Valve’s big hardware push: you asked, we answered.
After launching it in beta earlier this month, Valve has officially launched a new feature that lets you keep downloading games even when you turn the display off. I’ve wanted something like this since I first got a Steam Deck more than three years ago.
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Gamers Nexus reports that the cost of many consumer DDR5 and DDR4 RAM kits has increased drastically recently.
But why? There’s a lot to it, but AI datacenter projects, like OpenAI’s Stargate (which the company expects to require 900,000 semiconductor wafers per month), might be contributing to this trend.
Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat won’t promise anything, but he told us “that is something we are really interested in supporting” during our big Valve trip. It’s not as simple as it sounds, he says: What if users pull it off the dock mid-update?
It could fail and you’d be stuck in that state forever, right? Or you lose Wi-Fi connection and be in a weird state. There’s all kinds of situations where we want to be able to have acceptable behavior if that happens.
Can you tell we’re excited about the Steam Machine? We haven’t exactly been quiet about it. But it’s good to get the reminder that there’s one crucial bit of information we’re still waiting for, and it all depends on that.
Mrogi:
I mean yes, in principle by features it’s also the device I want. But I feel without the price 80% of the equation is missing?
There’s a few hundred bucks in one or the other direction if I feel enthusiastic or “meh” about this thing.
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Asus brought Hall effect customization to a split ergo board, but it didn’t go hard enough on ergonomics.
I’ve been looking for a better way to play Steam games on my TV, and the Steam Machine checks all my boxes.
“This is both a peripheral controller for a PC as well as the Steam Machine or whatever else you want to plug it into,” said hardware engineer Steve Cardinali. “Most of the time, your audio will be coming from that, not directly your controller.” Because of that, “we just didn’t feel like it was necessary.”
I still wish it was there; I use the DualSense’s headphone jack for quiet audio at night all the time. Otherwise, I really like the controller.
I brought our Quest 3 to Valve’s offices just in case we’d be seeing the Steam Frame, formerly known as Deckard — and it paid off! I didn’t have time to directly compare optics, but I’d say comfort is superior. It’s noticeably smaller, with controllers that are bigger.
What’s inside Valve’s six-inch cube? We got a dozen photos of the console’s guts, including all six sides.
