Topic: Steam controller, steam frame and steam machine

Price is going to be crucial for this, otherwise I can't see how it appeals. It certainly looks like an elegant little box but with these specs you're going to have to do some settings tweaking which seems at odds with its console-like nature (I imagine there could be some automatic stuff for certain games though).

If it's designed to be sitting under a TV and it costs roughly what a console does then you'd think a PS5 would be a smarter choice. It's also not quite as customisable as a standard PC.

Personally, I like a clear distinction between console and PC so it's not for me.

I wonder will "Universal Compression"/"Neural Texture Compression" potentially make these 8GB GPUs less of a bottleneck in future, or am I misunderstanding what they're for?

This is basically my entire reaction as well. I think MS's play is to court those alternative OEM you mention.
But what we are seeing today is the fruition of a decade or more of effort from Valve. Can anyone really expect MS to reasonably turn around a competing product in 2 years?

edit: unrelated but related: The Epic Games Store still won't keep you logged in.

Will pass on the VR, hold off on the machine but I'll probably pick up a controller. Machine is lovely looking though.

With the Frame running an ARM cpu and the translation layer they are using to play x86 games, I wonder how it compares in performance to existing solutions like Gamehub/GameNative. Been following that segment and it seems to be progressing super quick, so excited to see how well Valve's solution works.

I always wanted the original Steam Controller, looks like we all get a second chance. Can anyone speak to the trackpads on the original controller?

8GB VRAM sticks out like a sore thumb if the target is 1080p/60fps. Otherwise, this is definitely going for consoles.

@JayPsi
Tracks pads where nice on the og as track pads, they had a nice haptic feedback to them.
But the original controller kind of fell apart imo as they wanted them to fill in the place of a dpad and the right analog stick.
Ok for very specific games, like maybe point and click stuff or older games that could get away with one stick.
They are nice to haves, I'm glad to see them here and not at the expense of a proper dpad and stick this time.