After years of partnership, Valve is ready to build its own VR headset
posted Sunday Mar 31, 2019 by Scott Ertz
Valve, the gaming company behind the Steam game distribution platform and popular games like Portal, has been involved in the virtual reality market for the past few years. The SteamVR platform has been as popular for VR games as Steam has been for PC gaming. But, they have relied on a partnership with HTC to produce the HTC Vive hardware as the primary VR headset for SteamVR. That is about to change, however, as Valve is ready to enter the hardware space once again.
Over the last few months, there have been continued rumors that Valve would be launching their own VR headset, and this week the company confirmed those rumors. In fact, not only have they been working on the headset, but they are nearly ready to show it off. The Valve Index is going to be made public in "May 2019" - only a few weeks away. Unfortunately, other than a darkened, shadowed photo, there is no other information provided.
It is not terribly surprising that Valve would want to get involved in the hardware side of things, especially now. The company has long produced its own flagship hardware for its software platforms, whether or not they were successful. They have been closing up divisions from past products and services that haven't worked, such as the Steam Machines and Steam Link. Relying on a partner for the flagship hardware was a departure, but has produced arguably the best VR experience on the market.
Over the last year or so, HTC has undergone some big corporate problems. They sold the majority of the smartphone business to Google, leaving them with a partial team in that division, plus Vive. There has been a lot of fear that HTC couldn't survive on the Vive alone, so this could simply be a survival move for Valve. It would be a terrible idea to wait until things get really bad to respond.
