Steam in your living room and Steam all over your face

Yesterday, Valve announced three new devices to join the Steam Deck in its line of interoperable Steam Hardware, and honestly it’s all I’ve been able to think about. There’s an article from Chris Person at Aftermath if you want to hear a professional journalist sum up all the solid design choices evident in the announcement, but I wanted to add my take, too.

Disclaimer: I do have several friends who work at Valve, but I want to make one thing absolutely clear: I have no shame whatsoever, and if any of them wants to get me a developer kit or deep discounts on the hardware, I’ll gladly accept it in return for more gushing posts like this one.

Because while it’s not at all unusual for me to get excited about announcements of upcoming tech, especially if it includes AR/VR capability, it is unusual for me to get excited about announcements that are so sensible and reasonable. Based on what I’ve seen, it just looks like Valve made all of the correct choices, and they’re creating stuff that is exactly what I’m in the market for.1

The announcement is just over a day old, and I’ve already read or watched every article or video I could find about it, from YouTubers who got to try the hardware in person, and from other commenters reacting to the specs and videos. What I quickly realized is how much the usual sources for tech and gaming coverage have become irrelevant for what I want.

I rarely play AAA games anymore — and I’m not great at the ones I do still play — so I don’t really need the highest frame rates or resolution, and the majority of TLAs2 associated with performance specs for video games these days are completely lost on me. My Steam library is almost entirely made up of independent games, and the ones from larger studios are almost all turn-based, or simulators and city-builders. My Windows machine is several years old at this point, and it’s still overpowered for just about everything I try to play on it.

On the VR side, I’m still optimistic about the potential of it as a platform, even though it never quite seems to take hold beyond a niche audience. But even for me, the advancements I’d need to see are all in terms of experience, not technology. Not even in-game experience, since I have to wear glasses no matter what3, so I’m never going to get the highest clarity or widest FOV4. For me, the determining factors of “experience” are: how quickly can you put it on and get started, how comfortable is it to wear for extended periods, how self-contained is it, and how much is there to actually do with it once you’re inside?

I’d just started to take it for granted that to keep up with all the stuff I used to love — even as a consumer, not just as a developer — you had to be informed about all the details of rendering technology, processor design, memory caching and access speeds, display technology, object tracking, network latency, display latency, and whatever else has become crucially important just in the time it’s taken me to write this paragraph.

What I appreciated about Valve’s announcement is that the tone was basically, “Nah, we’ve got a lot of smart people who’ve figured all that shit out. You’re good.”

Steam Controller

This one is the least interesting of the three devices to me, because I rarely have to put any thought into what controller I’m using. All of the stuff I play on a desktop machine, I play with a mouse and keyboard. As God intended.

But even here, they made all the right choices. If I were to get a controller for playing PC games, this is almost certainly the one I’d get.

There are people who love the original Steam Controller, but personally, I never found a good use for it. The overriding design principle seemed to be bringing every input you’d have available on a PC to a handheld controller, resulting in the over-sized trackpads that in theory combined mouse, dpad, and joystick input into one control, but in practice just felt like the worst version of each. Plus, the use of AA batteries made it a hassle, and the overall build quality felt cheaper and more plasticky than it actually was.

The new one is at its core a Steam Deck without a screen, and that’s exactly what it should be. The Steam Deck’s ergonomics are like the physics of bumblebee flight: it shouldn’t work, and yet it does. It seems like the thing is way too big to be comfortable to hold for extended periods, but as soon as you get into it, it’s a joy to use.

In addition to the dpad, two joysticks, and everything else you’d expect from a game controller these days, the touchpads have a placement and size, not to mention responsiveness, that makes a lot more sense. I still rarely use them, but on a platform based around playing everything in a library of games built for PCs, it’s inevitable to need to simulate mouse input at some point or another.

And all the improvements specific to the new Steam Controller sound like genuine improvements. In particular: joysticks that are designed to be drift-proof, which the Switch 2 didn’t include for some reason. And it’s table stakes to include a rechargeable battery instead of relying on AAs, but the magnetic puck that is both a charger and a wireless receiver is ingenious. Especially in a world where everybody else has essentially said, “Just give up and use Bluetooth.”5

I’ve heard several people praising Steam Input as the underrated MVP of the Steam Deck and the platform in general. I haven’t spent any time experimenting with it myself. But again, the philosophy of modding and community-shared content that seems to run through everything Valve does will pay off here, since there’s a good chance someone has already made a controller profile optimized for whatever game you’re wanting to play.

Steam Machine

More appealing to me is the Steam Machine, which we have to acknowledge is solid, 1970s-style product naming, even if Steam Cube seems more appropriate.

I’ve been wanting a PC in the living room for almost two decades and three different living rooms. I’ve used everything from a Mac Mini running a Windows VM, to a Steam Deck dock. None of them have “stuck,” because there’s always been that little bit of friction that keeps it from being as quick and simple as a console. So I just keep taking the path of least resistance and saying, “Okay, fine, I guess I’ll buy the new PlayStation.”

So assuming they get the price right6, it looks like the Steam Machine will be exactly the thing I’ve been hoping for. A lot of the coverage I’ve seen has been focusing on the technical specs and comparing it to a desktop PC, but that honestly feels like it’s missing the point. I think Valve emphasized exactly the right priorities, namely: size, convenience, and compatibility.

Can it play my entire Steam library? Is it more capable than a docked Steam Deck? Can I leave it plugged in and not have to go through any setup every time?

And most importantly: can I 3D print a custom faceplate for it that allows me to attach Lego bricks?

It would’ve been foolish to position it as a gaming PC instead of a console alternative, since the people who are most interested in having a high-end gaming PC have almost certainly already got one. (Assuming they can afford the price of video cards). For people like me, who use Windows begrudgingly and only for gaming, a medium-to-high-end PC just sits under the desk making noise and taking up space. And it’s never a seamless experience for its intended purpose, either, since every time it boots up, it needs to go through another lengthy round of Windows system updates.

I appreciated that Valve showed the Steam machine being used as a desktop PC — and that’s all they showed, as far as I’m aware; I haven’t seen any out-of-game shots of whatever Big Picture looks like on this version of the platform. (I’m assuming it’s the Steam Deck’s interface, but bigger). But what I especially appreciated is how focused they were in the out-of-game shots: someone developing a game in Blender and Godot, and someone else using the Steam Machine to stream Stardew Valley. It’s such an ingenious way to communicate “this machine can do whatever you want” but still acknowledge “but we’re still perfectly aware of our target audience.” Clumsier and over-eager marketing might’ve tried to emphasize the computer’s versatility by showing someone editing a spreadsheet on it.

While I’m saying how impressed I am by this launch announcement, I should also mention how effectively they communicated “this is the diversity of our audience.” It doesn’t feel like a marketing team carefully picking out a member of each demographic to pointedly include them, but more a genuine effort to show what the audience really looks like.

Steam Frame

And finally, the VR headset, which was the announcement I was most anticipating and still the one I’m most looking forward to. I skipped the Index, because it was too expensive for me to afford, and because I already had VR fatigue by the time it came out. From what I’ve seen, the Steam Frame is exactly the device I wanted it to be, since it’s positioned somewhere between the high-end Index and the less powerful but more self-contained Quest 2 and 3.

The biggest surprise to me was the inclusion of an SD card slot. Valve emphasized that you could take the card with your Steam library from the Steam Deck, and put it into either the Steam Machine or the Steam Frame, and it all works. Even if the specifications don’t match up, it is essentially a Steam Deck for your face.

I’m so used to thinking of VR headsets as either being standalone computers, or 3D displays for stuff streaming from a PC, that it hadn’t really occurred to me to take the “why not both?” route. I’ve been using a Quest 2 with Steam Link to play Half-Life: Alyx streaming from my PC, and I’ve been surprised how well it works — apart from my general ineptitude with the game, the biggest problem has been using controllers that the game wasn’t designed for. I’ve liked a few of the Quest-native games that I’ve played on the device, and I’ve wished that there were more I could play that didn’t require either streaming from the PC, or buying again for the Quest. The Steam Frame seems to say, “how about you have a VR device that can play pretty much anything from your entire Steam library?”

And since I’ve mentioned the Quest a few times: the obvious appeal of the Steam Frame for me is not having to use a Meta product. That’s not even the start of an anti-Meta screed, either. It’s just the simple and innocuous observation that the medium needs healthy competition to be viable. For years, the Quest has been the major player in VR, they’ve done a ton to keep it from dying out completely, and they’ve funded projects that wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to be made. And to their credit, they’ve made the platform open-ish enough for apps like Steam Link to let you stream games from the PC.

But even if you’re able to disregard how much they’ve integrated the negative aspects of their other platforms into the Quest, the more pragmatic problem as a consumer is having to build up a separate library of games. And while I still like the Quest 2 — even though it’s been so long since I used it that the batteries in the controllers have likely corroded — the Quest 3 never appealed to me enough to warrant an upgrade. It felt like they pushed too hard on the Mixed Reality aspect, trying to position it as a cheaper-but-just-as-viable alternative to the Vision Pro, instead of really playing to its strengths as a gaming platform.

If the pitch for Steam Machine was basically “it’s like a video game console, but it’s also a PC (that you can use mostly for gaming-related stuff),” the pitch for the Steam Frame doesn’t even bother with any such qualifiers. It says “your games in every dimension” right there on the front page. Valve is letting everybody else chase this idea of wear-everywhere AR goggles, or VR headsets as a lifestyle device for affluent people to consult recipes or browse the web. Meanwhile, they don’t betray even a whiff of being ashamed that this is a device targeted at people who play video games. And they shouldn’t be, because games are still the most viable application of consumer VR, by far.

Most of the magical appeal of the Vision Pro faded for me once I realized how unsuited it was for any of the types of gaming that I’m interested in. Not technically unsuited, but as a result of the conscious design choice on Apple’s part to position it as a lifestyle device instead of a gaming-focused, or really even gaming-capable one. It remains pretty great for watching movies, and I’m still holding out hope that some kind of killer app reveals itself before the platform becomes a dead end. But paradoxically, the push to make it more general purpose has meant that there’s not enough that it’s particularly great at. And even with the stuff that it is good at — watching movies or videos, browsing through photos, or using the giant-screen desktop mirror — it’s always a question of whether it’s enough of a better experience that I wouldn’t rather just do it with a flat screen.

So the fact that the Steam Frame’s pass-through cameras are still monochrome, for instance, is something I see as a feature, not a bug. I’m hoping it’s a sign that they’ve considered affordability as one of the main drivers of the project, and are hoping to price it competitively with the Quest 3, instead of higher-end headsets.

And it’s a sign that they’re not concerned about AR or MR, an implicit acknowledgment that there still haven’t been any truly standout experiences for AR or MR that rival the best immersive VR. Or even relatively early VR, for that matter: to this day, some of the best things I’ve seen in a headset were a dungeon crawler called Vanishing Realms, and Valve’s own The Lab demo suite.

Another way of looking at it: time spent using the passthrough cameras is time not spent playing games, and it’d be better to put all the emphasis on getting you into a game as quickly and easily as possible.

The Business

The through-line in all of the hardware announcements has been simple and obvious: more ways to play the games in your Steam library.

On that front, you could make a solid case that it’s hypocritical to complain about Meta being the 900-pound gorilla in VR, when Valve is the 900-pound gorilla in video game distribution. Where’s my love of healthy competition now?!

It’s still there; I just think that it’s a competition that Valve already won, years ago. And they keep winning, every time a new challenger steps into the ring, no matter how powerful they are, or how much money they pour into it. And unlike the contenders, Steam wins because I think they know what their business is, and they know who their customers are. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic, and Microsoft have all tried over the years, to some degree or another, to build their own marketplace. And without fail, they force the customer to make concessions or jump through hoops, either with subscriptions or with exclusivity. It’s always more of a hassle than simply having all your games in one place.

It’s so rare in the tech world to find a situation where what’s good for the company is also good for the consumer. Every company either needs to be a non-profit constantly struggling to stay afloat, or a behemoth so fixated on maximum growth that customer service becomes an afterthought if not an outright inconvenience. I’m happy that Steam has made a metric shit-ton of money by distributing games, because I never have to ask myself, “wait a second… what’s the catch?”

(I haven’t ever tried to release anything on the platform, so I don’t know what the situation is for developers. But as someone who aspires to independent development and is also really, really, horribly, old, I still remember the pre-Steam days, when the idea of trying to make a living off your game without being beholden to a publisher was all-but impossible. Unless you’d made something genre-defining like DOOM).

And on the VR front, they’ve got their bona fides simply by having been invested in VR for a very long time. I have to say that the Steam VR experience has never been my favorite, since the interface was always little clunky, there was inevitably a setup step, and the whole process felt like a hassle to get started. The main reason I was so pleased with the Quest platform initially was that it was worth the downgrade from PC-quality games to mobile-quality, simply because the whole process was so much more seamless.

So I am completely and prematurely on board with the new Steam hardware. So far, all signs point to affordability being a goal, but of course it remains to be seen whether Valve’s idea of “affordable” is the same as mine.7 I don’t want to say that I’m getting too invested too soon, but I will acknowledge that I’ve already cleared a 7×7 inch space (for breathing room) on our entertainment center, and made sure that the living room floor is free of obstructions.

1
Or at least would be, if I had steady income at the moment.

2
Three-letter acronyms

3
Or use specialized lenses, like with the Vision Pro

4
Field of vision, or how much of the periphery of a scene you can see

5
Bluetooth is still an option with the controller, it’s worth pointing out. But the puck has lower latency and supports more simultaneous connections without a drop in performance.

6
Or, I’ll repeat, take notice of my shameless disclaimer above

7
Yes, I was one of the suckers who bought the Vision Pro. But that was knowing full well that it was more or less a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.

1 Or at least would be, if I had steady income at the moment.

2 Three-letter acronyms

3 Or use specialized lenses, like with the Vision Pro

4 Field of vision, or how much of the periphery of a scene you can see

5 Bluetooth is still an option with the controller, it’s worth pointing out. But the puck has lower latency and supports more simultaneous connections without a drop in performance.

6 Or, I’ll repeat, take notice of my shameless disclaimer above

7 Yes, I was one of the suckers who bought the Vision Pro. But that was knowing full well that it was more or less a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.