Valve’s next headset could be coming soon, just as Meta lost interest in virtual reality

“I hit”It’s a bad time to get into virtual reality“I’ve noticed a lot lately, and sorry, I’ll stick with that position… but maybe not for long. As frustrating as this year has been for VR fans (Meta Quest was barely mentioned at its annual conference) Link development conference), Valve may swoop in sooner than you think to give VR consoles a shred of hope or at least a little excitement.

according to Report to the XR Institute (A Chinese analyst group I cited before Accurate predictions on smart glasses), Valve has been rumored for a long time.”Deckard headphone. It is finally entering mass production, with the possibility of being available before the end of the year. The XR Institute says it expects Valve to launch Deckard (the headset’s internal codename) during the holiday season with annual production ranging from about 400,000 to 600,000 units. This is about the first Vision Pro Equity Edition Levels Certainly more encouraging than the rumors about Project Mohan from Samsungwhich indicates a launch in South Korea just to start.

While Deckard’s presence is news, his arrival is imminent He is Big deal, and not just because of Valve’s success with hardware Steam surfacebut due to the lack of focus on virtual reality by other major players in this field. Apple is said to be deprioritizing it with a cheaper price Vision Pro to focus on smart glasseswhile Meta has already started the same train to set off Three new pairs of smart glasses And there are no new VR/XR headsets.

While this may not be a bright moment for VR in general, I like the prospects for a Valve-made VR headset. While other companies like Apple and most likely Samsung tend to take a more dispersed approach to XR/VR, integrating work and communication, I expect Valve to focus more on gaming and less on other things, which is a good thing. I’m not saying that there aren’t great or fun experiences to be had outside of gaming in the XR/VR headset, but entertainment (gaming in particular) is still the most compelling of those experiences.

Don’t get me wrong, the VR gaming audience is niche, even despite the rise of VR headsets over the past five years, but it seems to me that the people who use headsets the most are the people who are most interested in playing games in them. VR gamers’ response to Valve’s headsets still depends on a lot of things, though the most important one is price. Rumors that surfaced earlier this year suggested that Deckard might do so The cost is about $1000which is significantly more expensive than the Quest 3 and more expensive than the Quest 3S, but still significantly less than the $3,500 Vision Pro.

To justify that price, I assume Valve will have to rely on its own display technology, offering better resolution and perhaps better performance than competitors like the Quest 3 and 3S. A lighter headset would be a nice feature, but I’m not sure what, if anything, Valve will offer up front. SteamOS in VR seems like a clear opportunity here, though again I’m not sure anyone will rush out to buy a new VR headset just for the UI. There’s still a lot we don’t know about Deckard, so it’s hard to say for sure whether it’ll be the jolt of excitement VR fans crave, but at least (between Project Moohan and Deckard) there’s something to look forward to.