Valve menargetkan harga yang lebih rendah untuk Steam Frame, lalu terjadi krisis ingatan: 'Saya berharap kami bisa mengirimkannya dengan harga tahun lalu'

After many years of waiting and a few false starts over on Reddit, the Steam Frame is finally here. We even have a price for the virtual reality headset, which is set to ship imminently to customers. Hold onto your headsets…

• Steam Frame (256 GB) w/ VR controllers: 1,059 USD/ 1,529 CAD/ 1,049 EUR/ 889 GBP/ 1,609 AUD/ 4,539 PLN
• Steam Frame (1 TB) w/ VR controllers: 1,299 USD/ 1,859 CAD/ 1,279 EUR/ 1,089 GBP/ 1,969 AUD/ 5,549 PLN

An additional Ergonomic Accessories Kit is available to purchase alongside the Frame. It includes two hand straps for the controllers, a head strap for the headset, and an extended light blocker. This costs 49 USD/ 69 CAD/ 59 EUR/ 49 GBP/ 89 AUD/ 229 PLN.

Be honest, were you expecting this sorta price for the Steam Frame? Some called it, due to the similar cost of a Valve Index for most of its lifespan; though I expect many of us adjusted our expectations following the onset of the memory crisis, and the subsequent launch of the Steam Machine. Our Andy called that the biggest victim of the RAMpocalypse, and you could argue something similar for the Steam Frame.

It's certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame's launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it's launching the Frame for today.

Here's Lyons on the memory crisis:

"We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we've made choices to make sure that we're making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.

"We don't know what pricing is in the future. We try to monitor these things, but we're certainly very aware of it.

"We think it's a great, compelling product, and we are still happy to have it out there. We're happy to have our customers be able to have hardware during this RAM crisis, and we think it's important to launch new hardware out there and have new experiences available. But, yeah, I think everyone's disappointed by the RAM crisis."

Selan was the person that guided me through the Steam Frame and all of its features back at Valve's HQ in late 2025. They also lament the increase in price since that time: "I wish we could have shipped it at the price that we were at last year. It's still awesome today. It is amazing, but we were targeting a lower price, and I wish we could have done that."

The price puts the Steam Frame at a big disadvantage to the Quest 3. Even following a price hike, which Meta justified on similar terms to Valve, you can buy a Quest 3 for $600 today. Admittedly, I feel the Steam Frame is a better all-round device than the Quest 3, but the significantly higher price point of the Frame does leave the Quest 3 fairly unchallenged in the mainstream market, especially when it offers a similar level of fidelity to the Frame.

Memory is one factor for the Steam Frame's higher cost; the Frame has 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, while the Quest 3 has 8 GB of LPDDR5. We asked Lyons and Selan about this decision and whether there was any discussion of shipping the Frame with less memory to save on cost.

"We looked at the Steam Frame pre-launch a few years ago, we said we can access this huge fraction of the same catalog [as the Steam Deck], or we can slice a major component off it and make sure that'll never run, if we do a lower limit," said Selan. "Now, granted, the trade-offs and cost and performance were a little different at that time, but even in hindsight, having a single target where we know what this generation will be capable of running is great, and we're very happy with that."

Meta also has the benefit of happily burning billions every quarter on its Reality Labs division, which is responsible for its Meta Quest headsets as well as its latest Orion smart glasses. While Valve isn't exactly strapped for cash, as far as cash flow goes, very few companies can spend as much as Meta without seeing much return on investment and not worry about it. That doesn't change much from a customer perspective, mind, many of whom will now have to weigh up whether Valve's device is worth an extra $450. Tough call.