Valve – which runs the Steam game store and made the legendary Half-Life series – already makes a VR headset for hardcore gamers who care to tether themselves to a beefy PC for an immersive experience.

The new headset is called the Steam Frame, and it’s trying to do several things at once. It’s a standalone VR headset with a smartphone-caliber Arm chip inside that lets you play flat-screen Windows games locally off the onboard storage or a microSD card.

Most of what Valve is doing with Steam Frame isn't particularly new. Sony uses foveated rendering for the PlayStation VR 2, and Steam Frame's lenses and audio solutions are, Digital Foundry's Sam Machkovech says,

Steam Frame, Valve’s next VR headset, has been announced, but the company has yet to reveal the price. However, the company says its goal is for Frame to be cheaper than its first VR headset. Steam Frame has finally been revealed and is planned for launch in early 2026,

Hands-on with Valve Steam Frame, a light modular VR headset that runs games locally or streams from PC, powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and eye tracking

For starters, Valve's Frame will utilize the pancake lenses from the Meta Quest 3, combining them with PSVR 2's foveated rendering and eye tracking capabilities. Like the Quest 3 and Pico 4 Ultra, it'll utilize an LCD display, but at a higher resolution, like PSVR 2, that means you get 4K resolution per eye.

A Valve engineer clued us into a thoughtful part of the new headset’s design.

Rumours have it that Valve is about to unleash a new VR headset – the Steam Frame. It is said to be a standalone model – ie. won't need a PC – and rival the Meta Quest 3. However, it'll give you access to Steam (of course) and the vast amount of VR games that are available through the platform.