valve index

Sales of Valve’s Index Headset Are Waning After Years of Surprising Longevity

News, valve, valve index, VR Industry / Ryan Harris / July 15, 2023

Valve’s Index VR headset is now more than four years old. Despite its age, the headset continued to sell at a surprising rate over the years—but as they say, nothing lasts forever.

Valve launched Index with the goal of setting the bar for PC VR headsets to beat. And by many measures it accomplished that goal. Despite the $1,000 price tag and the headset’s age, Index remains the second most-used headset on Steam at 18.38% of active headsets on the platform (though a distant second to Quest 2 at 42.05%) as of June 2023. Even with just one headset, that makes Valve the second largest headset vendor on the platform.

Despite PC VR headsets that have launched since with higher resolution or OLED displays or even a cheaper price, the headset’s balance of comfort, visuals, sound, tracking, and controllers have made it a popular choice long after its spec sheet would suggest.

While usage of Index remains strong, sales of the headset appear to be in decline after years of holding steady.

Although Valve doesn’t share how much revenue individual products make on its platform, Steam does rank the top selling products, by revenue, each week. Thanks to SteamDB’s archive of the data, we’ve been able to get a rough trend of the headset’s sales performance over the years.

The data is at times sparse; for most of the dataset we only know the top 10 products by weekly revenue (if Index fell under the top 10 we don’t know exactly how far it fell), but Steam recently began sharing the top 100, giving us a clearer insight into the downward trend of Index sales.

The exact reason for the somewhat sudden change in trend is unclear, but we have one hypothesis. The downturn began happening some six to eight months after Valve released Steam Deck—the company’s first hardware product since Index. The turn also came around the new year heading from 2022 into 2023.

Especially considering that actual usage of the headset remains strong, our best guess is that sales of Index have trended downward largely because Valve has shifted the spotlight to Steam Deck; possibly even more so after the company saw how well the device sold through the 2022 holiday season.

While Valve had once promoted Index in various places on the Steam storefront, now Steam Deck appears more often to be put in front of Steam’s huge audience of users:

Valve may even have reallocated some of its Index manufacturing capacity to meet demand for Steam Deck.

Its difficult to say what this means for Index and Valve’s future VR hardware ambitions. There’s no doubt that the introduction of standalone headsets has changed the VR landscape considerably compared to when Index first launched. There have been glimpses that Valve is still working on something behind the scenes, but the company’s limited attention may be largely focused on Steam Deck for the foreseeable future.

Sales of Valve’s Index Headset Are Waning After Years of Surprising Longevity Read More »

Valve Index is Currently Selling for $600 Refurbished from GameStop

gamestop, index, News, pc vr, steam vr headset, SteamVR, valve, valve index, valve index controllers, VR Deals, VR Headset / Ryan Harris / June 23, 2023

Looking to get your hands on arguably the best PC VR headsets out there? Well, you might consider GameStop’s refurbished units for $600.

Used, refurbished units typically sell through GameStop for $700, which includes the full kit and kaboodle: SteamVR tracking base stations, Index motion controllers, cables, and of course the Index headset itself.

Now that package is on sale for $100 off, bringing it way below its $1,000 all-in price when new. All you’ll need left to play a host of SteamVR content, such as the award-winning Half-Life: Alyx, is a VR-ready PC.

Before plonking down those six crisp Benjamins though, you might want to try out Steam’s VR Performance Test first to see if your system has what it takes.

But the last hurdle to overcome is invariably deciding whether it’s worth that price in 2023, as Index is now nearly four years old. For the long of it, check out our 2023 VR headset buyer’s guide. Here’s the short of it:

If you’re looking for a good all-in alterative to the Index deal, Meta’s Quest 2 is cheap and cheerful at $300. In addition to offering its own native library of standalone content, it also works as a PC VR headset thanks to both a wired and wireless PC connection.

You can also pick up a refurbished HP Reverb G2 from NewEgg for $390—another headset that made our list. It’s a good all-around PC VR headset, although controller latency is markedly worse than either Quest 2 or SteamVR-tracked headsets like Index or anything HTC offers.

Wherever you look though, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything new for $600 that matches Index’s still excellent displays, off-ear audio, ergonomic headstrap, and Index controllers.

Here’s a full list of what’s included:

What’s in the Box

Headset
Integrated Headphones
Headset Cable
Headset Connection Cable with DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.0 Connections
Headset Power Supply
Regionalized Headset Power Adapter(s)
Headset Cradle Adapter (for smaller heads)
Headset Face Gasket
2 Controllers, Left and Right
2 Controller Lanyards
2 USB Controller Charging Cables
2 SteamVR 2.0 Base Stations
2 15 ft (4.5 m) Base Station Power Cables
2 Base Station Stands with Mounting Hardware
Regionalized Base Station Power Adapter Plug(s)

Valve Index is Currently Selling for $600 Refurbished from GameStop Read More »

Recent Valve Hiring Hints at Next-gen Index Headset in Development

News, valve, valve deckard, valve index, VR Headset / Ryan Harris / May 17, 2023

Since the release of its first (and so far, only) VR headset in 2019 and its flagship VR game in 2020, Valve has been worryingly quiet about its future plans for VR. But recent hiring and job listings suggest the company is still working toward next-gen VR hardware.

It’s been nearly four years since the release of Valve Index, a leading PC VR headset which has held its ground as the second most-popular headset on the platform for longer than most might have expected. But the aging headset mirrors the aging PC VR landscape in general which has taken a back seat to Meta’s Quest platform after it captured the attention of a bulk of VR developers.

But Valve may not be done with VR yet. As YouTuber Brad Lynch pointed out last month, the company recently brought in two new people with experience in VR displays and optics, one of which claims to be advising the company on “next-gen Valve Index and Steam Deck products.”

Valve has made a couple VERY notable hires recently for their hardware teams

One being what seems to be their first full-time Display architect that has a fluent history in OLED/HDR

And a consultant focused on bringing “Next Gen Valve Index” products for commercial launch pic.twitter.com/nGpo859ore

— Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) April 23, 2023

Additionally we’ve spotted some interesting updates to Valve job listings showing the company is still very interested in hiring people with VR expertise.

As of late 2022, the company’s listing for a Visual & User Experience Designer didn’t include any mention of VR, but sometime between then and March 2023, the company updated the description to indicate that the hire would “create UI for use across desktop, mobile, handheld & VR.”

Similarly, the Software Engineer for Hardware listing was updated sometime between mid-2022 and March 2023 with new language specifically relating to “the next generation of VR and hand-held gaming products,” and “core VR Technologies (tracking, optical calibration, display customization).”

Add that to a handful of teases from the company in the last few years, and it surely seems like VR remains on the radar internally at Valve, despite little external communication to that end. Granted, Valve is pretty unique as a company, often working at its own pace on projects that may or may not ever launch. While there’s no telling if the company’s internal VR effort is on the backburner or actively moving forward, it’s clear the company still wants to hire and retain employees with VR expertise.

Recent Valve Hiring Hints at Next-gen Index Headset in Development Read More »

Valve Interview Confirms Its VR Ambitions Are Alive and Kicking

brad lynch, gabe newell, greg coomer, News, valve, valve index, Valve SteamVR, valve vr / Ryan Harris / April 23, 2023

If you’ve been plugged into the Valve leak-o-verse, you’ve probably come across the name ‘Deckard’, the supposed code name of a standalone headset allegedly under development by the one and only. While Valve isn’t confirming anything about the storied standalone, the company went on record late last year to say they are still have faith in VR, and are critically still working on VR headsets.

Valve product designer Greg Coomer spoke to Korean gaming publication This is Game (Korean) in December, saying that VR is very much still in the works. The interview wasn’t widely shared in the English-speaking side of the Internet until it landed on Reddit, Google-translated to English.

Here’s Coomer’s response to a question about what he can reveal in regard to VR, translated from Korean to English:

There isn’t much (laughter). Nevertheless, I can definitely say that we are continuing to develop VR headsets recently. Valve has a lot of expertise in VR devices and has faith in the medium and VR games.

We hope to remain open on PC platforms rather than having VR games exclusively on a certain platform. While adhering to this belief, we are continuing development.

However, we cannot confirm the existence of specific products or disclose the release date of the results. The same applies to game projects being developed internally. There are certainly many projects underway, but we cannot announce anything today.

As you might gather, Valve doesn’t openly speak about its in-development projects. Hearing that VR is still on the table from Coomer directly though, who has been with Valve since the release of Half-Life (1998), and worked on major games all the way up to Half-Life: Alyx (2020), is just about as good as you can get.

That’s especially so since the last time Valve released any VR hardware was its enthusiast-grade PC VR headset Valve Index in 2019. A year later, the studio launched its only full-length VR game to date, Half-Life: Alyx.

Still, it hasn’t been entirely all quiet on the Valve VR front. In March 2022, Valve chief Gabe Newell called its handheld gaming PC platform Steam Deck “a steppingstone” to standalone VR hardware.

“One of the things [Steam Deck] represents is battery-capable, high-performance horsepower that eventually you could use in VR applications as well. You can take the PC and build something that is much more transportable. We’re not really there yet, but this is a stepping stone.”

At the time, Coomer also noted Steam Deck’s hardware “would run well in that [standalone VR] environment, with the TDP necessary… it’s very relevant to us and our future plans.”

Meanwhile, tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch has been probably the most vocal proponent of all things Steam standalone, having followed the Deckard beat since data miners first found a string in a January 2021 Steam update that mentioned the alleged VR standalone.

Over the following years, Lynch has uncovered mounting evidence in subsequent releases of SteamVR, including his most recent supposition that Deckard may include PC VR wireless streaming capabilities, eye-tracking, and passthrough AR features.

As you’d imagine, there have been no public confirmations from Valve, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Valve Interview Confirms Its VR Ambitions Are Alive and Kicking Read More »