Can Valve save VR gaming with the Steam Body?

The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional is an costly flop. I haven’t heard anybody point out the Meta Quest in months, regardless of it getting a brand new mannequin simply final 12 months. I can’t even bear in mind the title of Samsung’s incoming Android-based headset. Whereas digital actuality players stay passionate, the thrill across the format appears to be slowly dying… once more. 

After which alongside got here Zeus Valve. Simply the least mainstream of its three — THREE! — {hardware} bulletins yesterday, the Steam Body is all the pieces I hoped for. It’s a standalone, self-powered headset with its personal software program and apps, a la the Quest. With an inner battery, it’s able to go on the highway or simply roam round your house with out being tethered. 

However it could possibly additionally connect with a gaming PC or a Steam Deck or a Steam Machine (what’s the distinction?) to entry extra highly effective digital actuality video games and non-VR media. And Valve is setting this up as a central function, with a low-latency wi-fi dongle included within the field.

It’s packing the most recent VR tech corresponding to eye monitoring, pancake lenses, and enlargement choices for MicroSD and USB-C. It’ll be operating on a strong Snapdragon ARM64 processor, and the software program is at the least some taste of SteamOS, giving it speedy entry to an enormous quantity of each VR and commonplace video games.

That is massive, and I say that as somebody who’s very invested in VR gaming. The Body is checking very practically all of the packing containers {that a} VR headset must be a smash hit with customers. And maybe, most crucially, it’s coming with one thing players already know that they need: Steam itself. For all of the billions that each Apple and Meta have invested into their VR platforms, they’ve but to make a case to most customers that these units are something greater than novelty. 

Keep in mind when Apple was making an attempt to persuade us that haunting digital eyes on an exterior display screen wasn’t extremely creepy? That was simply two years in the past. Perhaps I’m projecting, however Valve’s promotional video for the Body may simply have a nod to that, when an older girl lifts the headset as much as see the viewer and provides a cheeky smile.

Ten years of labor in VR gaming 

Valve doesn’t must faux that the Body is something past a sport machine, a body — oh, I see what they did there — by way of which you’ll be able to entry all of the stuff that’s already on Steam and the place essentially the most fleshed-out VR video games already reside. You can be forgiven for forgetting that Valve, together with companions like HTC and to a lesser extent Oculus, has been constructing a distinct segment however stable basis for digital actuality software program for over a decade. 

Varied flavors of VR headsets by no means actually landed earlier than, even with Steam as an entry level. However you can say the identical for Steam Machines, which floundered with an strategy that targeted on retail gross sales and OEM partnerships, and the unique Steam Controller. Now with a decade of expertise and perspective, to not point out the runaway success of Steam because the de facto platform for PC gaming and the Steam Deck redefining a whole type issue, it’s straightforward to see why Valve might need somewhat pep in its step. 

Valve wants two extra parts to make this factor successful. One, a killer app. One thing with somewhat extra mass market enchantment than, say, Half-Life Alyx, a considerably experimental side-entry right into a franchise finest identified for being in hibernation for nearly twenty years. (By the way, Alyx will most likely be six years outdated by the point the Steam Body will get into customers’ palms, and on their faces.) 

steampowered.com

It wants one thing like Astro’s Playroom VR or Astro Bot on the PS5, an interesting tour of all the pieces you are able to do with VR {hardware}. Ideally free with the acquisition, and with a few of that Valve developer soul that’s so arduous to search out because it principally grew to become a storefront that solely drops a brand new title a couple of times a decade. 

By the way, after the {hardware} bulletins Valve stated that it’s not at present engaged on a first-party VR sport. Oh pricey.

The worth is pivotal 

And the second factor it wants is the one factor that was lacking from all the new Steam {hardware} bulletins: a great value. That’s the one which I’m most involved about. Samsung’s headset, the Galaxy XR (there, I regarded it up) comes with comparable specs, a Snapdragon-based chip with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on the bottom mannequin. 

The Galaxy XR is $1,800. That’ll trigger barely any much less sticker shock than the $3,500 Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, and will definitely shut down curiosity from players who’re solely tentatively considering testing VR gaming. 

Chris Martin / Foundry

It might probably’t have escaped Valve’s discover that the Meta Quest collection, which at one level price as little as $200, stays the preferred technique to play PC-based VR video games. I do know it could possibly’t, as a result of Valve advised me that statistic itself in its newest {hardware} survey. The Quest 2 and Quest 3 nonetheless make up over half of the Steam VR participant base, regardless that they’ve to leap by way of a couple of hoops to make use of it for PC VR gaming.  

I’m not saying that the Steam Body must price $200 to be a hit. However Valve definitely understands {that a} low entry level is crucial. That’s a part of the method for the Steam Deck’s prime spot above an admittedly small heap of PC gaming handhelds. And if Valve is sensible, it’ll value the brand new Steam Machine 2.0 at as small a value as potential, each to compete with the PlayStation and (I suppose, technically) the Xbox and to maintain folks engaged with the money-printing Steam platform. 

Valve

So realizing all this, one thing under $500 would make the Body an on the spot purchase for me and I’d dare to hope for many different players. I’ll have to attend and see… however with a potential launch date of “early 2026,” I could not have to attend too lengthy.