When a cushion wears out, a battery fades, or a display breaks, there’s a plausible repair ahead of you. But the heat management’s a little more buried.
The RAM was originally half (on par with the Quest 3)
If they could reduce the RAM by half and still have a streaming capable rig that’s about $100 off the bill of materials and potentially doubles your manufacturing capability (assuming the bottleneck is RAM acquisition).
If this is true, why couldn’t Valve just release a Frame Lite in ~6 months that is stream-only?
I can’t imagine them doing that. Here’s my reasoning: You can’t make everyone happy. People are already mad that the frame isn’t EXACTLY what they expected it to be.
So you’re proposing one solution, to appease one group of people. Essentially the same Frame but just half or less a quarter of the RAM? To save a hundred bucks?
Then what? You’ll have a device that can TECHNICALLY run some games locally, but now it’s underpowered. But people will get confused and try it anyway and be mad. Or they’ll get confused and buy the wrong one.
They could make it painfully clear that it’s streaming only, and even limit the software so it can’t play locally.
But people will hack it and try anyway and probably still complain.
Or claim that valve is scalping money for the higher ram version.
Or any other number of problems that involve people not being happy with them. And all of it costs them money to produce the second SKU.
Maybe they’ll do it if everyone cries loud enough. But in my opinion, it’s smartest to keep one product, with one performance profile to target. Just like the Deck.
It’s not worth the hassle for them, and it’s not worth saving $100 for me.
It’s not a new idea for companies to make a lower end SKU of their product. Don’t pretend like it’s some untested thing. And there’s plenty of people (myself included) who’re wanting to only stream with it.
And it’s not just a $100 off the price tag. I was basing it off RAM prices today. What if RAM prices continue to go up, or if they have a harder time getting more chips at any price?
RAM is currently the limiting resource in building electronics. Any reduction in the need for it in a product means that product can more easily withstand changes in component prices and availability.
It’s not untested or impossible, but clearly they didn’t do it, so there must be a reason.
I’m saying that I think the reason is because it doesn’t make sense to do it, for all the reasons listed above.
And yes RAM is currently the issue, but I imagine they don’t want to make massive changes to their production plans just to accommodate the AI bubble that may or may not pop soon. The same way RAM manufacturers aren’t making massive changes to their plans to ramp up production, because who knows what the market will look like.
If they could reduce the RAM by half and still have a streaming capable rig that’s about $100 off the bill of materials and potentially doubles your manufacturing capability (assuming the bottleneck is RAM acquisition).
If this is true, why couldn’t Valve just release a Frame Lite in ~6 months that is stream-only?
No one is paying 90% for a shittier product.
I can’t imagine them doing that. Here’s my reasoning: You can’t make everyone happy. People are already mad that the frame isn’t EXACTLY what they expected it to be.
So you’re proposing one solution, to appease one group of people. Essentially the same Frame but just half or less a quarter of the RAM? To save a hundred bucks?
Then what? You’ll have a device that can TECHNICALLY run some games locally, but now it’s underpowered. But people will get confused and try it anyway and be mad. Or they’ll get confused and buy the wrong one.
They could make it painfully clear that it’s streaming only, and even limit the software so it can’t play locally. But people will hack it and try anyway and probably still complain.
Or claim that valve is scalping money for the higher ram version.
Or any other number of problems that involve people not being happy with them. And all of it costs them money to produce the second SKU.
Maybe they’ll do it if everyone cries loud enough. But in my opinion, it’s smartest to keep one product, with one performance profile to target. Just like the Deck.
It’s not worth the hassle for them, and it’s not worth saving $100 for me.
In my opinion.
It’s not a new idea for companies to make a lower end SKU of their product. Don’t pretend like it’s some untested thing. And there’s plenty of people (myself included) who’re wanting to only stream with it.
And it’s not just a $100 off the price tag. I was basing it off RAM prices today. What if RAM prices continue to go up, or if they have a harder time getting more chips at any price?
RAM is currently the limiting resource in building electronics. Any reduction in the need for it in a product means that product can more easily withstand changes in component prices and availability.
It’s not untested or impossible, but clearly they didn’t do it, so there must be a reason.
I’m saying that I think the reason is because it doesn’t make sense to do it, for all the reasons listed above.
And yes RAM is currently the issue, but I imagine they don’t want to make massive changes to their production plans just to accommodate the AI bubble that may or may not pop soon. The same way RAM manufacturers aren’t making massive changes to their plans to ramp up production, because who knows what the market will look like.