Valve is in the news again thanks to the impending launch of its Steam Frame VR headset. The developer recently opened up pre-order registration for the £889 / $1,059 standalone headset following months of wait.
In a new IGN interview, Valve was asked whether the ongoing memory and storage crisis has had an effect on Valve’s plans for the next Steam Deck. “Not really,” said Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais.
“We’ve talked before about how we want to make sure there’s a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, I think we’re still looking at it in the same way.”
What Griffais is referring to is an idea Valve communicated a few times in the past: for a Steam Deck 2 to exist, it needs to offer a generational leap in performance. In 2023, the developer-publisher said that technology doesn’t exist yet. Two years later, Valve said it had a “pretty good idea” of what the next Steam Deck might look like. In April, Valve outright confirmed it’s working on a Steam Deck 2 and that the device builds on everything learned from developing the original as well as its hardware launches that followed.
The ongoing memory crisis has severely impacted pricing and availability of Valve’s hardware products – including Frame – and caused several delays. Valve previously said the worsening memory shortage is something it’s keeping in mind, but Griffais’ comments don’t address how much of a factor – if any – that’s going to play into the design process. Raising prices is one thing, but as we’ve recently seen with Google Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL smartphones, companies can charge more while lowering specs.
With that in mind, Griffais explained Valve’s goals with the Steam Deck 2 also haven’t changed. “From what we’re working on as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we’re trying to build goes, it’s very similar goals,” Griffais said.
Steam Frame is the final hardware product to ship of the trio Valve announced last year, with the other two being Steam Controller and Steam Machine. The rising prices of Valve’s hardware is partly what makes it difficult for Steam Frame VR headset – already a niche product – to make a compelling case for itself.
Despite being impressed with the hardware design and capabilities of the headset in Eurogamer’s review of Steam Frame, Matt Wales said “Frame isn’t a machine for high-end enthusiasts” and “doesn’t offer a dramatically different in-headset experience to the far cheaper, more intuitive Quest 3”.
