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Valve discontinued their controller and streaming box because they did not sell - to get rid of their stock, they had to put them on fire sale. They're still su
by Fej 6y ago
Valve discontinued their controller and streaming box because they did not sell - to get rid of their stock, they had to put them on fire sale. They're still supporting the controller and afaik the streaming box as well. The controller was innovative but often regarded as awkward, and the streaming box wasn't particularly special.
The Valve Index on the other hand has redefined the high-end VR market and is selling out accordingly. I've tried most of the consumer VR solutions on the market and the Index "knuckles" controllers blow everything else out of the water, it's not even close. Oculus has dropped out of that market, opting to produce more affordable but somewhat less capable headsets and controllers. I don't see HTC turning it around as they don't have the name recognition or the capital and their tech is already weaker.
Point being is that Valve owns the top-end of the VR market already and this project, while impressive and definitely promising, is not competing with Valve. It might in the future, with a lot of work, but it's not insurance against a Valve dominion. There might not even be room in this niche market for more than one competitor, which is awful but that's what we're looking at.
- chaostheory 6y agoOne reason the Steam controller didn't sell is that users had to figure out configuration schemes on their own instead of Valve being proactive with developers and publishing houses. I agree that the Index, especially the knuckles blows everything away, but I'm already seeing the same issue that the Steam controller suffered from pop up with the knuckles. You're right about Oculus too, and I hope that you'll be right about Valve staying in the game. I definitely want to keep using base stations instead of unreliable and heavy headset cameras. I want full body tracking to gain traction and that won't happen if external base stations die off.