StooMonster

Looks like Steam Frame has four models too:

• 256GB without charger
• 256GB with charger
• 1TB without charger
• 1TB with charger

If you're running tethered to your PC via USB-C then the cheapest option is the one to pick.

@themightyant There appears to be an overwhelming amount of evidence that Half-Lfe 3 is imminent; I've always assumed it's going to be a launch title for Steam Machines.

Similarly, I think they're going to release a stand-alone native ARM64 port of Half-Life Alyx for Steam Frame at launch.

But maybe if they break their duck with a 3 game, we may see more?!

Looking forward to Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight — looks like PS5 Pro is the place to play.

Although … have they confirmed a Professional version?

It's a lovely controller. Combined with Big Picture Mode, which is done by twice-clicking the Steam button, is very nice experience indeed.

Now, where is:
1. Steam Machine
2. Steam Frame
3. Half-Life 3

@Vyns Huzzah, it just arrived. I still prefer coloured XYAB buttons, but this is a very nice controller indeed.

It will be interesting to see if Valve takes any action to make this sort of accidental unencrypted release harder in future

For this to happen to two high profile releases demonstrates that Valve should put some checks in exactly as Will suggests.

User error is unavoidable and clearly extreme care needs to be taken in this process, but this is hair-trigger high-stakes risk that could be mitigated with some code.

@Vyns It shipped yesterday and the tracking number tells me that it's still with the courier (GLS) in the Netherlands — I guess because it's the weekend.

So I'm expecting it early next week.

@wsjudd Haha, yes Will. Thank you!

Got the 'shipped' with tracking number email at lunchtime. Exciting stuff indeed.

I'm a sucker for Valve hardware and have so far purchased everything they've produced. 🙃

Packaged items

Come on, come on, move to Picked up by carrier.

@themightyant not confirmed like Steam/Epic/etc. store support

This is the deafening silence, certainly Tom of MooresLawIsDead has put out a couple of shows about this very point.

@themightyant At the end of the day, does it really matter?

I think it does with the third-parties. If they're building XboxOS — game specific version of Win11 — and it can run on third-party hardware, then the next question is … can I download it an install it in place of Win11.

Or will there be options in Win11 to make it more like XboxOS, expanding further the Xbox Mode they've just pushed out.

I think that all makes it not a console.

I'm hearing that it's a Win11 box with fixed spec generic hardware and some XboxOS secret sauce.

Will games be optimised for this hardware or for the OS? I suspect the latter.

@Granadico It works as a regular Xbox controller outside of Steam.

This is great, just started playing Pragmata on PS5 Pro after finishing RE9. Lovely engine Capcom, and two fantastic games.

That Oblivion remains broken after a year does not bode well for the long-rumoured Fallout 3 Remaster.

My Steam Controller (2) has moved from Paid (which it has been the last three days) to Packed. Just waiting for courier pick up and then shipped (with a tracking code).

Wonder if it's this week or next?! Stated 3–5 days when I bought it.

Mrs StooMonster hates tech in the living room, plus gaming PC installed in my office with 21:9 OLED.

Might have to double-dip if it's great.

@NandoCalrissian Feels like Nvidia is the key missing part of support for SteamOS. Especially now they're got ARM64 version of SteamOS running — seen the videos of it running on Switch? — and there's the forthcoming Nvidia N1X handheld hardware.

Enjoyed this video, thanks much. Haven't bought Pragmata yet, but am absolutely going to do so on PS5 Pro as soon as a bit of backlog finished.

Although the PC Path-Tracing is calling … but want to play this on the sofa.

@themightyant Agree with you. Plus I’ve been thinking the same about Project Helix backwards compatibility, that it uses AI to solve things like fixed resolutions and frame rates from old days and uses an ML upscale plus a frame rate interpolater to make 60fps … or more.

Any news on whether Crimson Desert received the PSSR2 patch upon release?

Available this evening at 10pm (that's Thursday 19 March 2025), and I guess we'll see whether the PSSR2 was updated … as well as playing the game. Looking forward to it.

@stoper

I don't think they are lying to us. Nvidia is.

The conspiracy deepens!

When they should have sat down and analyzed the images carefully.

You think that DF are unprofessional and don't know what they're talking about?

@themightyant

Do you GENUINELY not see the AI filter / uncanny valley when you watch the faces in motion?

I see the uncanny valley effect, semi-realism causes that on all humans and is a well documented phenomenon.

It's the "AI filter" comment that I don't agree with. Perhaps if people's understanding of tech is SnapChat or TikTok filters (not how they work, just turning them on) then that's what they can articulate as their understanding.

I'm interested in hearing more about how this fits in the rendering pipeline — also this clearly doesn't work with path-tracing, which I think was mentioned in the video.

It appears to me to be either a) a low cost way of improving the lighting in games that don't have ray tracing, or b) optionality on games with ray-tracing.

Or have I got that wrong on b) I know it doesn't work with path-tracing does this work with ray-tracing … or is it only for games with rendering that has no RTX?

@themightyant The consoles may be running AMD, but this is exactly the kinds of technologies that Microsoft are talking about for Project Helix and Sony are same for PlayStation 6.

This is just the start of the next transformation to gaming tech—like sprites to 3D, software 3D to GPUs, etc.—it's not going away, and there's going to be a whole lot more of it.

@Dort

going to fly with folks who are clearly seeing a big change in aesthetics

This isn't going to magically appear in games without the developers putting it in the games.

Talking of things that deliver a drastic change on artwork, path-tracing doesn't magically appear in a game either.

The game developers put it in there.

What if the devs develop the game with this technology at front and centre … and so turning it off is therefore going against their vision of the game? i.e. Turning it off has the drastic change on the artwork? 😱

@stoper

Because it's clearly not just lighting.

Why do you think they're lying to you?

But they should have known this will be controversial and should not have rushed with a quick coverage from a hotel room.

Why not?

@Mookmac

bucket of angry gamer buzzwords

Rings parallel with:

➡️ Native resolution rendering is the only thing that matters — ML upscaling is cheating, brute force rasterisation for the win

➡️ Native FPS only — frame-rate insertion is fake frames

➡️ Baked in lighting for me — ray-tracing looks worse than pre-rendered bitmaps

➡️ AI slop — new lighting model ruins creative integrity and artistic vision.

It's all the same.

@maxeez0323

Its inherently changing the artistic and creative integrity of games seemingly just as a business decision.

Can you explain how?

Do you think Nvidia somehow got these demos together without the developers from Capcom, Bethesda, etc.? That they let their assets be used in these promotions without their approval?

If the artists use this lighting tool when building a game, does that mean the creativity remains integral, and that it's acceptable? Perhaps not using it would then be going against the creative design?

@NetshadeX

if the changes to artistic vision bother you then I'd encourage you to not use it.

But is it a change to artistic vision if the game artists put it in the games themselves — which is discussed in the DF video.

It's not like DLSS upscaling or frame generation appears in games without the developers putting it in there. 🤷‍♂️

Plus like path tracing, frame insertion, etc. it's going to have an off/on switch … for the performance hit to an Nvidia GPU if nothing else 🙄

Perhaps some modders will patch it into games that don't natively support it — but people don't have to install those mods.

@designgears

Comment section is a clown show.

I'm old enough to remember when gamers were complaining about developers focusing on newfangled 3D polygon rendering and how game graphics should be about sprites, parallax scrolling, etc.

Plus ça change.

@themightyant

we are just going to put an AI filter over people's work

Like DLSS earlier versions the devs can control this (lighting) technology in game settings — what you appear to be referring to is if there's mods to put DLSS5 into game that don't natively have it set by developers.

For the DF video we learn that it's only about changing the lighting … not the meshes, textures, etc.

You can see that if you watch closely what DLSS 5 is doing, and listen to the explanations of the DF team.

Very interesting technology, looking forward to more coverage of this … and all the other neural rendering, ML led techniques we're going to see emerging over the transition to the next generation.

One of my friends had Intellivision, while the rest of us had Atari VCS / Atari 2600 consoles. We could loan/borrow games from each other but this chap couldn't — we took the Mickey ruthlessly for his parent's console choice.

I never really noticed if any of the games were actually any good — are they?

Was talking about this with mates and colleagues last week. I think that we're seeing the beginning of the end of consumer PC builds.

I think all electronics like consoles, computers, phones, are going to get much more expensive as the AI world sucks in all the global production.

The answer is for supply chains to ramp up, but I think in today's market they're just going to increase their margins instead and build up reserves of capital.

Downloaded Resogun on my launch day PlayStation 4 — still love it, haven't played it in a while but will now.

However, am absolutely loving Sektori on Steam Deck, the inky blacks versus the beautiful and fast graphics, the visual design is top notch as is the gameplay. Cannot recommend this enough.

So good that it may have to get a double-dip with PlayStation on the OLED television. Gorgeous.

I agree Rich. Also interesting titbit is that Apple's Rosetta 2 solution wasn't just software. Apple built specific hardware features into Apple Silicon chips to make Rosetta 2’s x86‑64 translation fast.

Apple Silicon adds microarchitectural support specifically aimed at making x86‑64 emulation efficient, which Rosetta 2 takes advantage of. Key changes include:

• x86‑style memory ordering (TSO): M-series SoCs implement support for x86‑64’s Total Store Order memory model so that translated x86 code can run without constantly inserting extra memory fences.
• Special flag/condition‑code instructions: M-series chips include custom ARM instructions for computing x86 flags, which lets Rosetta 2 map x86 condition codes directly instead of emulating them with long instruction sequences.
• Paired load/store and stack operations: Apple’s cores support efficient paired loads/stores and stack‑pointer‑modifying operations that Rosetta 2’s translator targets to reduce instruction count and improve cache behaviour.

Together with Rosetta 2’s ahead‑of‑time translation and aggressive optimisation, these hardware features are a major reason x86‑64 apps under Rosetta 2 often reach a large fraction of native performance on M‑series chips.

This a key feature missing on Microsoft's Prism that works by just-in-time compiling x86-64 code into ARM64 instructions without this boost in the generic ARM64 Qualcomm Snapdragon for example; one of the reasons it's not as performant as Apple's translation layer.

Interestingly Apple have already set a sunset for this, Apple has stated that Rosetta 2 will remain a general‑purpose Intel‑app translation layer through macOS 27, covering the next couple of major releases, but also that starting with macOS 28, Rosetta 2 will be scaled back to a more limited, legacy‑focused mode mainly for older games and unmaintained software that rely on Intel‑specific frameworks … and the expectation is that it will eventually be dropped — like Rosetta that translated PowerPC to x86-64 before it — and will eventually be dropped from M-series chips too.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if Valve worked with likes or Nvidia or AMD to include similar x86-64 translation boosting hardware that they could take advantage of in FEX … rather than relying on generic ARM64 chips that lack this hardware optimisation?

Customer ARM64 CPU for Steam Deck 2 could be very interesting.

Even if they don't, I'm keen to see SteamOS offer Nvidia options — come Nvidia with your Linux drivers — moreover with the Nvidia N1X/N1 processors there could be some very interesting things to come.

Can we assume that it's going to run Half-Life 3 at 4K 60fps with FSR upscaling?

In theory, Half-Life: Alyx should run on Steam Frame already, barring incompatibilities with the new x86 to ARM translation layer … the CPU not only has to run game logic and prepare GPU draw calls, but also needs to run the title's x86 code through the FEX translation layer to run on an ARM-based processor

Do Valve have a native ARM64 build of Source 2 engine is key here, if they can get rid of the overhead of running the FEX translation layer and run native instead then it could be transformative to some titles … maybe Half-Life Alyx among them.

Which brings me to questions of Steam Platform, clearly it can manage Windows vs Linux vs Mac vs SteamOS on x86-64, are we about to see different processor architectures supported too?

Did I dream this or hear it on some YouTube video, that Valve will sell the Steam Machine sans a controller … with the assumption that you have an Xbox or PlayStation or other controller laying around, as these are all compatible.

That would give it a lower 'entry price'.

Not to say they won't sell a bundle with the controller too, but this might be a tactical option to give a "from $499" price tag.

How’s the Steam Machine at running Half-Life Alyx and streaming that to the Steam Frame?

Going to be very interesting comparing that to X86-64 emulation on Steam Frame versus the native ARM64 version when that arrives.

@Nebatunia MooresLawIsDead has a good video about pricing, Tom over there reckons $400–$600 for the Steam Machine.

@fatpunkslim

Are we comparing SteamOS versus Xbox Full Experience on Windows?

Soon enough we're going to be comparing Valve's Steam Console (codename "Fremont") running SteamOS versus Xbox's next-gen PC-console hybrid (with "Magnus" APU).

In addition to the Steam Deck versus other handhelds.

Fascinating times.

With Valve working on SteamOS for ARM64, reckon we'll have all sorts of new PC benchmarks in the near future and not just Windows vs Linux x86-64.

@Abdulla77 Did that too!

From your list you've missed the PSVR2 games with PS5 Pro enhancements … tiny list that there is!

I am happy with my PS5 Pro — although it makes my buys games that support it that I wouldn't otherwise, just to test it out.

I wish there were more titles with support for it launching, plus a bit of love from Sony first-party studios tweaking older titles would be nice.

The weird thing is the PSSR being subpar in so many regards, one would've thought Sony would be on top of that for PS6 — I hope we see their PSSR hybrid to FSR4 before long, and that perhaps it's easy to back port to games with PSSR shimmer issues.

Please reposition the "LEAVE A COMMENT" at the top of the comments under the articles, not at the bottom of the comments … as this leaves a huge scroll to leave a new comment!

Oh my goodness, what a great time indeed. Congratulations to RichL and the DF team on this milestone.