In case you missed it, Valve announced a load of new hardware this week, including a second stab at the Steam Machine , a Steam controller, and a long-rumored new VR headset called the Steam Frame . But in with the new often means out with the old, and perhaps inevitably, the company has confirmed that its previous headset, the Valve Index, is no more.
Valve’s Lawrence Yang told The Verge that it’s "no longer manufacturing" the Index, which we called "the best desktop VR yet" when it launched in 2019. The Index arrived around the same time as the Oculus Quest and its promise of an affordable all-in-one future for VR. By contrast, the Valve Index was very much still a high-end tethered device for the hardcore enthusiasts, with a price tag that reflected that.
We don’t know how much the Steam Frame will cost yet, but it definitely sounds like Valve is making a play for the more casual VR crowd here too, as well as those who want to play demanding 3D titles. You can stream flatscreen and VR games from your PC or Steam Machine using a wireless adapter, but the Steam Frame is also a standalone device like the Meta Quest 3 , backed by a built-in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and 16GB of RAM. Valve is supporting Android games too, seemingly a move to entice VR developers to bring their Quest games over to Steam.