I’ve been hitting the “it’s a bad time to be into VR” note a lot lately, and, sorry ya’ll, I stand by that stance… but maybe not for long. As discouraging as this year has been for VR enthusiasts (Meta barely mentioned the Quest at its annual Connect dev conference), Valve might swoop in sooner than you think to give VR hardware a shred of hope or at least a little bit of excitement.
According to a report for XR Institute (a Chinese analyst group that I’ve cited before for accurate forecasts on smart glasses), Valve’s long-rumored “Deckard” headset is finally entering mass production, with a chance that it could be available before the end of the year. XR Institute says that it expects Valve to launch Deckard (an internal codename for the headset) during the holiday season with a starting yearly production of about 400,000 to 600,000 units. That’s about the initial Vision Pro release levels of stock and certainly much more encouraging than rumors about Samsung’s Project Moohan, which suggest a launch in South Korea only to start.
While Deckard’s existence is from news, its imminent arrival is a big deal, not just because of Valve’s success in the hardware space with the Steam Deck, but because of the de-emphasis of VR by other major players in the space. Apple is reportedly deprioritizing a cheaper Vision Pro to focus on smart glasses, while Meta already started that same train by launching three new pairs of smart glasses and zero new VR/XR headsets.
While this might not be a shining moment for VR writ large, I like the prospects of a Valve-made VR headset. While other companies like Apple and most likely Samsung tend to take a more scattershot approach to XR/VR, incorporating work and communication, I expect Valve to focus more on gaming and less on the other stuff, which… is a good thing. I’m not saying there aren’t cool or fun experiences to be had outside of gaming in an XR/VR headset, but entertainment (games in particular) is still the most compelling of those experiences.
Don’t get me wrong, the audience for VR games is niche, even despite the ascendence of VR headsets over the last five years, but it seems to me that the people who use headsets the most are the ones who are more deeply invested in playing games in them. VR gaming enthusiasts’ response to Valve’s headset is still dependent on a lot of things, though, price chief among them. Rumors from earlier this year have suggested Deckard could cost around $1,000, which is notably a lot more expensive than the Quest 3 and even more so than the Quest 3S, but still well under the $3,500 Vision Pro.
To justify that price, I assume Valve will have to lean into its display tech, offering better resolution and probably better performance than competitors like the Quest 3 and 3S. A lighter headset would be a nice perk, but I’m not sure what Valve will have to offer on the front, if anything. SteamOS in VR seems like an obvious opportunity here, though, again, I’m not sure anyone will be rushing 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 are pining for, but at least (between Project Moohan and Deckard) there’s something to look forward to.