Report: Valve to release $1200 VR by the end of 2025

That price is personally a lot more than I'm comfortable with, especially on VR. I have a Quest 2, and it was about 20% of the cost, at most.

I would absolutely rather support and have the Steam ecosystem in VR though. No Meta would add a cost I'm willing to pay, but maybe not this rumoured $1200.

Plus, it would need to be wireless and not require the space the Index needed, was like an entire room with cameras set up.
 
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Itchy Tickles said:
That price is personally a lot more than I'm comfortable with, especially on VR. I have a Quest 2 and it was about 20% of the cost, at most.

I would absolutely rather support and have the Steam ecosystem in VR though. No Meta would add cost I'm willing to pay, but maybe not this rumoured $1200.

Plus, it would need to wireless and not require the space the Index needed, was like an entire room with cameras set up.
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yep. while quest is so cheap and psvr2 is like 500$ and works with ps5 and pc? yeah f that 1200$ vr crap
 
AJUMP23 said:
Too expensive for mass market adoption.
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If it's anything like the INDEX then it's NOT targeting mass market adoption. Valve wouldn't even have the manufacture output volume to feed a mass market adoption properly.

It will be a premium-priced prestige device, set at the high end of current VR capabilities.
 
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SegaSnatcher said:
Is VR really still a thing? I can't imagine growth has been that great.
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Hell yes it's still a thing. Especially last year we've been eating good with banger after banger like Batman: Arkham Shadow, Arizona Sunshine Remake, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Skydance's Behemoth, Metro Awakening, etc.

This year started promising with Arken Age. That game is a bit rough around the edges but it took me back to the first time I played the very first Unreal on PC: FPS set on a colorful alien world with great atmospheric music.
 
I've wasted so much money on VR and if I'm honest, it has always sucked.

In the absolute best case, I get sick as a dog after like 10 minutes and my brain tells my body that VR is bad so I don't get on it for like 3 months.

I'm not just talking shit. I got a PSVR2 on Jan 7 2025 at full price. I got an Oculus Rift on launch.

If none of that mattered, it still sucks in way too many ways to count.

Any investment as this is a beta stage investment and this garbage will never be successful until it innovates and I mean by a LOT.
 
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thuGG_pl said:
Sim guys, like me. I can't wait for it.
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"Sim" guys. So that's what you call it in Poland.

James Franco Flirt GIF
 
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VR is something you buy because you think it's insanely cool but then weeks later it's sitting in your closet somewhere collecting dust because you realized that the majority of games suck on it and it's gimmicky in every sense of the word. If they do release this then it'll bomb hard especially at that price point.
 
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Gamers are begging for Steam Deck 2 and Steam Machine, but they are going to release the DOA gimmick for $1200!

Strange people!
 
Parazels said:
Gamers are begging for Steam Deck 2 and Steam Machine
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Are they? :pie_thinking:

Last time we had a thread about that I think most Steam Deck owners were pretty happy with their device and saw no reason for an update. Old games and indies machine, the backlogkiller and all that.
 
If it's $1,200 and the thing plays itself like the Meta Quest then I'm in.

If you need a $5,000 rip off Nvidia GPU then they can take a hike.
 
Parazels said:
Gamers are begging for Steam Deck 2 and Steam Machine, but they are going to release the DOA gimmick for $1200!

Strange people!
Click to expand...

They will most likely be sharing effectively the same APU/Mobo/RAM across the Steam Deck 2 and this VR headsets processing puck/onboard computer. If it's an external puck, it'll likely also be sold as the lowest cost Steam Machine, a literal Steam Deck 2 without the screen.
 
I've still got the original Vive. I had it pre-ordered. It's still the only VR I've ever tried. I wonder how much better it's gotten. That was ten years ago this May!
 
Sebastian1295 said:
VR is something you buy because you think it's insanely cool but then weeks later it's sitting in your closet somewhere collecting dust
Click to expand...

10 years later and I'm still blown away every time I boot up VR. I haven't been blown away from a regular game since Crysis 1 in 2007.
 
Clearly lot of people in this thread haven't played alyx on the index and feel burned that they wasted all their money on subpar garbage
 
I'm lean heavy towards buy it. I have a Quest 3 and it is pretty impressive and a nice thing to be able to check out new stuff occasionally. Meta has the content pipeline but I'd rather not an Android/Horizon/visionOS solution. I don't have confidence yet for compatibility on other platforms being maintained well for decades compared to something more standard desktop Linux based like SteamOS
 
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Sounds dope. Vision Pro for gamers is what I want. The quest 3 is a nice piece of kit but the compromises to hit the price point really suck. I just can't rationalize the "not needing a pc" part. How on earth can you power pc games and the vr interface within the thermal envelope of a headset? Heavily rely on eye tracking? Deck can barely handle 720p.
 
Bry0 said:
Sounds dope. Vision Pro for gamers is what I want. The quest 3 is a nice piece of kit but the compromises to hit the price point really suck. I just can't rationalize the "not needing a pc" part. How on earth can you power pc games and the vr interface within the thermal envelope of a headset? Heavily rely on eye tracking? Deck can barely handle 720p.
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You realize the power in the Apple Vision Pro probably far exceeds this right? So why wouldn't this be able to do it if Apple did it?

Deck can actually run Alyx to a VR headset on potato mode.

Deck 2 will be able to run it at pretty good settings, not 4090 GPU settings, but definitely better than what many people who played it 5 years ago saw.

For more demanding PCVR I'm sure it will be like the PSVR2/Quest 3 where you can feed it from a gaming PC.
 
Parazels said:
Gamers are begging for Steam Deck 2 and Steam Machine,
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who the fuck is begging for Steam Machine 2? Everything steam machine related has been coming from Valve to minimal interest from us.

Way more people have been asking for an Index sequel than any Steam Machine.

And VR is fine. It's not gonna die, it's not some fad, it's not some gimmick, it's been fucking 10+ years since we've been introduced to it and it's still around and more popular than ever. Quest 3S is selling like hotcakes on Amazon and Meta's doing numbers. "VR is dying" isn't gonna happen, stop tryna make it happen.

the price is quite disappointing since I was expecting them to make some cheaper hardware after the Deck came out and became their most successful physical product. But oh well, people here complain about prices and then buy a 3000 dollar graphics card. I can save up 1000+.
 
64gigabyteram said:
who the fuck is begging for Steam Machine 2? Everything steam machine related has been coming from Valve to minimal interest from us.

Way more people have been asking for an Index sequel than any Steam Machine.

And VR is fine. It's not gonna die, it's not some fad, it's not some gimmick, it's been fucking 10+ years since we've been introduced to it and it's still around and more popular than ever. Quest 3S is selling like hotcakes on Amazon and Meta's doing numbers. "VR is dying" isn't gonna happen, stop tryna make it happen.

the price is quite disappointing since I was expecting them to make some cheaper hardware after the Deck came out and became their most successful physical product. But oh well, people here complain about prices and then buy a 3000 dollar graphics card. I can save up 1000+.
Click to expand...

VR now will never "die". But we are hoping for more growth. I hope Dekard does it.
 
Minsc said:
You realize the power in the Apple Vision Pro probably far exceeds this right? So why wouldn't this be able to do it if Apple did it?

Deck can actually run Alyx to a VR headset on potato mode.

Deck 2 will be able to run it at pretty good settings, not 4090 GPU settings, but definitely better than what many people who played it 5 years ago saw.

For more demanding PCVR I'm sure it will be like the PSVR2/Quest 3 where you can feed it from a gaming PC.
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Yeah, but what chip would valve use? Vision Pro uses an m2 and an r1 dedicated to sensor processing. What is the x86 or non-apple arm equivalent that can handle all that alongside running full fat pc games while also staying in that thermal envelope? I would think something like strix halo would be too big, and aerith+ still too weak. And how do you keep the BOM reasonable if they aren't charging 3500 like a Vision Pro?
 
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Hell yea. I'm hoping it's the best on the market at the time it releases. I've been wanting to get a PC headset for ages now, but held off. This would be a great jumping in point.
 
Bry0 said:
Yeah, but what chip would valve use? Vision Pro uses an m2 and an r1 dedicated to sensor processing. What is the x86 or non-apple arm equivalent that can handle all that alongside running full fat pc games while also staying in that thermal envelope? I would think something like strix halo would be too big, and aerith+ still too weak. And how do you keep the BOM reasonable if they aren't charging 3500 like a Vision Pro?
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Yes, what indeed. I imagine there's something between the $3000 Vision Pro M2 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 of the Quest 3 (which the $300 3S sports)! I feel like the Quest 3 is significantly better than the Deck 1's hardware, at least at VR resolution - and it's no slouch either, going by Pinball FX performance on the Steam Deck (not great, barely 60fps, no ray tracing) - which the Quest 3 will run in VR at WAY higher resolution.

So hopefully there's something that the Deckard can use that lands between the AVP and Quest 3, which would be on par with a future Deck 2 release @ $350 (where as you're getting in earlier but for more money in the Deckard).

Pejo said:
Hell yea. I'm hoping it's the best on the market at the time it releases. I've been wanting to get a PC headset for ages now, but held off. This would be a great jumping in point.
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If you're getting a headset FOR PC gaming, on a PC, you can likely make the argument that getting a $1200 headset that's all-in-one and doesn't need a PC to be used would be overkill, versus a $300 PSVR2 headset which is very much top of the line for gaming on a PC.
 
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Not sure what they are trying to achieve.
So at $1200 it comes with on-board compute and also targets SteamOS so you can play flat games in VR...not sure how much of a selling point that is.
It also could mean it likely can play Alyx pretty decently native? But what mobile hardware can achieve that right now? If that existed I'd imagine they'd just put a chip like that in a Deck 2, but it sounded like such a chip does not exist yet.
There is also a secondary rumor that project "HLX" which seems like an FPS project with heavy emphasis on physics/simulation is coming close to being done, so very well there could be a HL3.
Will HL3 be VR only? It could. Valve did not give any fucks about making Alyx VR only, they seem to be interested in experimenting and pushing the gaming genre forward, as Steam basically prints money for them at this point so they can take big risks or pursue projects with modest returns.
HL3 could also be a flat game with a VR extension, like like there is an HL2 mod that makes it feel almost native VR.

The reality is VR can't be carried by 1 company and $1200 is really for the super enthusiast market, so whether VR sinks or swims is not up to Valve.
A much bigger player in VR is Meta, and any moves they make has profound impact on VR and how many studios decide to develop for it. Thankfully Meta has been willing to BURN BILLIONS of dollars on their VR adventure, selling fairly decent headsets at cost (like Quest 3). It is after all an excellent PCVR headset.
Still very excited to see where they go with it, and seriously hope HL3 is not VR exclusive, though I'd enjoy it nonetheless.
 
If it takes $1,200 to do this right as a standalone, that's all right by me. I don't think they're trying to rip anyone off. This is going to be some nice stuff.
 
Hot5pur said:
Not sure what they are trying to achieve.
So at $1200 it comes with on-board compute and also targets SteamOS so you can play flat games in VR...not sure how much of a selling point that is.
It also could mean it likely can play Alyx pretty decently native? But what mobile hardware can achieve that right now? If that existed I'd imagine they'd just put a chip like that in a Deck 2, but it sounded like such a chip does not exist yet.
There is also a secondary rumor that project "HLX" which seems like an FPS project with heavy emphasis on physics/simulation is coming close to being done, so very well there could be a HL3.
Will HL3 be VR only? It could. Valve did not give any fucks about making Alyx VR only, they seem to be interested in experimenting and pushing the gaming genre forward, as Steam basically prints money for them at this point so they can take big risks or pursue projects with modest returns.
HL3 could also be a flat game with a VR extension, like like there is an HL2 mod that makes it feel almost native VR.

The reality is VR can't be carried by 1 company and $1200 is really for the super enthusiast market, so whether VR sinks or swims is not up to Valve.
A much bigger player in VR is Meta, and any moves they make has profound impact on VR and how many studios decide to develop for it. Thankfully Meta has been willing to BURN BILLIONS of dollars on their VR adventure, selling fairly decent headsets at cost (like Quest 3). It is after all an excellent PCVR headset.
Still very excited to see where they go with it, and seriously hope HL3 is not VR exclusive, though I'd enjoy it nonetheless.
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I fully believe the Deck 2 will be able to play everything the Quest 3 can, power wise. It should even be stronger than that IMO.

The Quest 3 most likely could run Alyx, after seeing the Deck 1 run it at 60fps on VR headsets (albeit on potato mode), and I do think the Quest 3 is better suited to VR than Deck 1. Quest 3 can run the RE4 port at 120fps and over 4k res. I'm not sure how many games the Deck 1 could run at 120fps and 2160p, and again the Deck 1 runs Alyx, so Deckard could definitely run Alyx, Deck is pretty slow at this point, and the next round of handhelds should thoroughly trump it - as if the Ally X and others haven't already - they have.

I think the idea of a VR fork of Steam OS sounds pretty neat. SteamVR / Home is pretty antiquated IMO at this point, and if you've used a Quest 3 enough, the mixed reality / passthrough UI is just so much faster and more modern than Home. There's a lot they could add to the VR frameworks which it is currently missing if they do a relaunch with Deckard.

I'm definitely more excited to see this happening with a $1200 price point than a $300 one. Even if a lot of it gets eaten up by the lens and internal hardware powering it, it sounds like there's still plenty of money left to add some pretty unique things for VR. But we'll see!

Crayon said:
If it takes $1,200 to do this right as a standalone, that's all right by me. I don't think they're trying to rip anyone off. This is going to be some nice stuff.
Click to expand...

I think the only drawback is there's a lot of die-hard PC VR users who don't like wireless/native play, and would 100% use the device wired to a PC, so having $400 or more of hardware in it that they'd never use could seem a bit annoying? I dunno. Certainly I think it will have to show why someone should be buying a $1200 device for PCVR over spending 1/3 of that on an OLED PSVR2.
 
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Minsc said:
I fully believe the Deck 2 will be able to play everything the Quest 3 can, power wise. It should even be stronger than that IMO.

The Quest 3 most likely could run Alyx, after seeing the Deck 1 run it at 60fps on VR headsets (albeit on potato mode), and I do think the Quest 3 is better suited to VR than Deck 1. Quest 3 can run the RE4 port at 120fps and over 4k res. I'm not sure how many games the Deck 1 could run at 120fps and 2160p, and again the Deck 1 runs Alyx, so Deckard could definitely run Alyx, Deck is pretty slow at this point, and the next round of handhelds should thoroughly trump it - as if the Ally X and others haven't already - they have.

I think the idea of a VR fork of Steam OS sounds pretty neat. SteamVR / Home is pretty antiquated IMO at this point, and if you've used a Quest 3 enough, the mixed reality / passthrough UI is just so much faster and more modern than Home. There's a lot they could add to the VR frameworks which it is currently missing if they do a relaunch with Deckard.

I'm definitely more excited to see this happening with a $1200 price point than a $300 one. Even if a lot of it gets eaten up by the lens and internal hardware powering it, it sounds like there's still plenty of money left to add some pretty unique things for VR. But we'll see!



I think the only drawback is there's a lot of die-hard PC VR users who don't like wireless/native play, and would 100% use the device wired to a PC, so having $400 or more of hardware in it that they'd never use could seem a bit annoying? I dunno. Certainly I think it will have to show why someone should be buying a $1200 device for PCVR over spending 1/3 of that on an OLED PSVR2.
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Yeah I don't really want to pay for tha myself lol. But the rumors have been stand alone the whole time.
 
Minsc said:
I fully believe the Deck 2 will be able to play everything the Quest 3 can, power wise. It should even be stronger than that IMO.

The Quest 3 most likely could run Alyx, after seeing the Deck 1 run it at 60fps on VR headsets (albeit on potato mode), and I do think the Quest 3 is better suited to VR than Deck 1. Quest 3 can run the RE4 port at 120fps and over 4k res. I'm not sure how many games the Deck 1 could run at 120fps and 2160p, and again the Deck 1 runs Alyx, so Deckard could definitely run Alyx, Deck is pretty slow at this point, and the next round of handhelds should thoroughly trump it - as if the Ally X and others haven't already - they have.

I think the idea of a VR fork of Steam OS sounds pretty neat. SteamVR / Home is pretty antiquated IMO at this point, and if you've used a Quest 3 enough, the mixed reality / passthrough UI is just so much faster and more modern than Home. There's a lot they could add to the VR frameworks which it is currently missing if they do a relaunch with Deckard.

I'm definitely more excited to see this happening with a $1200 price point than a $300 one. Even if a lot of it gets eaten up by the lens and internal hardware powering it, it sounds like there's still plenty of money left to add some pretty unique things for VR. But we'll see!



I think the only drawback is there's a lot of die-hard PC VR users who don't like wireless/native play, and would 100% use the device wired to a PC, so having $400 or more of hardware in it that they'd never use could seem a bit annoying? I dunno. Certainly I think it will have to show why someone should be buying a $1200 device for PCVR over spending 1/3 of that on an OLED PSVR2.
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I'm thinking it will have pcvr capability and awesome lenses that enthusiasts will take a hard look at. I'm expecting something wild that will push clarity/color beyond the asking price. Maybe eye tracked OLED pancake lenses with a wide fov.
 
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Somehow, I feel VR is where Valve really wants to succeed the most and cannot quite pull it off. At the price they are not even worried about alienating potential customers. With the Steamdeck, they were willing to take the loss. (Why not of course, every Steam Deck sold meant more games bought on Steam).
If this ever became a massive success (it won't) I bet Valve would drop everything else hardware wise related and focus on VR.
 
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This thread is hilarious. Posts about how "this is DOA" and "nobody wants this" surrounded by posts going "day 1" and "I'm so fucking in"
 
GateofD said:
can people with glasses actually use these things yet?
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The space before your eyes and the visor lenses can be managed to a certain extent, but if you have a thick frame on your glasses it can be uncomfortable (and DO NOT let your eyeglasses touch the visor lenses, because they will leave a scratch).
As an alternative there are manufacturers of optic inserts that you put on, basically replacing your glasses:
reloptix.com

Prescription & Non-prescription VR Headset Lenses | Reloptix

Reloptix offers affordable magnetic VR lens inserts, prescription and non-prescription, with high index and free anti-glare or blue light filtering options.
reloptix.com reloptix.com

VR Optician - Prescription Lenses for VR/AR Headsets

More comfort, immersion, and visual quality in VR. Improve your VR experience by replacing your annoying glasses with optical inserts with lenses in your prescription.
vroptician.com vroptician.com
and more
 
I hope it'll be standalone.
I'm not going to pay 1200 dollars for a headset that requires a 2000 dollar computer.
 
UnrealEck said:
I've still got the original Vive. I had it pre-ordered. It's still the only VR I've ever tried. I wonder how much better it's gotten. That was ten years ago this May!
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I've switched from Vive to Quest 2 a few years ago and that already looked much better. Also no cable anymore and no lightboxes with their stupid buzzing sounds..
 
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