Valve has opened reservations for the Steam Frame, its standalone VR headset, with pricing starting at $1,059 for the 256 GB model and going up to $1,299 for the 1 TB version. We had already reported back in July that Qualcomm's own chip price hikes were pushing Steam Frame costs upward well before today's reveal.

In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais walked through why the final price landed where it did. Here's what he said: "I think as far as memory prices and those kinds of conditions, we're really in it like everyone else. It's an unfortunate situation all around. We wish that gaming hardware was cheaper, but we're definitely trying to be on the cheapest side that we can get despite all those conditions. Even just things like motherboards, copper, anything, even shipping anything worldwide right now is way more expensive than it was last year and two years ago. So every part of the sticker price is affected there."

That's something we haven't heard much, as most of the pricing conversation around Valve's hardware this year has centered on DDR5 and LPDDR5X shortages specifically. Griffais is pointing to something even bigger, which is that the same AI-driven demand that pushed DRAM contract prices up sharply over the past year is apparently also raising costs across copper, motherboards, and global shipping. Unfortunately, that suggests price pressure on gaming hardware won't ease immediately when memory supply eventually stabilizes. Companies like Valve are now left passing the full cost down to buyers, unless they choose to implement console-style subsidies.