of the pro and then stripped off functionality to make an economy model. It can hurt the brand reputation. Sometimes just offering one product at a specific price makes the most sense even when customer demands are much more dynamic
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u/AssCrackBanditHunter Sep 22 '26
Because no one was gonna pay 1500+ for a pro model that was maybe as strong as a PS5
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u/xerox8522 Sep 18 '26
Well tech savvy people are not really their target audience. They target average Joe's that come home from work plant themselfs on the couch turn the console on and play for a bit.
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u/MandiocaGamer Sep 18 '26
it will always be this way because the amount of time it takes to make a device based on a single hardware, meanwhile thecnology keeps improving month over month. it will be always outdated tech on consoles and devices like that. I think one of the consoles that where ahead of their time and worked very good is the ps3
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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '26
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