u/Truscape — Truscape

Sort of a synonym for markup, an additional cost on top of the original planned price.

Given the current chip market there'd be a 400+ USD upcharge from the previously stated price of "below the (Valve) Index"

The retail pre-paid debit cards can be bought with cash at various convenience stores, at least in the US. Growing up I used to use them before I had a bank account.

There is no name attached. Just the payment method at initial purchase (which can be done with cash).

My lemming on the internet, prepaid debit cards have been a thing for multiple decades and are perfect for anonymous purchases online at any storefront. You don't need explicitly Valve-endorsed cards.

Get a bigscreen beyond then? (And embrace the burn-in?)

Considering the Steam Deck has an easily replaceable battery this might just be an increased design complexity for hot swapping = more cost, so they made it "enthusiast" tier to have separate pricing.

It's a great feature either way though, I'd use it for sure.

Prepaid debit cards found in stores (used for gifts) have no requirement for information? You just hand over cash and use the card like normal without a data trail?

That is an anonymous purchasing method.

Prepaid debit cards are a decent replacement. Plus those are useful for other platforms like GOG.

Then in that case something like a prepaid debit card (which are available in the same stores) would work just fine.

You can buy counter strike and tf2 defunct trading platform accounts that are decades old for pennies on the dollar.

A) You'll have people selling their place in line, which means that those who can afford to take a large quantity of orders in advance can profit from the difference

B) It's not exactly good PR to order something and having to wait a variable window of time for it to finally arive at your door (see almost all Bethesda merch incidents post Fallout NV)

C) Valve doesn't operate like a dropshipper. There is no "white label" steam controller being made in china that they can slap their logo on and sell as soon as people order for it. They have to contract volume in advance, since it's a bespoke product.

Rampocalypse is to blame. They're simply not manufacturing any more units until memory prices drop (since raising prices on the SD would be a PR nightmare and they wouldn't be able to eat the margins without that).

It's sorta dead - the TL;DR is that Sony cut a deal with the developer during the PSVR2 launch to create a crossplay port with the PC and PS5 players, and an unfortunate consequence of this was that mods had to abide by Sony's content policies, which nuked steam workshop support from orbit.

It's slowly been gaining more community content ever since (especially since the communities are split in terms of mod policies now and most PC servers are community hosted), but we haven't reached the former glory yet. The core gamemodes and fundamentals are as solid as ever though.

Contractors on the other hand, never had this situation happen, but it is crossplay with Meta Quest users (so graphics aren't the best and you have more squeakers).

Into the Radius and Half Life Alyx would be what you are looking for, along with games like Pavlov VR/Contractors (since you have human opponents).

Also, use PCVR. Avoid Meta's ecosystem (almost all of their games are shallow AF)

That's actually the same case with the Steam Deck, apart from the hardware form factor.

SteamVR/OpenXR has been a standard for a long time, so pretty much all headsets can work on the platform (and by extension, there are plenty of vr games that run both on Steam and off of steam using the standard, such as the Vivecraft Minecraft Java edition mod :D). As a happy Valve Index owner for several years I am definitely looking forward to upgrading to the Steam Frame and selling my old headset, although I'm not sure when that'll make sense for me personally (since the index still works and plays games well).

Oh yeah some recommendations for good VR games:

• Into the Radius 1 and 2 (STALKER/Metro like experience but VR)

• Half Life Alyx (the one and only)

• Pavlov VR/Contractors (if you like Counterstrike/Battlefield style gameplay)

• VRChat (meeting so many cool people and exploring some crazy worlds)

• Way too many good mods that bring VR gameplay to desktop games (best ones are Vivecraft and SPT VR in my current experience)

It is, using SODIMMs (Laptop form factor)

Credit where credit's due, Valve did that for the Steam Deck's entry pricing. Although the danger for the Steam Machine would be potential abuse for massive orders (at Valve's expense) for things like call centers and offices rather than individuals.