I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Steam over 13 years now, and I still think that’d be unfair. It just needs to be a hard threshold that answers this question for Valve, “Do you have genuine skin in the game or not?” I think Valve’s new rules for the reservations answers that well enough. I just wish they had done this from the start.
Yeah, this is my main concern for the Frame release. I don’t want a “blocked for suspected fraud” credit card payment being the reason I miss the first few minutes of the reservation window, but I also don’t want hundreds of dollars just sitting in my Steam Wallet in case I miss the window anyway. First world problems.
Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It’s not much, but it’s also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.
I went through a ton of the reviews, and as far as I know, none of them gave a box weight or even dimensions. Still, I based my palletizing math on the original Steam Controller box, 8.5" x 6.5" x 3", and I don’t think the new one is too far off of that. We’ll know for sure in “3 to 5 business days” at least.
It doesn’t mean a lot for your overall point, but I think you’re underestimating the weight of the packaging and USB-C cable it comes with a little. I grabbed a cable and a similar sized box and weighed them at 110g. It was a lot flimsier looking box than the controller’s too, so I could see that still being at good bit heavier. With that in mind, I think something closer to this math is more likely:
To be even more pessimistic, I think this works too especially if pallet weight is an appreciable amount of the total:
Edit: tweaked math a little for better palletizing
May 9th edit for posterity:
I have my controller now, and my estimates above were still very optimistic. The total package weight per controller is 748g including an additional shipping box that has to come from the factory due to the serial label on the outside. This means the 12,970 kg shipment couldn’t have been more than 17,300 controllers
Also, package dimensions are 8.0" x 5.75" x 3.1".
Unlike some comments here, I don’t think this is a “test run.” Valve just doesn’t like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can’t make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I’m sure Valve sees it as a win-win.
We’ll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.
I definitely don’t go into it as far as a lot of people do, but some customizations are too nice to ignore. The original Vive (basically Valve hardware in all but name) had a mod that swapped the straps for welding mask supports and added off-ear speakers much like the Index later got. That was absolutely a massive upgrade.
The OG controller and Steam Deck are both sort of this way for me. Despite rarely using them, I never intend to sell them. My desktop just spoils me too much.
I expect having the new controller will actually encourage me to use the Deck more often though. Right now, starting a new game on the Deck feels like committing to the lesser experience due to not wanting to jump between control schemes. Having control parity fixes that.
Yeah, I’m not too worried in general. Valve devices tend to have pretty vibrant DIY communities grow up around them, both on the software and hardware side. I’m looking forward to seeing what 3D printed accessories exist in a few months myself.
In that case, definitely check out SISR if you want that functionality in Linux or Windows. It mentions emulators in particular as a use case. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything like it for Android which I saw you mention in another comment.
Are you alright with Steam running in the background? As far as I know, that’s all that’s really needed to get the full functionality outside of Steam for most uses. It’ll just be using whatever you have set up as your desktop profile. For other things, programs like SISR already exist too.
I’m worried Valve has the same expectation for the Frame and will understock it. It’s the device I’m looking forward to the most.
Yep, Steam Wallet here too. I definitely hit Continue at least 100 times before it processed.
I got mine in via Firefox on Android, but it definitely took some persistence.
Haha, I’ll never forget it because of how much the community was obsessed with mapping order times down to the second with each shipping wave and trying to predict ahead. I checked all those spreadsheets and things quite often in the couple months before my shipping notification. They actually got pretty close. It’s a shame I don’t actually use the Deck more than I do.
Congrats!
I’m wondering if the “ships in 3 to 5 business days” is valid for everyone who got an order in.
Preordering the Deck was definitely stressful knowing every little delay could push you weeks down the shipping queue. I think I also got my Deck order in right at about 15 minutes which put my shipment in one of the April waves. Is that about where yours was too?
Keep spamming Continue. It’ll eventually switch to “Working.” I must have hit it at least a hundred times from 9:59 PST to 10:10 before it worked for me. I wished they had opened purchasing right on the dot instead of a few minutes early, but oh well. I’m happy.
Edit: Out of Stock. Sorry everyone who didn’t get one. :(
A few notes:
First-party support for Steam Input’s deep configuration is a big selling point for a lot of people, myself included. It also means the lack of some of the extra buttons you mentioned present on other premium controllers doesn’t hurt so much, because there’s already so many options for layering in more inputs. Not wanting to mess with most of that doesn’t mean the controller is “not for you,” but it does mean it’s going to align less with what you value.
I absolutely love the Deck’s touchpads. I consider them non-negotiable inclusions for any future PC handheld or controller I buy. I will agree though that they aren’t ideal if your main use case for them was typing any more than a couple words at a time.
Citation needed on no one using grip-enabled gyro. It’s not something you need a game to support to make use of. Also, touch-enabled gyro was awesome on the original Steam Controller, and grip sensing on the Index controllers enabled some cool functionality.
I don’t think lack of console support or color customization are going to register as negatives for most people in the market for this. I can’t even remember the last time I used a console.
Valve has a pretty good track record with ergonomics, so I doubt accidentally activating the touchpads will be a common problem. Even if you find yourself in that spot though, you can have Steam Input disable a pad under certain conditions like when its thumb is on a stick.
Symmetrical sticks being a downside is extremely subjective.
I’m not anti-capitalism like the other guy, but I still need to correct your first bit. I’d rephrase it as “People adding value to something then reselling it is the cornerstone of (uncorrupted) capitalism.” “Adding value” can be lots of things, even something as simple as collecting a bunch of related products together in a more accessible, easily browsed format, i.e. what your average retail store does.
Scalping does not add value. It leaches it. You could try saying it adds value to someone who couldn’t be present during the original sale, but it does that by robbing the purchase opportunity from someone else while adding an exorbitant middle-man tax, so there’s no net gain in the system. It shouldn’t matter what platform or legal rules exist. It should be enough that it’s obviously unethical.
The closest I’ll come to saying something like scalping is okay is when someone resells a product forclose to the original price to people left out of the original market.