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Just after leaks of a killer VR headset from Valve? No thank you, Meta. For those not in the know, Valve is coming out with a successor to the Index headset ca

Just after leaks of a killer VR headset from Valve? No thank you, Meta. For those not in the know, Valve is coming out with a successor to the Index headset called Valve Deckard. They'll probably announce it later this year. From the leaked information, it looks like an absolute beast of a headset.

bombcar 4y ago
Deckard Cain? Stay while and listen.
- growt 4y ago
  More likely named after Rick Deckard (Blade Runner)? After all Diablo is a Blizzard IP.
  - henriquecm8 4y ago
    And it's also probably not the final name.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    I presumed some relation to the steam deck
    - jonny_eh 4y ago
      I assume it's both, a pun.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
I didn't realize the Index was still being sold - it was unavailable so long that I thought they launched it, sold the initial batch, then never made more and abandoned the product. As a result, I wrote Valve off as "launches awesome tech demos but doesn't want to make consumer products". (I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?) The Deckard seems to be standalone too. That's excellent. In practice, being standalone was a killer feature. You can just grab and use it like a phone, instead of having to boot a PC, mess around with cables, make sure the lighthouses are powered up, inevitably spend the first 15 minutes debugging the setup... (and of course having to own a gaming PC in the first place was also a significant hurdle).
- lordofgibbons 4y ago
  From what we know, it will be both standalone but will also be able to connect to a PC to make use of a more powerful GPU.
- quartzic 4y ago
  The Steam Link was pretty Shield-like, in that it supported game streaming.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > (I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?) There was Steam Link, another little hardware experiment that boiled down to an ARM chip in a black box that streamed games from your PC. I heard great stuff from the people who used them (Ethernet is a must-have, obviously), and they were priced really competitively iirc ($25 or something?). In any case, the product never really saw mainstream success and ended up going the way of the Steam Controller, getting excess stock sold-off at $5/piece just to get the units out of their warehouse. Nowadays, much as you've highlighted, Valve takes a lot of caution with their product releases. Back in the Steam Machine/Controller/Link era, I think Valve forgot that they aren't a lifestyle company and ultimately make highly-desirable niche products. With the Valve Index and Steam Deck, though, I think Valve is finally settling into a groove. Part of that groove is probably not mass-producing products that don't even have pre-orders open yet, the Index and Deck are pretty good examples of learning that lesson.
- mmis1000 4y ago
  Index is on the sales rankings like since forever. It is always in the top 10 sales (probably due to its high pricing?)
kilroy123 4y ago
Yes but for how much? The Oculus 2 is crazy cheap and more accessible to a wider audience. I doubt that will be. I imagine ~Facebook~ Meta took a loss on every headset sold.

bombcar 4y ago

Deckard Cain? Stay while and listen.

growt 4y ago
More likely named after Rick Deckard (Blade Runner)? After all Diablo is a Blizzard IP.
- henriquecm8 4y ago
  And it's also probably not the final name.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I presumed some relation to the steam deck
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    I assume it's both, a pun.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

I didn't realize the Index was still being sold - it was unavailable so long that I thought they launched it, sold the initial batch, then never made more and abandoned the product. As a result, I wrote Valve off as "launches awesome tech demos but doesn't want to make consumer products". (I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?) The Deckard seems to be standalone too. That's excellent. In practice, being standalone was a killer feature. You can just grab and use it like a phone, instead of having to boot a PC, mess around with cables, make sure the lighthouses are powered up, inevitably spend the first 15 minutes debugging the setup... (and of course having to own a gaming PC in the first place was also a significant hurdle).

lordofgibbons 4y ago
From what we know, it will be both standalone but will also be able to connect to a PC to make use of a more powerful GPU.
quartzic 4y ago
The Steam Link was pretty Shield-like, in that it supported game streaming.
smoldesu 4y ago
> (I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?) There was Steam Link, another little hardware experiment that boiled down to an ARM chip in a black box that streamed games from your PC. I heard great stuff from the people who used them (Ethernet is a must-have, obviously), and they were priced really competitively iirc ($25 or something?). In any case, the product never really saw mainstream success and ended up going the way of the Steam Controller, getting excess stock sold-off at $5/piece just to get the units out of their warehouse. Nowadays, much as you've highlighted, Valve takes a lot of caution with their product releases. Back in the Steam Machine/Controller/Link era, I think Valve forgot that they aren't a lifestyle company and ultimately make highly-desirable niche products. With the Valve Index and Steam Deck, though, I think Valve is finally settling into a groove. Part of that groove is probably not mass-producing products that don't even have pre-orders open yet, the Index and Deck are pretty good examples of learning that lesson.
mmis1000 4y ago
Index is on the sales rankings like since forever. It is always in the top 10 sales (probably due to its high pricing?)

kilroy123 4y ago

Yes but for how much? The Oculus 2 is crazy cheap and more accessible to a wider audience. I doubt that will be. I imagine ~Facebook~ Meta took a loss on every headset sold.