Valve puts Steam Frame's color passthrough behind a $150 plug-in module

A Steam Frame owner who wants a game to see the living room in color has to buy two things. The headset ships with monochrome infrared passthrough cameras. Gizmodo calls it an awkward device for any augmented reality content ^[4]. Color passthrough and 3D video capture come from a $150 accessory made by Arcturus, promoted by Valve at launch, that plugs into the front of the headset through its PCI-E expansion slot ^[2][3].

At $1,060 for the headset ^[1], the color-capable configuration costs $1,210 ^[17], and the module alone is about 14 percent of the headset price ^[16]. For a buyer that is one line item. For a studio it splits the audience for every mixed reality feature it builds, into owners who bought the add-on and owners who did not, and nobody outside Valve can size those two groups yet.

The same pattern applies to the battery. Gizmodo names limited battery life as the weak point when the headset plays 2D and VR titles natively ^[5], and the fix Valve described to PCGamer is another accessory: a new headstrap with a hot-swappable battery and higher-end speakers, along the lines of what was in the 2019 Index ^[6]. Gizmodo does not report a price for that kit ^[18].

The slot is what makes third-party hardware plausible at all. Soulart, an indie company, is designing hardware-agnostic base stations it has promised will be compatible with Valve's headset ^[8], even though the Steam Frame tracks itself and its controllers without any infrared base stations ^[7].

Modular hardware still needs a market. Polyarc, the studio behind Moss and Moss II, shut its doors the week before the $1,060 headset's debut ^[9]. Gizmodo wrote that the Amsterdam team at Vertigo Games, which made Metro Awakening, met its end because the "VR market remains a challenging space" ^[10]. PCGuide was first to point out that practically all major online retailers, PlayStation Direct included, list the PSVR2 as out of stock or available only used or refurbished ^[11]. Gizmodo attributes rising VR hardware prices and thinner release schedules in large part to the ongoing RAMpocalypse ^[13].

A comparison with what Meta and Apple have chosen to build is not something this reporting can settle. The Meta item here is a "Project Pheonix" glasses and headset hybrid that Gizmodo says may be revealed at Meta Connect on Sept. 23, alongside Google and XReal's Project Aura glasses ^[14][15], and Gizmodo doubts either is built with play in mind.

For anyone shipping software on hardware with optional sensors, the decision turns on whether the feature needs a part that is absent from the base unit, and on whether you can put a number on the share of owners who will buy that part. Needing the part while having no such number means you design for the base unit and treat the module as a second path. The tradeoff is real: the showcase color demos will go to whoever bets on the $150 Arcturus module instead ^[2].