Better Offline - Is Valve Taking On Microsoft? with Steve Burke

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about Valve’s new console-like Steam Machine and Vision Pro-like Steam Frame, and what this means for the future of gaming. GamersNexus:  Valve Steam Machine, Desktop SteamOS, Steam Frame VR, & Controller | ft. Engineering Discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ Valve Steam Frame Engineering Deep-Dive: Water Cooling, Thermals, Power, Acoustics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSjvJDe6IcSupport GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexushttps://gamersnexus.net/https://bsky.app/profile/gamersnexus.bsky.socialhttps://x.com/GamersNexusSteam Machine: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachineSteam Frame: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, and on my new podcast, How Hard Can It Be? I call on my Gen X squad from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fan fantastic BS. Unfiltered conversations from night sweats to futas to scheduling sex. Wait, what sex? Is it just me or does every woman my age want to look at Pinterest instead of having sex sometimes? They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also Media. Hello and welcome to Better offline. I'm your host Ed Zittron. And I'd like to announce that much like NVIDIA revealed in a recent leaked memo, we are also nothing like Enron. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus, who's going to talk to you about, I know it's a thematic shift from the show about something that actually exists. And we're talking about an announcement from a few weeks ago from Valve about the Steam Frame headset and the Steam Machine console. Steve, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. A quick question. what was the Enron thing?

I think I didn't see that one. This is important. So, Nvidia had an internal memo that they put out. And they said, and the headline from Barron's was, I'm just going to pull this up right now because it's one of my favorite I've ever read.

Nvidia says it's not Enron in private memo refuting accounting questions. Ah. Good stuff. That's, that's what we want to hear. And they were like, we're nothing like Enron because we don't use SPVs to inflate revenue. It's also good.

It's all real, Steve. It's all very real. I'm starting to have my doubts that this AI stuff is built on anything real. Although I did hear about the two data centers that are currently sitting empty because the grid can't support them until 2028. Oh, which ones? I think it was in Northern California. Hell yeah. I love this.

This is, we live in the future. But genuinely, talk to me about the steam machine. What is this thing? It's like a games console. Like, walk me through it. Yeah, no. I mean, this stuff's actually, it was a really nice break from everything else because, like you said, it's real. They're actually doing stuff. It's consumer facing. So that's nice. And there's some pretty, some of these things have cool innovations in them. So the steam machine is a small, basically small form factor PC, but it's kind of positioned almost like a console, at least in terms of size. the intent to be used with a TV or in a living room, although it could be used desktop. But instead of being a more closed-down console, it has the openness of a PC in terms of you have access to BIOS and things like that, some modularity of components. And it's running on Linux. It's running on SteamOS. And so right now, we've had some hands-on time.

We had interviews with the engineers. We have the specs. Haven't tested it yet. You know, can't make any value judgments or anything at the time because they haven't even given us a price. But it does, there's some cool things, I think, that regardless of how their launch goes with the steam machine, it is in the very least, very promising for Linux, which helps to maybe get people unstuck from Microsoft. Yeah. So what makes this thing unique, though, is it just like a, because Steam for those listening who don't know, Steam is a, it is not really a monopoly, but it's,

like the best way to download games and keep track of them, I would say, but it does also involve paying one company. Yeah. But is that really, is it just a big PC? Because you've, you've at least messed with it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's, it is still, I think it still qualifies as sort of just a computer, but really what they're doing is, I guess it in the same way that Some handheld devices are technically computers. I mean, a lot of the modern handheld gaming, we'll call them consoles, are actually just handheld PCs. Some of them, a lot of them have windows on them even.

And so it's that concept except applied to a cube that goes. I mean, people have been jokingly, I don't know who coined this, and I wish I did, but people have been jokingly referring to the Steam Machine as the Gabe Cube, as in Gabe Newell, the CEO Valve. That's really good. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, God damn it, I wish I thought of that for a video. That's a banger. So is it, so is it like a kind of consumer-friendly UI?

Like, have you, what, how much of you had to, how much of a chance we had to play with it? We had, in total, I think it was about five or maybe six hours with Valve. And so in that time, we were able to speak with engineers and, you know, messed around with it. so yeah it's a steamOS which is on the steam deck so the steam deck is a gaming handheld device that these have existed for a long time but the deck was kind of the first one in recent years to really breathe life into the gaming handheld market outside of nintendo and um that's not necessarily because everyone bought the deck but it's because all the other manufacturers saw like oh this is real like steam is a serious uh then you

to move games and people will buy stuff. And so ASUS and Lenovo and all the other competitors jumped in. So the Steam machine is building on that because the Steam deck uses Steam OS, which is an Arch Linux-based distribution. And it has a lot of optimizations that solve long-running problems with Linux and gaming in general. So that would include, for example, translation layers. and things like this.

So they build on that. And then, yeah, as far as the user experience goes, it is a basically a sort of big picture mode or desktop mode, you know, operating system. But it's computer. It's just you kind of navigate it more like a console, I guess. Did you play it at all? Only a little bit.

Yeah, we tested the new Steam controller. Yeah. Talk to me about how does that feel in your hand? Because I have peculiar hands myself and that thing looks straight. It's got like two little touch screens at the bottom. Yeah, it is large. It's, so the two, it's basically a... Not screens, but, you know.

Yeah, touch pads, track pads. So it's got two track pads. And they function like, like a laptop trackpad, except there's haptics and things like that. There's a gyro. Well, so like buzzes, kind of like you get on the switch as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you'll get like the haptic feedback.

like you would get, you know, yeah, and a phone. And, yeah, so controllers, to me, it's interesting, and it's cool that they're trying it again. They last tried a controller somewhere around a decade ago, and it went with the steam, the thing that could mirror your Steam PC, right? Yeah, they had the Steam link, the controller. Yes. Yeah, and I think there was like one more thing in that sort of round of hardware. really remember it. Maybe the steam boxes, but, um, yeah, so the original steam controller, I guess, went so well that they had to dump them on fire sale for $5 each. And they've

memory hold it by releasing a new steam controller with the same name. So, but how did it feel? Was it, how did it feel in comparison to like a first generation Xbox controller? Yeah, the first Xbox was I think the Xbox controllers are probably regarded as one of the sort of most, you know, user-friendly layouts. It's hard for me to say too much.

The stuff that I tested with it and the limited time we had with it was related to some of the more unique inputs. So I will say it is a little larger, but... Larger than the original Xbox controller, or like larger than like an Xbox 360. Larger than a more modern.

Yeah, Xbox controller. I would have to put it next to the original. But there's an idea for the future. Yeah. But some of the interesting inputs, I guess. So there's a grip sense where when you, if it's enabled, when you let your fingers off of the grip. So you're still holding it, but you're not like tapping your fingertips to the actual grip

of the controller. It'll detect that. and it can use that to stop input so you can rotate, you know, it's got a gyro, you can rotate to turn in the game if you want, and then you can basically lift your fingers off if you want to

stop or kind of stutter step the rotation as you move. So it's got some like clever execution of input. It feels like it takes some inspiration maybe from things like the switch and stuff like that. That's cool. Yeah, and and this is important,

Not a single time, literally not even once. Did at any point, anybody from Valve say AI in that order of letters? Oh, magnificent. Thank God. Not once. Not once. How delightful. Oh, God.

Nice, because they're building a real thing. How do you feel about this? So I was talking to my Mike Casey Kagawa, a friend of the show about this. And he kind of put the thought in my head, this could be a quite dangerous. like this could be quite dangerous to Xbox, especially because Microsoft is kind of just sitting there and letting that fester at times. Yeah, I think this is probably the absolute best time for anybody new to try and get into, like, console or console equivalent type devices. And in particular, I mean, Valve is a deadly combination with it. but Xbox is kind of at the lowest of its lows.

You know, they just, they, they can't seem to stop fucking everything up. And their best new thing they have is just a rebranded Asus ROG ally handheld. And like, that's doing well for Asus, but by Microsoft numbers historically, it's not impressive. And so, yeah, I think Microsoft right now, it's, they're in a compromised position. their sales are awful. I don't have the numbers offhand, but they're easy to find, and they're just not even close

to what PlayStation's been doing. They're losing control of the market, and it just looks like they're kind of going the route of Sega right now. Yeah, Sega abandoned consoles for anyone who doesn't know, and they went full-on game publisher. And so, yeah, I mean, I agree. I think Steam or Valve is in a position right now where this is before a new console launch cycle from the incumbent.

And it's when Microsoft's had its weakest with Xbox. So it's really good timing for them. Well, I don't know what you're saying. Microsoft can't innovate any further because they're reading this now. It's 24th of November. And I read this. Xbox prices could go even higher because of Grand Shorter. They seem to be doing it.

It is really funny to just. follow the steam machine with that as well. Just being like, hey, guess what? It was more expensive and it sucks more. Do you like it? Please God. And the Xbox has been out for like a long ass time now. I don't remember when it might be like five years already or something. Yeah.

The prices are supposed to come down. And I know like some of these are whatever market factors they can't exactly control. Although even though Microsoft does kind of have a big part in the AI thing that's making the prices go up, but we'll forget about that. Yeah, there's stuff they can't control. But even still, like, consumers aren't going to want to pay more for a thing that is now ancient. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app,

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Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It just kind of, it feels like they've been spinning their wheels for the longest time, because it felt like they were sort of moving away from Xbox by leaning on game pass. then it turned out giving everyone access to as many games as possible for $30 was not a good

decision. So now they want to do something. It just, it does, I hadn't thought the Sega comparison, but it really does feel like that. Like Microsoft won't die, but Jesus. Yeah, I mean, they're fortunate, I guess, to have their spying division with Windows. So they'll, they'll be fine, I guess. Their ad revenue they get from installs of Windows on laptops that take 10 minutes to turn on. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that'll keep them in business maybe better than what Sega had when it left hardware. But yeah, no, they're in a bad spot for Xbox. I'm not really sure what the plan is over there. It doesn't seem like they're sure either. So I had a specific steam machine question. So what's it doing GPU-wise? Like, is it doing like one of the AMD? ones with both a GPU and a CPU on the same diet?

What is the situation there? It is. So for the silicon, the short answer to that question is it's an RDNA3 GPU with 28CUs, and I'll kind of loop back to that. But the silicon in general, the CPU and the GPU are the only non-modular sort of normal components that you might swap in a computer. So meaning you can't change the CPU or the GPU. This is a big split from a normal computer. They're using BGA parts, ball grid array, so they're soldered to the board.

And that makes it more like a laptop. And in fact, they are basically laptop parts. They're semi-custom laptop CPU and GPU that are discrete. Right. Yeah, the GPU. So, RDNA3, 28CUs. That makes it a little bit smaller than an RX-70. as an example.

Off the top of my head, I think that's 32 CUs. And the CPU is a Zen 4 part. It's six core is 12 threads. Their maximum advertised boost is 4.8 gigahertz. And they claim a 30 watt TDP. And so for reference, I mean, some of the other low ones. How does that compare to like a gaming handheld, exactly? Well, gaming handheld, it's, yeah, it's higher power than a gaming handheld for sure.

So it is better than that. you have the benefit of not worrying about a battery, not worrying about skin temperature on the device, because they're not holding it. And so for those reasons, they can run more power. So I think they're in total somewhere around 110 watts for the GPU, and then a 30-watt claim for the CPU. So, you know, with other miscellaneous devices and with inefficiencies and whatever,

you maybe call it 200 watts, and I think the power supply is 300 watts. And so compared to a handheld, I mean, at peak power consumption, which you're not normally at, this is significantly more power and will perform, I mean, significantly better. It's a big difference. Kind of it almost feels inevitable as well, because the fall of Microsoft, sure, it's that they don't give a shit and don't see if you trying in any way imaginable. But it's also, at some point, we were going to meet, we're going to reach. peak console, surely. At some point, there's just how much more can we do with this? Yeah, I think, and you can, this is, this gets into like a broader, interesting topic I've been thinking about lately too, but which is, um, for gaming in general, you know, you do hit

a point where it's like, okay, the graphics are sufficient, and actually now the kind of meta is, you know, more people are playing indie games that don't push the graphics to insane levels and people are kind of rediscovering that, oh, wait, I play video games to have fun and it doesn't need to be... Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that? I don't know, that's not why I play. I play games to get upset. Yes.

Yeah, well, I have a game for you. I need an investor right now. Actually, it's AI company simulator. That sounds more fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I think the thing with the, on the gaming side, I think the steam machine, on a technicality, like, it's more powerful than a lot of hardware people have, I guess, if you look at the Steam survey, in reality, it's a low

and modern computer and I think they're probably going to be partly leaning on things like FSR upscaling to try and bridge the gap, the performance gap. I mean, one of the things they didn't say that I can remember when we were

talking to them, but they did say on the spec sheet was that the steam machine supports 4K 60 FPS with FSR and that's pretty good. And FSR is the one where they use AI, but actual

AI, real stuff. Actual machine learning, yeah. Like, actually does something. Yeah, and so, like, I wasn't too happy about that when I saw that on the spec sheet, because, like, saying factually it's probably accurate because it says with FSR there, but that's, it has to always be there. They can't just say 4K60 because there's a big difference and this hardware cannot do 4K60 without some kind of crutch, which FSR.

would be. But point being, you know, it's a low-end computer. They say it's going to be priced like an entry-level gaming PC. I don't know what that means. That could mean anything. Yeah. That could mean literally could cost $7 million. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, it's a big range. I mean, it's, you know, in the old days, like 20, I don't know, 12 to 16 maybe you could build a super low on PC for $450.50, more realistically, probably 550. That's kind of gone now. So I think they'll have some pricing. The biggest concern is for sure price. But at a hardware level, really, I think the big story is the Linux side and then what you're saying, the Microsoft side where it's like, is this just kind of twisting the dagger

on Xbox? I hope so because Microsoft sucks. And the thing is PC gaming is cool. Like it's the The one, like, it's one of the great things about it in that there's such a great indie gaming industry and I feel like Steam is, though imperfect, is a great way to get into that in a way that I don't feel like the big consoles are. Yeah, indie games are kind of like the lifeblood of it now. I feel like there's so much character in them and they're very accessible in terms of often price, but also not being overburying on systems, you know, requirements.

Well, my favorite game of this year was Dead Zone Rogue, if you have played that. I have not, but I won't look it up. It's a rogue-like. It feels like the, and I realize there are numerous other sufferers who listen to this may not understand what I mean. It feels like when Destiny was fun in the single player, it has that kind of very clicky, very, it's just very satisfying game. Indy game, never heard of the developers.

Don't know if they've ever made anything before. Fantastic game. I haven't enjoyed any AAA that much, unless you consider Hades 2, which I'm not sure that counts. I feel like that doesn't really count, you know, like it's, yeah, I feel like that, that to me still feels like sort of the smaller side of things, yeah. And yeah, there's a big market there. And I think, I do think that big picture for some of these companies, I was about to say gaming companies, referring to, you know, Nvidia and TaliumD, but that's not really what they are anymore. but looking at these companies I'm happy to see some of the success of indie games

and I'm happy to see things like a Steam Machine in terms of hardware being capable of playing most of the games people play because specifically you know on the cynical side it's like if you sell GPUs for playing games and the graphics have kind of peaked for a while and it might take a few more years to really reach another major peak where it's invalidating older hardware to a point where people feel forced to buy

something new to keep the flow of money going for the companies. In that situation, cynically, it would feel like you would need to invent a problem to solve so that people will buy your next GPU to play games unless you can generate sort of escape velocity from the gaming side and get into some other business, which right now appears to be AI data center. they don't need to invent problems to solve for gaming because they're doing that for someone else. Invented one for the economy. Right. But it's, it's actually, this is, I feel like you slug, this is just a question I had, I've got to ask,

you can't replace anything inside the steam machine it looks like? So you can do the RAM, the, the, the, the, which is not bad. Yeah, the RAM is so dim, so it's laptop memory sticks. And then you can also do the SSD. It supports up to, I'm not 22080, which is the sort of standard larger form factor. Those would be the main ones, I guess. That's not too bad. Hard drive is probably going to be solid state, though.

Yeah, solid state. And then it is very accessible. I mean, it's easy to remove the cover and the heat sink if you wanted to. You could pull. You could swap it. The fan is easy to swap and replace. The power supply has a blade connector. so it's sort of similar to server form factor styles where they don't use cables,

but they use just a connector. And so all of these things from a repairability standpoint would, in the very least, be easy to repair and swap. Valve has a pretty good track record of making those parts available for the Steam Deck, so hopefully they'll do that here too. Yeah. Jesus, I'm not used to companies not just immediately being evil. Yeah, I mean, there's still time.

Oh yeah They could end up being $1,200 Like that's That's where I could see them Fucking this one up for me Right Another podcast from some SNL Late Night Comedy Guy

Not quite Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends Me and hilarious guests From Jim Gaffigan To Bob Odenkirk To David Letterman Help make you Funnier

This week my guest SNL's Mikey day And head writer Streeter Seidel Help an Acapella Band with their between songs Banter There's that worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Human me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your podcast. business, think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-Ehart. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout, Kate Martin, and rising hockey star Laila Edwards.

If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone

and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world, Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning.

It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast. Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking of successful industries that everyone loves, the steam frame. Yeah. What is this meant to, is it meant to be a Vision pro situation? Is it meant to be like the, like, what was it, Valve Index? Like, what is it? Steamframe is pretty interesting. So the Steamframe is a new VR headset from Valve. They launched

the HTC vibe with obviously HTC a long time ago now. And then later the index and then there was Oculus Rifts that later turned into the meta quest. And so that's kind of the VR industry. It's really just these are the, um, the big milestones. There have been a lot of other devices in between. But Valve's jumping back into it with what they're calling the Steam Frame. The Steam Frame is pretty interesting in that it both has standalone functionality with basically an integrated, we'll call it a compute unit that mounts to your face with the goggles. And then it's also got streaming capability where it streams content from an actual gaming computer. and so Valve is here leveraging the fact that it has an unbelievably large library of games, probably the largest ever to have existed,

and the fact that most of its players probably have a decent gaming computer. And so they can render the game content on their computer and then stream it to the headset. Basically, you're casting a video to the headset so you're not rendering locally. Yeah. And then that allows you to be tetherless and wireless from the computer, which solves a lot of the problems this kind of VR has had historically. But it does want its own thing. Yes. Yeah. So, but the new problem, if you're doing this, is anytime they're streaming, there's latency. Right. Yeah. And so the concern just becomes, if I'm streaming this from my computer, instead of playing it with a wire plugged into the back of my headset, am I going to notice that in actions and game?

And the cool part, I think, that maybe this technology could apply elsewhere in some capacity, but is what they're calling foveated streaming. And so, yeah, so there's already a thing called foveated rendering. But basically the concept is to preserve band. bandwidth and maximize sort of how much data you can get across without causing major latency issues to keep the frame rate high and everything else. What they're doing is they are targeting specific areas where the eyes are tracked to be looking and then rendering those, assigning basically the maximum amount of bits to those areas.

Yeah. And everything else gets a reduced bit. rate in the streaming uses less bandwidth and so it technically renders at a lower quality but in the quick testing we did you know i only had a little bit of a hands on with it but i couldn't tell i mean when i was when i was looking wherever i was looking in the headset it looked full quality and then if i tried to you know quickly dart my eyes over somewhere else like i i'm not fast enough i don't know that any human is fast enough really to move your eyes quick enough to be when it detects your change of focus,

and then reassigns those bits to the new area to maximize that area's resolution. So I think the response time is something like 8 to 12 milliseconds. But it's a, it is both like a Vision Pro and a VR headset. Yeah. Yeah, in the sense, yeah, you can technically do like, call it productivity tasks and things like that. Yeah, I just, I, I'm a vision pro, truther.

I actually think that, I think it's a fun idea. I wish there were more fun ideas like it, but I also recognize I'm peculiar for that one. And also, I don't think Apple gave enough of a shit. It's just, it is nice to see Valve doing something. I think, I realize also talking to you about this, how depressing it is to just be like, yay, someone did something else. I mean, that's, that's how it felt. It was like, it's,

Yeah, I mean, the VR side doesn't get a lot of love compared to when it started. But it does VR games as well, though. Yeah, it's primarily a VR gaming headset, and then they are saying, look, if you want to replace your monitor with this, you can do that. That sounds expensive, though. And of course, they have yet to say how much this will cost. Yeah, they said less than an index, but they didn't say how much. and an index, yeah, there's a few skews.

I think the common... $1,000. Yeah. Yeah, it's, they range like $600 to... I want to say the highest is $1,200 or something, but it's not going to be $600. It'll be $1,000. It'll be $1,000. But we don't really have an idea of when these things are coming out, do we, just next year?

Next year, the frame, specifically the Steam Frame, the VR solution, they said early 2026, which in my experience early to a lot of these companies just means first half. Yes. Yeah. You excited? I am. I'm oddly excited about both of them. It feels like we're finally getting something in PC gaming again.

Yeah, I mean, I'm excited because for that same reason, it's nice where it's like, okay, it's just the hardware and there doesn't appear to be a lot of bullshit. So, you know, if we test it and it's not. the best solution for the value, then fine. That's a really easy review. Maybe you say it's good, but it costs too much. But that is a lot better than saying like what I'm kind of having to lately think about, which is, okay, when NVIDIA launches their next GPU, how do I handle the conclusion where, you know, do you get to the end? You're like, other than the fact that they're partnering with Palantir, which has openly admitted to, uh, you know, you know, you're not, you're

developing technology that is used on occasion to kill people, the GPU is pretty good. You're like, how do you cross that bridge, right? It gets into really serious stuff. It's a problem across the whole tech industry. I think Google's working with Border Patrol. Yeah. Like, it's just, and I always had the theory that people are like, wow, I can't believe the tech companies are suddenly doing this. I'm like, they've been fucking waiting. Oh, yeah. They've been looking, like, they're like, oh, goody, finally the chance to make all that revenue for a the evils. Or they've already been doing it and now it's just more in the open or whatever. And I'm guessing that this is becoming increasingly a challenge with like even with like

AMD who is increasingly though I realize the evils are slightly different there. Yeah I mean AMD is um is not quite as uh boisterous I guess as Nvidia in that way but they they still a lot of the same concerns and so yeah with Valve it's been, I think that's why why the reception's been so good on this, because there's no, there's no hardware launch yet, it's just announcements, but

the sentiment's pretty high, and I do think that's because people just feel so kind of beaten down where it's just every, RAM prices are skyrocketing over 100% in several cases. I think we saw one stick, one kit

that was like 185% higher than it was three weeks ago. Yeah. that's going to affect GPUs that'll write when the prices were coming down on those and these will affect the steam machine but I think just like the

sort of hey it's just hardware that plays video games and I guess if you want to use it for other stuff you can too like that sadly is pretty exciting right now so so yeah I'm excited about it I think the Steam frame

I'm actually really interested in I am the original viewer testing we did we did some really cool VR benchmarks a long time ago and it just kind of did it a couple times never did it again I thought it was a cool idea but the setup for VR was just way too burdensome at that time I was still running the company out of my childhood bedroom and so room scale VR was like you need to spend like three hours clean your house for it.

Yeah, the term room was a little bit fungible, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was like, but now it seems like all of that has matured a lot. And as someone who has not felt any desire whatsoever to play any VR games for the last like 10 years,

I actually do really want to try the Steam Frame and I think it'll be pretty fun, yeah. It's so weird, it's like, I wouldn't say Microsoft was ever known as like a, a deeply quality company, but there was at least at some point a level of prestige to it. It was like, oh, Microsoft would never just make a big pile of shit. They'd never wheel out of, I mean, they might do that in their software, but it felt like

they were at least, there was the brief period where we could humor ourselves being like, oh, I like my Xbox. Not anymore. Fuck your customer. I think you're right. I mean, I think the hardware, for a while, it was like, it seems pretty serious. Their laptops were pretty well respected.

I like the window. They had the weird, I think it's Panos Penae who's over at Amazon now, but they had like a weird thing where they were respectable for laptops. Yeah. And now, I don't know, it's all eating itself, it feels like. Well, it felt like after the Zoom, they realized they needed to change something in a heart. and went okay after that.

And just to put it out there, I still have my original Zune. Hell yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. I was a creative nomad guy myself. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, creative got really screwed during that whole period. I mean, it was.

Yeah, just in the sense that it was like, creative was kind of, they were sort of their first or very early, and they did a lot of innovation, and they just got squashed by Apple. like Apple did kind of the Apple thing where it's this juggernaut. Because it's just drop their weight on them. Yeah. I think there was even a lawsuit. I want to say Creative One. It was maybe like a couple hundred million dollars or something.

I don't know. I got to load this up. Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's, uh, it was one of those win or lose. You still lose. Yeah, yeah. No one's winning by the end of this other than Apple.

Oh, boy. Well, on that happy note, Steve. where can people find you and what are some recent things they should go and look at 100 million dollars 2006 by the way Apple will pay creative 100 million dollars for a paid up license to use creatives awarded patent MP3 players anyway what was your question yeah it's just where can people find you and what are some

interesting things you've been covering recently most interesting yeah recently is um so we have a story coming up where I previously mentioned to you, I would be going to the UK for something and you immediately said, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's the appropriate. And so we went over to London. We've got a really interesting thing.

We're finalizing now where I'm still trying to sort through who's right, who's wrong, all that stuff. But long story short, there is a guy who bought Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft, and other game development kits and development cartridges from a scrapyard. We visited the scrapyard. We visited the guy. And he was arrested by the police. And Sega was connected to it.

They had a private investigator looking to the guy. And basically all the companies involved in the chain, as far as we tell, freaked out when they found out their game development kits and cartridges made it into the hands of a person, even though they had thrown them out. And we're basically trying to sort through where did stuff fall through the cracks? And is this an over extension of a corporation into someone's home to work with the police on a raid over game development cartridges? You know, or is there any... These were old games, right?

Primarily, I think there's maybe like some switch stuff in there, which is, I think, probably what set the alarm bells off. fucking Nintendo. Yeah. Anyway, so that will go up, I'm guessing, in the next few weeks. So, of course, we'll link to gamers Nexus. But yeah, thank you for joining us, Steve. It's always a pleasure having you. Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it. And you've been listening to Better Offline. You can find me at Better Offline.com. Who knows when this one goes out, but in the next couple of weeks, he says, knowing that you'll have no concept of the time scale I'm talking about. But thank you so much for listening, everyone. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattersowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R-S-Betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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