Steam Frame Reservations Open at $1,059, Bundle Includes Half-Life: Alyx
Valve's standalone VR headset can now be reserved through a randomized sign-up list, with prices starting at $1,059 and a free copy of Half-Life: Alyx.
- Steam Frame costs $1,059 for 256GB or $1,299 for 1TB, both including Half-Life: Alyx
- Sign-ups run until Thursday, September 17 at 10 AM Pacific, then Valve shuffles the list
- Purchase invitations begin going out September 18, with a 72-hour window to buy
- A $149 third-party Arcturus Vision Camera is needed for color passthrough
Valve has opened reservations for the Steam Frame, its standalone VR headset, pricing the 256GB model at $1,059 and the 1TB version at $1,299. Valve priced the Steam Frame at $1,059 for 256GB and $1,299 for 1TB, with controllers, a wireless adapter and Half-Life: Alyx in the box. The company confirmed the news through its own Steam Hardware post and a post from the official Valve account on X.
Getting one isn’t as simple as clicking buy. Steam Frame reservations opened through a signup list on the Steam Frame product page, and you add your name any time before Thursday, September 17 at 10:00 AM Pacific, then Valve shuffles the whole list once, and your place in that shuffle decides when you get to buy. Signing up in the first minute earns you nothing over signing up Wednesday night.
Reaction split between people relieved the price landed under four figures for the base model in some regions and others startled by how the lottery locks out anyone who hesitates past Thursday’s cutoff:
What Ships in the $1,059 Box
Steam Frame starts at $1,059 for the 256GB model and comes with standalone-capable Half-Life: Alyx, included with every unit for those who don’t already own it. Every box includes the headset, two controllers, the USB wireless adapter, a glasses spacer, and a USB-C cable.
What’s missing is a charger. What’s not in the box is a charger, though Valve will sell you a branded one for $29, and any 45W USB-C power supply works, including the brick that came with a Steam Deck. Valve also lists a $59 Ergonomic Accessories Kit and a separate replacement parts kit for face gaskets and cushions, both add-on purchases available once a customer actually receives a purchase invite.
The September 17 Cutoff and the Reservation Lottery
Valve is running the same system it used for the Steam Machine earlier this year. Valve today opened pre-orders for Steam Frame, finally revealing pricing info, official accessories, and release date, using a randomized reservation lottery to limit resellers rather than first-come, first-served.
Signing up does not guarantee a purchase. Sign-ups are available now and remain open until September 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, after which Valve will randomize the initial reservation order, with users receiving an email telling them whether they have entered the reservation queue or been placed on the waitlist, and the first purchase invitations are scheduled to begin going out on September 18, with customers selected to buy given 72 hours to complete their order.
Anyone who misses Thursday’s deadline still gets a shot, just a slower one. Sign up after Thursday’s cutoff and you go straight to the back of the waitlist, no draw. Valve has not published how many units it plans for the first production run.
Read also: Steam Frame Leak Reveals Arcturus Color Passthrough Add-On With 5K Cameras
Color Passthrough Costs Another $149
Out of the box, the headset’s mixed reality view is monochrome. Out of the box, Steam Frame has monochrome passthrough, grayscale tinted blue, that in terms of angular resolution feels sharper than Quest 2 but significantly blurrier than Quest 3, as well as lacking color.
Valve is leaving full color to a third party. Valve has closely partnered with Arcturus Vision, formerly Arcturus Industries, a startup making a $149 addon that attaches to Steam Frame’s PCI-E expansion port, weighing just 10 grams and featuring dual 32-megapixel Sony RGB sensors to add high-quality color passthrough. It automatically works across all apps that use passthrough.
70 Games Already Verified for Standalone Play
Under the hood, Steam Frame runs a mobile chipset rather than a full PC GPU. Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset packing a Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 mobile chipset, meaning it can natively play optimized VR games and nearly the entire Steam library of flatscreen games, in addition to being able to stream anything from a PC via its included Wi-Fi 6E dongle.
Valve has already put a chunk of its VR catalogue through compatibility testing. Valve has already tested and confirmed 70 other VR titles that run and perform well standalone on Steam Frame, earning them the ‘Steam Frame Verified’ tag. Half-Life: Alyx itself is not among the day-one native ports; the game ships redeemable through streaming from launch, with a fully standalone build for the headset’s ARM hardware still in development.
The headset also runs Windows and Linux titles through translation layers rather than raw silicon muscle. Like Steam Deck and Steam Machine, the headset runs Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS, adapted here for VR, and can run compatible Linux and Windows games locally, including SteamVR titles, using Proton for Windows compatibility and FEX to translate x86 code for its ARM processor. Purchase invites for the first reserved units go out September 18, with the queue expected to move in batches as production continues.
Reported from
- Video Games Chronicle
- UploadVR
- Road to VR
- Game Informer
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