Steam Frame has only been out for a little over a month now, and is still heavily backordered. Still, Valve’s latest Steam Hardware Survey shows the headset is already off to a strong start.
The News
This is the first Steam survey to include Steam Frame, Valve’s standalone VR headset which natively supports SteamOS. You can learn all about Steam Frame in our deep dive review here.
The opt-in, randomized monthly survey now shows Steam Frame at fifth place on the platform, making for 5.49% of all headsets in use on Steam.
Considering Steam Frame is still heavily supply constrained, as shipments now reach into 2027, immediately taking fifth place is a surprisingly fair result.
In contrast, Valve Index only managed to post a 1.46% share of all connected headsets in its first month on the Steam Hardware Survey.
Some of this could be explained by Quest 2’s sizeable loss of 3.57% since the September survey, which could suggest some portion of Quest 2 users upgraded to Frame.
Notably, Valve changed its survey methodology in March 2020. Previously, the VR hardware detection system was based on headsets connected at the time of survey. Now, the survey uses SteamVR records of headsets connected during the preceding month, making for a more fair picture of headsets used.
My Take
It will be interesting see whether Frame can outdo Index in the coming months/years. It took Index nearly two years to reach the second most-used VR headset on Steam, coming in right behind Quest 2 in Valve’s September 2021 survey.
Some of that feels like it might come down to price, but I’m not so sure. Valve Index launched in late 2019 at $999 for the full kit, including headset, two controllers, and two SteamVR base stations. In terms of inflation, that’s around $1,300 today.
And that’s the same price as the most expensive Steam Frame 1 TB model, which notably doesn’t need a VR-ready gaming PC—although you’d probably be better off with one considering the comparatively small number of Frame optimized games.
The wrinkle in that calculation though is Index users had the option to upgrade piecemeal from other PC VR headsets, allowing them to purchase Index alone for $499 if they already owned HTC Vive controllers and SteamVR base stations.
Whatever the case, Frame has proven to be popular enough to surpass Index very early in its existence. And I’ll be charting its performance, so make sure to check back for more.
