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Our first look at the Steam Frame Welcome Tour has finally arrived. Dataminers spotted a whole bunch of references to the Steam Frame in the latest Steam Client Beta, which arrived as Valve officially released Steam Machine and Steam Frame Verified requirements last night as part of new Steamworks documentation. Now, users have managed to view the setup-style screens.
The Welcome Tour is what you’ll see when you set up your Steam Frame for the first time on a new machine. Users will be able to immediately pair the VR headset with a computer via its 6GHz wireless adapter. Alternatively, you can simply skip this step as the Frame works as a standalone device, powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip – supposedly good enough for Half-Life: Alyx.
Steam Frame Welcome Tour screens shared online
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Well-known VR enthusiast – and reliable source of datamined content – Brad Lynch also shared welcome tour graphics on social media. We can see that it’s an incomplete state, still using placeholder ‘Lorem ipsum’ text, and at the same time referring to the Frame as its ‘Deckard’ codename. Either way, it’s yet another step closer to launch, which is now confirmed for this summer.
Today we are expanding the Verified program to include Steam Machine and Steam Frame, both of which are shipping this summer. As with Steam Deck Verified, the goal is to help customers understand the out-of-box experience for a given title on these new devices, and how smoothly a game will run with no user work or configuration required.
Source: Valve, via Steam Community
Another interesting thing you’ll notice is that Valve is committed to the Frame branding. Instead of calling different interfaces ‘Windows’ as you may expect, the company refers to the ‘Dashboard Frame’ to stay on brand.
Everything seems to be taking shape, and the only thing we really want to know right now is just how much the headset costs. Current forecasts are looking gloomy after Valve was forced to ramp up the price of its Steam Deck handheld due to inflated memory and storage costs.