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No big surprises here, but good to get an update nonetheless.
When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).
Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed. But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.
Oh and it looks like lens inserts will be made available first party
In the meantime, we went from:
To:
we will be shipping all three products this year
With the release of the Steam Machine, the Frame must be close too.
Valve has stated that both should release this Summer.
Rumor is about two weeks™ until reservation lottery day.
I’m planning on getting one, but given the Steam Machine pricing, the ‘good value for money’ is probably not going to be in the top 3 reasons for getting one. 
The Quest 3 is what like $499 for the 128GB (edit: actually, that’s discontinued, so I guess the 512GB), and the Frame is (my guess) going to be about $899 for the 256GB - so getting close to twice as much, which is pretty tough pricing. Until they sell all the 3’s Meta is putting in hundreds of dollars of subsidy that Valve don’t do.
On the upsides, the Frame is going to have good pancake lenses, eye tracking, great foveated streaming, ok but not great screens (compared to the flight sim boutique $2000 headsets), a pretty good local processing ability and be an open and hackable ARM based linux computer.
I think it’ll be a really nice follow up to the Index but the RAMapocalypse™ has kinda killed the buzz.
I understand it’s a tough market. I hope they will do well but for me this will be the perfect headset.
My Reverb G2 is falling apart.
The Quest 3 is what like $499
and a surveillance tool. Just like the Pico, it is made by a company whose main business is harvesting, connecting and selling personal data.
Their prices are incredible but I would like to avoid contributing to them if it can reasonably be helped.
As for the boutique headsets, Pimax and Bigscreen, the price is a thing, but I also just don’t want to be tied to Windows and/or proprietary apps. I really see the appeal of the spying headsets that “just work”.
So the Steam Frame should give me the convenience of a spying headset with the privacy and connectivity options of a Linux pc.
I was really looking forward to the Frame. My Reverb died a couple of months ago and the Frame seemed like it would be a suitable and somewhat affordable replacement. But notwithstanding that the Frame is probably going to be a lot more expensive than hoped for, and that its availability is probably going to be very limited initially, I found out that Valve doesn’t even sell to Switzerland at all. So my only hope to get one is when a Swiss store picks them up in a year or so, if at all.
I’m sure something can be arranged with one of the EU Mudspikers..
I am still on a Rift S (which doesn’t fully work with my current PC) so it will be a HUGE improvement. If it isn’t outlandishly expensive then I’ll buy it.
Are you close to LSZH?
Not really, at least not by Swiss standards
There are surprising hoops to jump through in terms of export restrictions on things that you really wouldn’t expect if you want to mail something out.