Who is the Steam Frame For? - DTNS Weekend

[music] Hello everybody and welcome to Daily Tech News Show weekend edition brought to you by me, Jason Howell. Also, my dog Bronson is wandering around. You might see his tail if you're watching the video version. Uh this is gratefully provided to you because you support this show. So, thank you uh for doing that. And today we're going to be talking about virtual reality and specifically the release of the anticipated Steam Frame VR headset. Uh this is not an inexpensive VR headset. It is uh right around $1,060, $1,59 if you want to be exact, but we'll go ahead and round it up just cuz it's a little friendlier. Um, so it's not necessarily cheap like uh like some of the more mainstream devices, you know, like your MetaQuest and and everything. That's like, you know, I don't know, $700 less expensive somewhere in that region. Um, so what is it good at? Where does, you know, VR even stand in 2026? That's what we're going to talk about today. And joining me to do that is Scott Stein, CNET, editor at large. Good to see you, Scott. >> Hey, good to see you, too, Jason. Um, I'm on the road cuz I'm looking at Snap Specs uh stuff tonight. So, more to come on that, but uh but that's that's in LA and then MetaConnect coming up. So, it's a big there's a lot of glasses headset stuff happening. >> Tell me about it. I uh you know, probably like 6 months ago, I was like, you know what? I'm going to lean into glasses with my like my YouTube channel and you know, some of the other coverage that I'm doing on the other shows. And it's like I put that energy out there and now I've just got this mountain of glasses next to me and I don't have enough time to get to them all because everybody's got different glasses. Not just, you know, not just VR, which is what we're going to talk about predominantly here, but smart glasses. I mean, glasses are just a big deal in 2026, it seems. And not all positive, you know, some of it's negative, too. [snorts] >> A a lot of it has been going uh negative. And it's it's kind of like both asking for more players in the space to help define it out and it's it's earlier than like most people haven't even really used the tech. So it's it's like >> it's like early fears of the tech as well as um legitimate concerns about what's going on and it's all flying around and there's a million different types of devices too. >> A million different types. Uh with cameras without I mean you know I've got the holiday G2 are the ones that I'm working on right now. Oh, you know, do the frames fit your face is a whole other thing. Do they have cameras? No. Audio, all the things. But what what we're going to be talking about today, I mean, primarily anyways. And I mean, we can get to those other things. I'm fascinated by it all. But, um, is the frame. And you Well, I think you even have it in in your hot little hands over there. There is the steam frame. >> This is This is the steam frame all kitted out. This is like with the accessories. This head strap is extra. Um, this is a a modular color camera that you can get for $149 that >> Oh, it just like snaps right on or snaps right right off. >> So, there's a Wow, this is one of the two modular ports on the Steam frame. There's a little like slot in there and this thing Arcturus Vision goes in there and gives it the color camera. So, it's interesting. Plus, like this whole thing comes off. the whole uh I'm not going to detach now, but like this part comes off from here and there's a little plug-in thing that you could put in a different type of head strap and battery. And >> I'm sure there'll be other there's another option from Valve coming, but the whole thing is designed to be modular. It's one of the interesting things about this little little headset Curiosity that I've been reviewing. [snorts] >> Okay. So, um so first of all, everyone should, you know, go to CNET. You have a written review for for the headset. You also have a video review. We were talking before we hit record on how it's like when you do reviews at CNET nowadays and I guess it was this way when I was working there too. It's like twice the work cuz you [laughter] got to do the written thing and then you got to go to a new team and do the video thing. So they keep you busy. But you gave it a seven out of 10. I guess we'll we'll just kind of start right there. You know, could be better, could be worse. Um I I guess why don't we start there? Like what what is uh at the end of the day kind of the high level? What drives the seven out of 10 if you had to summarize? >> Yeah, that was such a hard thing to land on and I felt uh anxiety and and second thoughts about it. I kind of looked at where I also was landing afterwards when we all came out with reviews and I thought okay yeah cuz I mean I don't like landing at a 7 out of 10 because it kind of feels like I'm saying like a kind of like me it's like it's kind of easy to land there. But >> two things were at play here. one is that price what it's doing right now uh and what it can replace are rough you know this is this is not something where I would go oh yes this is something you should get or this is something that can absolutely step in and replace something or be the gaming thing that that Valve wants it to be for everything at the same time uh while it was buggy while it had some weirdnesses and all sorts of things which are very Valve Um, I liked using it more and more over time and I found myself happy to dip into it. I mean, I brought it with me to keep testing it and have it with me because it's so close to the review, but also kind of fun to take it with me. And I I pay attention to those feelings and I thought, okay, you know, plus I'm very glad that it exists in a way that I'm not it doesn't really factor into the rating entirely, but it kind of does in that I think it's a needed device in the landscape. anyone, you don't need VR. And that's the thing and the question of, you know, is VR essential where it's always kind of alive and dead through all the years that I've been covering it. And I'm used to that. >> But it's gotten so condensed now. Like for all the players that were in the space, it's kind of like Meta and not many others. I mean, Apple's doing its own thing and it's hard to tell where it's going. Vision Pro, Samsung and Google are doing their own thing. And so Valve um is necessary competition and kind of trying to solve a lot of problems that are for compatibility that have been lurking out there. That's a long answer, but basically I think it's it's kind of like a Rosetta Stone to figure out to translate a lot of different missing pieces in the landscape. >> So it's setting out to solve some of those problems and compatibility. Does it does it actually do so? I mean, you mentioned in in your piece that like um you know, it's kind of like a Steam Deck in disguise. Maybe that kind of ties into the answer a little bit from from a universality perspective, but like you know, you can play your your regular VR games on here. You can also play your flat 2D games on here. Um, kind of seems to that end I kind of understand like, oh, it's a Steam Deck, but in your goggles, and when you want that extra dimension, you can go there, but you don't necessarily have have to. How does it how does it do at handling all things and being more universal in in its approach? It feels a little underpowered for what it's aiming to do ambitiously, but I also feel like Valve was trying to stick a landing. It's kind of similar to Steam Machine in the sense that, you know, I think Valve tries to build these things without going over the top. And >> um it's hard to say, it's hard to say that because that also the prices are high. We're also at a time where all the prices are going up and Valve seems to, you know, acknowledge that that the prices on these products are are all higher than they intended. um hard to tell where where it would have landed without Ramageddon and everything, but but like even with Steam Deck back when the price was lower, there was a sense of them trying to get to something attainable without going too over the top. And so the frame kind of feels that way. It feels like they they got the chipset that they could get that's it's not a Qualcomm XR chip. It's a it's a it's a Snapdragon 8 mobile chip, which is unusual. Didn't have color pass through cameras, which are pretty common. I mean, they've been on the Quest headsets that are that are cheaper for years. Um, and Apple and and Samsung have those. So, it doesn't have hand tracking, which is something that is pretty common in VR. Now, >> it's kind of a big deal. I feel like hand tracking is kind of one of those things that more and more more expected. I don't know if you'd agree with that, but >> it's helpful. And and then Valve says it's coming. So, I believe them in the sense that I think that that would be very capable with the cameras that are built in, but it's like um they're working on it and it wasn't like an essential piece in the beginning. It was more about the controllers. So, those are some of the oddities, but at the same time, they call it a streaming first headset. Um I think and um and paradoxically, I mean, people might get upset about this in my review. It's also because I don't have a gaming PC at home in my everyday life. I mean, we have ones at at CNET, but I'm not a big PC gamer. Actually, I'm not I'm just not that person. Um, and and it is designed to be a great experience if you're plugging in the included streamingle to stream. But that even wasn't the most interesting thing to me because while it would be nice to have a nice streaming PC headset, there's a lot of headsets that can do PC connections and even the the Quest can do that reasonably well uh at a lower price. But it's the standalone promises of all these things that I was like, I want to see what it can do with that. So, a lot of my time I spent with that. Um, part of the puzzle, okay, as a VR headset, I to mention those limitations. And then what games work on it right now, this is very valve 2, the the great on frame category is a is a narrow subset. And you know, not all not that many games are in that uh category yet. That was true with Steam Deck. That was true with Steam Machine at launch. There's probably like 130 and growing. It keeps it keeps increasing. Um, when I started reviewing it, it was like 60, you know, and um, and then you want to see what what things can play. Valve does not prevent you from loading anything on it, which is kind of cool and weird in that you could just take anything in your Steam library and boot it up. Your mileage will 100% vary. Sometimes will just totally fail out. Sometimes it'll >> Sometimes it'll really be rough. And in a 2D game, that's fine. in VR that is can be brutal and there's no there's no heads up warning so you really want to notice those like great on frame recommendations carefully but all those great on frame VR games are very much quest ports you know like things that you've seen before if you played VR kind of the greatest hits of stuff walkabout mini golf beaters even on there >> yeah um >> synth writers I looked at um you know like old chestnuts you know job simulator and that's kind of where VR is at where it's like You see a lot of these games that kick around and are still good, but it's been years and years. Um, those play fine and not surprising. And they're getting better with the updates. Originally, like the refresh rate wasn't so great. It was like defaulted to 72 hertz. Now I see games that are going up to 120. The headset can go up to 144, which is a fast refresh rate. Um, the display is good. It's like 2160 by 2160 per eye. So, it's like, and it has like these clear pancake lenses, so they're like the MetaQuest 3. Um, I would say it's kind of equivalent display-wise. It's not the bleeding edge display experience of a Samsung Galaxy XR or Vision Pro, though. Like, you notice a big >> a big difference there. But it's more than good enough for games. You can play videos on it. I'll get to that in a second. But, um, >> but the uh so the display actually felt good. It's lightweight, too. So, like that factors in where I felt like this is smaller and more comfortable to wear. Um, >> it's like one pound or something. It's super lightweight. >> Yeah. And it's balanced with the back thing. But in exchange for that, the battery life is low. Even by VR standards, it's 2 hours at best. Like I found that most of the time after an hour, I wanted to recharge it. Um, I saw a lot of people also having those experiences. The good news is you could you could tether it to something or daisy chain, but then you're tinkering and then it's like there there's going to eventually like a pro thing with a hot swappable battery pack and um, but then starts to get like how many pieces you want to start adding to it. Um, yeah. And so the game so the games were like fine. I like the controllers. The controllers are very standard VR feel controllers. There's a couple of things that are particularly unique. One is that the buttons are all like a regular controller on them with D-pad and button layout. >> Mhm. >> So, and this goes into is it also a Steam Deck. You can just use it as a regular controller >> for pretty much any game, which is really nice because on a on a Quest or other things, you usually have to reach for a type of controller you want to pair. You don't have to do that. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. And so you don't have to do that here for for pretty much everything. A standard Steam layout that it taps into. The other thing is like this actually has uh hidden touch sensors all around the front and the bottom. So >> Oh, wow. So, so even the control surface itself, if you're not on the controls themselves, the actual full face of it is touch sensitive. >> Yes. And not a lot of games take it >> Yeah. Not a lot of games take advantage of it yet, but they So, the the wild game that I played on this is Halflife Alex, which is the one people thought, >> would this run on the Steam frame? And it does. It's It's like a It was a a pre-release build when I when I played it. But that's the one that would get people geeked out because I mean, this was 6 years ago now, but it was it was a a premium. It is a premium killer VR game >> and Valve made great efforts to port it on here. There's definitely compromises, but it works. Uh, it uses um foviated rendering, which is another thing I didn't mention on this VR headset as far as how does it compare. There's eyetracking for all the things it lacks. Eyetracking is a very advanced feature and um Valve ambitiously put this in here to lower the processing um requirements to try to squeeze more performance out of this headset for both streaming and for on headset. But like HalfLife Alex is the only one phobia rendering if you don't know is like where it's enhancing the pixels only where your where your phobia looks. So makes everything else kind of invisibly blurry. >> It kind of requires eyetracking in order to do that, right? because then it knows where you're looking and all the things. >> It's kind of like the way your eyes work. It's interesting like well working optical illusion. You don't really notice it and it worked pretty well. Um so Halfife Alex was like Half Life Alex was like the the pinnacle of where things could go on the headset. I think that's why they showed it off. And and the point is that also uh this tracked finger motions like in the I could move my fingers here and I noticed they were showing up in the VR headset and I was like wait a second it notices my pinky moving and my finger. So that type of cool stuff I didn't see in any other VR game on the headset, you know, and would any developer bother to develop for this and do that? I have no idea. But um >> they could. Yeah. >> Yeah, they could. And so it kind of like descended in in like excitement and expectations on that. A lot of it felt familiar. But then uh you I hope and would like to run classic VR games. There's like all the stuff going back. Uh Valve was one of the first VR pioneers in this new age. like they were up against >> Oculus 10 years ago where they paired with HTC Vive, Steam VR. There's like this um Adventure Time, Magic Man head games that um came out around that time. My kids love Adventure Time and I was like, they haven't ported this over. This would be great to run on the frame. I hope it runs. Doesn't run. Um and then I tried uh I tried um they had this old Rick and Morty game that was really fun. It was like a kind of like you go around the place and play with stuff and that loaded but at a horribly unusable nauseainducing frame rate. And I think they're promising that those games might eventually work but they may require developers to fix some stuff. I >> was going to say yeah. Is that a system update or is that a developer going in there to optimize? And if that's the case, yeah, you're not going to get everything the way you want. So, and and then Valve, like you go even deeper into this where it's like Valve is using all these like little magic tools like they have compatibility tools. There was something called Proton that was on that's been on Steam Deck and other things that has helps with game compatibility and kind of like magically automatically converts stuff to work better. And they have something on this called Leptton that um is supposed to be like a VR conversion tool. And I'm just like just go with it. So I I'm kind of It sounds like over time they may start having things find tools to help convert stuff more. They claim that um Android APKs and apps will work on this too, which I haven't tried. But like part of the cool part of this is and why I get excited is that there's a very open feel to it in terms of it's just like all the other Steam devices. It's Steam OS, but it's also Linux. So like you could just open the Linux desktop part and start downloading random Linux apps and you know >> download you really want to do inside of VR. I guess you can >> if you want to do that >> sync up like a Bluetooth keyboard so you could get some productivity >> Bluetooth keyboard on hack [laughter] your stuff around. I mean, for those people, it's like a Reddit dream where like you could just uh you could Yeah, you could go hog wild down any road. >> And um that's where I was kind of like, okay, like I don't know. I'm playing around with this a bit. I'm not going to do that all the time, but I appreciate it. Um >> yeah, you appreciate that that's there. The MetaQuest is is a little bit more controlled. I mean, you you kind of had to hack away, I think, at that to get it to do, you know, certain other things, but >> um Okay. >> But it's but it's rougher. And so that's the VR answer. And it's kind of like, yeah, would it be the VR headset? No. For PC people, could it could it be a really good replace? I mean, for the old index, yeah, it would be a really good replacement. And it's kind of like the same price, $100 more. So, in that sense, um, what you get for your money over time is actually a lot more exciting now, even though the price seems so high. It's like a thing. I I kind of look back and I was like, "Oh, yeah, the Valve Index was $1,000 and it needed a PC." Okay. you know, it was like that's and then I forgot that the Quest Pro was like $1,500. So, it as expensive as it is, like you said, >> VR headsets are actually pretty expensive across the board, especially now like Vision Pro, I mean, Galaxy XR is $1899 and the Vision Pro is ridiculous. 3600. Um, the Quest is artificially low because Meta, I think, keeps it that way. and and so it's like an it's kind of an impossible price like and why nobody else has ever released headsets in that price range. Um so it's it is it is cheaper but I don't even think anyone I I think the price this would have been would have been like 700 if I were to guess and that's probably what things like that cost. Um, >> so okay. So then touching touching on that that's really interesting because like Meta doing what it apparently and obviously has the resources to do price that incredibly low become, you know, makes it much more of a a main staple for the majority of of like entry level or mainstream VR users, let's say. But then you have to really like being that it's artificially lower price a headset like this that's you know two to three times more expensive it's really got to prove itself then for those users. So who is the audience for this and does it do enough to separate itself from what you can get for like a third of the price. >> Yeah. No it doesn't do enough to separate itself right now and who it's for? I think and I was talking to Sean Hollister at the Verge about this. We did a Verge cast and it was it was a lot of fun. It was like you know he really honed in on this too. It's for the tinkerers. It's for the early adopters. We've heard this before, but I really think for this one, it's like if you want to go for the ride and you are ex I mean, I've seen a lot of people on social and people I know in XR spaces, people geek out on this and are like, "Oh my god, I got to test this out. I want to do this." And there are very few products that can try to develop some of these tools that are compatible and allow that type of openness. Mhm. >> That's like your That's kind of like, you know, it's like it's like the cyber deck trend, you know, of like people going like, I want to have something I can, you know, hack up. This is that product like, you know, have fun, go for the ride. Valve's usually pretty good at they're promising a lot of support for this. That's a huge I don't like going on promises for uh potential. That is like that is always a trap. I would say historically Valve has proved it out but it is unknown of course what will happen with that. So that's what I feel exactly. It is a leap of faith. And um and then we didn't even get to the Steam Deck part, which is >> Yes, please. >> Equally interesting in that this like we have this whole trend in VR headsets lately or ones that don't call themselves VR headsets um but still are. Um Vision Pro, Samsung Galaxy XR, they and then it influenced Meta where everything became these 2D apps running 2D apps in these in this interface. And this kind of takes that same approach. And so they're trying to make it like a yes and device. Like the they're very intentionally making this a sure it's VR. It's also not VR. It's it can run whatever you want. Like the whole Steam library. Um run run 2D games on this and put them on big screens much like what you can do on a Vision Pro or Galaxy XR and other other things like that. >> Um at a at a lower price. So I felt like oh that's kind of >> in that lens. The pricing makes a lot more sense. Yeah, for sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. And but more expensive than a Steam Deck, although the Steam Deck's gone up in price. PC handhels have gone up in price. Um, as a handheld, it's not quite a handheld. You're wearing on your face. And and so it's a different experience. In some sense, it's great and luxurious because you can put stuff on a big screen. The games you can run on it are also a subset of the games that run on a Steam Deck. This is where it got this is where it's like, what is the proposition here? And the question of how that'll change over time. And to the bigger thing of what I think is really going on with Valve is [snorts] this is running on an ARM chip. And I think this is one of the most important initiatives of what Valve's doing with this headset, which is that uh I wrote about this in November. It's like machine was pushing the hardware experiments up but but still below PCs and this is going down. And that's interesting to me because if it runs on a phone type chip, my mind races in all these directions outside of VR where it's like, could this mean Steam OS running on a phone? Could mean running on a tablet? Could it run and with um Ramageddon and stuff like that? you start getting PC gaming handhelds that are running uh more affordable chipsets, things that are smaller that can basically run what you need and maybe be a little less power like the like the Switch Light, but they actually have the same chipset, but you know, it's like something where you're like a little little lighter, less expensive. I I I it feels like Valve's kicking the tires on that for the whole Steam library. I kind of feel like there's more I would imagine there's more uh developer support for that initiative too because VR is a little bit floaty right now. But but you know for 2D games to get them running on ARM chips I feel like uh there makes a lot of sense like there's a lot of things you could potentially optimize for that for all sorts of things. So, >> the [clears throat] games that work for that are again like there's stuff like Cuphead, Hollow Night, um, >> uh, what are the types of games I played on this? Um, Dave the Diver, uh, Bellatro. These are things are not pushing any sort of intense thing. Portal 2 is the one that Valve put on it. Really old game, but great game, but like, you know, a little more 3D. Um, I tried other games to test out. Some of them worked kind of like the Steam Deck surprisingly well, like Sector, which is a great Twitch arcade shooter. Uh, Baby Steps, which is a really fun bizarre indie game, played pretty well. Um, you know, Crazy Taxi, I have this old, you know, in my library, I was like, "Oh, this old version of Crazy Taxi plays cool." Uh, Elder Ring was a mess and Ratchet and Clank was a was a was a mess. Those were like unplayable. um some games like the didn't even like authorize properly. So it is you know experimental but they do sound ambitious about um getting more games to work with it. And then it's that same thing of like I remember Steam Deck I I was really late to review Steam Deck. I didn't review it. Dan Arian reviewed the first Steam Deck at CNET. Then I saw people talk about how it was a mess and then all of a sudden it became great. When I reviewed Steam Deck OLED I came aboard and I was like this is fantastic. like I was like this is probably the most exciting handheld next to the Switch. And I found that there were a lot of games that worked at that point. So I kind of hope that like could Elden Ring ever work on this thing? Like I don't know. But um I think more games will start optimizing. But that goes back to short battery life. Kind of weird to take with you, >> more expensive and less game support equals no, I would not call this a Steam Deck replacement. But >> but I could see um yeah, it's like they're trying to bring all these pieces together in this junction. Yeah. And and then you play with um >> you play with glasses now, too. One thing I didn't bring up with this is something you can already do on on a Steam Deck, which is plug in a pair of display glasses, >> which is not VR. >> Okay. >> Right. And then you think like, wait a second. So, I got a Steam Deck. I'm putting a virtual screen up like XRail or Vure. Isn't that kind of the same thing as what I'm doing with the Steam Frame? >> And it is, >> but I wonder if Valve is also thinking about like the pieces where it's like Steam Deck 2 in the future. Could there be like and that XR aura that is a a more advanced VR like pair of glasses coming? >> Super interested in that. Yeah, >> I'm like wouldn't Valve poss, this is all speculative. Wouldn't Valve possibly make a Steam Deck 2 where you plug in more advanced glasses and suddenly it's kind of VR like and then that's kind of where frame like I'm like that's where frame should go. Um, so it kind of feels like an oldfashioned form. Like if for all we talk about future tech, it's an oldfashioned form for a boundary breaking. We're in a season where I'm looking at devices including Snap Specs >> and Exreal Aura where all these things feel like they're kind of melting the forms. >> They are. >> And um that's the thing that excites me most about Steam Frame. Yeah. It's But you know, >> I think the direction Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. It it does sound like maybe this device is a stepping stone device of some sort, a testing ground. And um yeah. Okay. I think the seven out of 10 sounds uh pretty valid. Um kind of uh rounding things out here, like you know, as we look forward to the next couple of years in in VR, I think you've kind of actually already answered what I was going to end with for the most part, which is how these things are blurring together. What do you Yeah. What most excites you about like what's what's coming up? How they are kind of converging these different form factors? [snorts] >> It is converging in a in a numbing a messy way now that is colliding with AI in in a in a kind of helpful and distracting way. Um reminds me of like the metaverse uh overblow, you know, where it was like >> suddenly train wrecked everything. In my opinion, still going back, it's like people go the metaverse was, you know, But it's like I thought the concept of the metaverse was real, but it got inshitified by the hype cycle and by, you know, NF2 crypto and and everybody just trying to turn everything into everything. And then you [snorts] don't know what's legit, what's not, and everything's being overly forced. AI now feels like a a clear tool that's going to start, especially on smart glasses and AR, yeah, is already going to become a key factor. But it's such a cart and horse thing where it feels like, you know, everybody's dropping things and running to the AI that I don't know if the focus is being kept on like I like to believe that it's all going to work together, but there's a lot of stuff just being like shoehorned in and thrown in there. >> And so that gets into like form because the whole XR space is like kind of having a midlife crisis. And then glasses were supposed to be this evolution or transformation or companion to VR. But then as people started backing out of VR, including Meta, although they're they're probably coming back with a a new type of uh smaller more glasses like headset that they may be talking about next week according to reports. Um and they still have the Quest, but they they de I mean they they basically stripped so much stuff out of it in the past year. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> game teams and support for things and they they they admitted it's not doing the levels that they had thought. But, you know, I think that glasses have not stepped up to help replace that. And so it feels premature to power that down. And for stuff like like something like Snapspecs, just talking about them because we already know they exist. Um are like one of the only AR glasses attempts that's out there that's real at this moment. They're all kind of saying they're coming, but >> yes, >> we're we're seeing these like hodgepodge. Yeah, we're seeing all this like >> bits and pieces being glom that aren't aren't really that and can't do anything like it. So that's like the the long answer. Like you said, the melt is and where we're going. I've seen VR headsets that are getting more compact and glasses like and I would even call the frame a tiny step in that direction. Doesn't I mean it's still VR headsets. >> I mean it's still big but it's man it's so light like it's it's really kind of >> it's lighter >> and it doesn't feel gigant even like just holding it and I was like this is not gigantic. It's like this is a year of tiny valve devices. I was like machine is delightfully small. this is like really not that big. Um, and the, you know, the Metaphenix thing, which already, I mean, it looks like a pretty good leak of what they're going to have, is a >> very thin thing. Um, it's like everybody's striving to get to that next thing and glom it or find a bridge. >> So, I think we're going to start seeing more of that. That XR or I was talking about, it's like VR but in a glasses form. And I think it's >> Yeah, it's fantastic. >> I think it's really cool. >> Yeah. And and then I hope Google keeps up development for it with Android XR. You know, there's all these that's where again Steam's position in this I I really love because they're actually one of the more stable pieces. Um Steam is a massive library of stuff. It's the main go-to for for indie developers. It's not perfect, but they tend to keep stuff around too. So like all the libraries and support and like >> you know Steam VR meta is flexing and Google is >> like unknown. Apple's unknown like there I think there's too many like um floaty pieces. So like when we talk about that path of where things are going I'm like Valve may be one of the most stable pillars in >> this is interesting >> in the space. Yeah. So, go Valve, go. But yeah, it's like I I think it's it feels like um >> Yeah, it feels like walking on uh moving pieces of ice right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. Which would be a great game uh inside of VR. [laughter] Uh Scott Stein, uh thank you so much for carving out a half hour to talk about uh your review and the future of VR and smart glasses and all the things. you do excellent coverage at CNET of all of these this this whole side of the industry. I'm always, you know, when I see that you've got something new out, I'm always super interested because I'm very fascinated by the glasses as well. So, if uh people want to find more of you online, I mean, clearly your coverage is on CNET. If they want to find you, like what do you want to point people to? >> Definitely look for my if you Google Google up my CNET profile, Scott Stein, it lists all my stories that are coming. So, it's helpful. It's not like prominent on CNET's main page, but you can look there. CNET's YouTube channel has a lot of our breaking stuff. I am on Blue Sky a whole ton. And I also have my own little newsletter called the Interwix that is on uh Beehive. I don't always post things there, but it's kind of my extended after hours thoughts on the melting space. So, um look for that. Sign up and it's free. So, I don't know. Just I'll have more there. And I'm I'm working on a continuing podcast thing. So, I'll tell you more about that when I'm when it's all together, but it's great talking about all this with you. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. Scott, thank you for carving out time again. Have good uh have a good time with the rest of uh of your time in LA for Snap. >> Thank you. Yeah, we'll talk from that, too. >> There's a lot coming. Snap, Meta, Google, uh XREL, we have a lot of dominoes left this year. >> Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. You'll be following it all. Thank you again, Scott. Uh, and of course, thanks to all the people who support uh this show, especially those of you on the Patreon, patreon.com/dtns. [music] Uh, we are, it's right down there. We'll be back on Monday with a whole lot of news to talk about on the show. Appreciate you. We'll see you next time. Talk to you later. >> The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker. [laughter]