“This is a new product. That’s one of the reasons we changed the name from Valve index to team Frame, because we’re trying to do something new with this,” said Selan. “We’re really trying to blur the lines from your catalogue, where you just think about, you have your games, this is another device that lets you enjoy them. So I don’t want to put too many sort of preconceived expectations on how people will use this.”

One of the major things that sets the Steam Frame apart from the Valve Index is the fact that it has its own built-in hardware that is capable of running games on its own. The Index, on the other hand, was built to be an accessory for those that already own gaming PCs.

“If you think about the Valve Index, awesome device, I worked on it myself, as did Jeff,” he said, referring to fellow Valve engineer Jeff Leinbaugh. “We’re really proud of it, but it always was sort of a companion to the PC.”

The Steam Frame has also been designed with the idea of reducing the amount of friction that is typically associated with VR gaming. While the Index needed players to go out of their way to set up all the hardware to work with their PCs, the Steam Frame can instead simply be worn, which ends up with players presented with options for the kinds of games they want to play.

“I think in the Valve Index era, I would have to think about, before I picked up the device, what I wanted to play,” Selan explained. “Do I just want to enjoy a non-VR game? And I would pick up my Steam Deck or go to the PC. Or do I want to play a VR session? And then I’d turn on the base stations, walk over to the room that had my Index and play that. I find myself now with this device much more so just throwing it on before I know what I want to play.”

While the company might be getting ready to release its new VR headset, it has also confirmed that it is not working on a first-party experience that would help showcase the Steam Frame’s capabilities. This runs counter to Valve’s habit of typically releasing its own games to showcase its hardware, like Aperture Desk Job for the Steam Deck, or even the critically-acclaimed Half-Life: Alyx, which while playable on any VR headset, also made use of the special features of the Valve Index’s Grip controllers.

Along with the Steam Frame, Valve also unveiled other hardware – a gaming PC dubbed Steam Machine, as well as a new controller, dubbed Steam Controller.

The question was asked due to the company’s history with VR, especially when it launched the Valve Index, and then Half-Life: Alyx just a year later to show off the full capabilities of the virtual reality headset. The company also tends to have a pattern of releasing some new software – even if it is simply a collection of mini-games – whenever it launches a new hardware product.

Aside from Half-Life: Alyx, Valve had also previously showcased its VR hardware with the release of the free title Aperture Hand Lab. The 2022 launch of the Steam Deck was similarly followed up with the release of yet another free title that made use of the handheld system’s capabilities: Aperture Desk Job. The title put players in the shoes of a person with a desk job at Aperture Science, where they could complete objectives and push buttons to then get an idea of the various hardware features of the Steam Deck.

The Steam Frame was unveiled just yesterday, and is set to feature two LCD displays with a resolution of 2160×2160 each and between 72 and 144 Hz refresh rates depending on the game being played. Along with this, the headset also has dual stereo speakers and four high-resolution cameras with infrared LEDs that it uses to track the outside world. Unlike the Valve Index, the Steam Frame will be a completely mobile headset that doesn’t need to be plugged into a PC to play games.

Powering the Steam Frame will be a Snapdragon 8 Series SoC (system on a chip) and 16 GB of RAM. When it comes to storage, the headset will be available in 256 GB and 1 TB configurations, both of which will also come with a microSD slot for further expansion. Valve has stated that the battery life expected from the Steam Frame thanks to its 21.6 Wh lithium-ion battery will be around 40 hours.

It is worth noting that Valve has referred to the Steam Frame as a “streaming-first” device, which means that it is intended to be used alongside hardware that would be capable of running games from Steam. It is capable of running just about any title available on Steam through streaming, and can also pair up with older Steam Controllers, the new Steam Controller, as well as the Steam Deck.

Along with the headset, Valve also unveiled a couple of other new pieces of hardware – the Steam Machine and a new Steam Controller. The Steam Machine will be a gaming PC designed to be effortless to set up and can be used as a full-fledged PC that runs SteamOS – a custom operating system based on Arch Linux. The Steam Controller will pack in a host of new features, including high definition rumble and grip-enabled gyro, among other things.

It has also claimed that Valve plans on producing between 400,000 and 600,000 units of its new VR headset every year, which would put it in the same ballpark as Apple’s Vision Pro headset in terms of units manufactured.

Valve leakers Tyler McVicker and Brad Lynch have also corroborated that two Deckard VR headsets, dubbed the DV1 and DV2, may be in production due to their representation in the SteamVR files. The DV label signifies that the product has entered the final stages of internal development before it gets released to consumers in the form of a PV model. Due to this, they believe there is a high chance of an announcement by Valve coming between this month and the next.

Keeping to its traditions, Valve has been quite coy about announcing its follow-up to the Index VR headset. However, the company has hinted at its development in the past. Back in 2022, for instance, a job listing had popped up with Valve looking for someone to take on the role of Software Engineer – Computer Vision.

“We are looking for versatile, self-directed software engineers in computer vision who can help us achieve the next steps in VR with millions of customers worldwide,” wrote the company in the job listing. “The main scope of this position is to prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking (HMD and controllers), camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking.”

Earlier this year, the company had also written about the future being bright for PC gaming, especially when it comes to the handheld markets through products like the Steam Deck, and VR gaming through SteamVR.

“The future of hardware at Valve is bright. Steam Deck, SteamOS and SteamVR are delivering tons of value to players and devs, built on top of a decade of investments into UI, Linux compatibility, input support, custom silicon, motion tracking, displays, battery efficiency, and more,” wrote Valve.

“Every developer making PC games benefits from these investments, and players can now enjoy their PC games in so many new contexts. Hardware teams at Valve are delighted to see Steam in the living room, the airport, the backyard, and wherever else customers want to bring their library of PC games.”

The launch of the Valve Index eventually also saw the company releasing a brand new VR title taking place in the Half-Life universe – Half-Life: Alyx. While working with any VR headset that worked with Windows, the critically acclaimed title would also serve as a strong demonstration of the Index’s features, like its ability to keep track of players’ fingers.

Immersion Corporation is citing a number of patents as part of the lawsuit, including 7,336,260, 8,749,507, 9,430,042, 9,116,546, 10,627,907, 10,665,067, and 11,175,738. As part of its lawsuit against Valve, Immersion Corporation is seeking damages, royalties, and an injunction against Valve from producing the hardware and VR hardware mentioned above.

In the past, Immersion Corporation has struck licensing deals with a number of gaming hardware and software makers, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. As part of previous lawsuits, companies like Apple and Google have also settled with Immersion Corporation.

Valve recently also saw competition in the handheld PC gaming market increase with the unveiling and impending launch of the Asus ROG Ally. For more details on that, here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming handheld.

On some level, this does make sense – in spite of the general certainty around VR being the next great tech paradigm for not just video games, but computing as a whole (remember, Facebook rebranded itself into a VR oriented company at the height of its powers and prominence, and even companies like Apple were looking into investing in the format), it just never quite caught traction the way you might expect. Meta Quest 2 (née Oculus Quest 2) has certainly done well for itself, selling almost 15 million units globally, and becoming the de facto VR platform for a mainstream audience. But that’s essentially the level of success we are talking about here – the bestselling VR system has sold 15 million. The others? Much, much less than that (given that Meta Quest 2 is the dominant VR platform after all).

Sony’s own original entry into the VR market was the PSVR, and it sold… actually fairly well, with 5 million units sold globally. Now, in a vacuum and in the immediate context of the discussion, those numbers aren’t quite so bad, are they? The PSVR sold a third of the dominant VR platform, and selling 5 million of anything is hardly anything to scoff at. But business decisions, especially financial ones, are never made in a vacuum, and in the broader context, the PSVR’s performance starts to look less impressive, and raises the question of why a follow-up exists at all – and certainly, why in the state it does (we’ll get to this bit shortly).

Just as a reference, the PlayStation 4 sold roughly 115 million units worldwide, meaning that very literally less than 1 in 20 of PS4 owners were willing to buy the PSVR. This, by the way, was in spite of heavy discounts, great bundling, and some not insignificant software support. At the peak of the PSVR’s life cycle, you could buy one for $200, and it would come bundled with some amazing games, such as Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Iron Man, Gran Turismo Sport… and sometimes even multiple games.

This was also at the peak of VR hype. You know how I alluded to that period where the entire tech world was convinced that VR would be the next step, and there was a lot of optimism and enthusiasm surrounding the format? PSVR came right at the crest of that wave, and rode it to garner a lot of attention, support, and interest. Remember, major third parties were all announcing some fairly big name PSVR projects. Remember when every developer or publisher would have at least some VR project (even if not a full fledged game) planned? And remember how almost all of them hit the PSVR?

That was the market the PSVR launched in, those were the circumstances going in its favor. And with all of that, it managed to sell 5 million units globally.

5 million! That’s a pittance. You know what sold more than 5 million? Very literally every other PlayStation platform ever. This isn’t exaggeration! The original PlayStation sold over 100 million, the PS2 sold over 150 million, the PS3 sold over 80 million, the PS5 is already north of 30 million; the PSP sold over 80 million, even the PS Vita, the one and only real failure the PlayStation brand has had, is estimated to have sold 13-15 million units worldwide (as in, very literally three times as much as PSVR managed).

We’ll get back to the Vita in a bit, because that, after all, is central to the point that I am making here, but for a second, let’s compare the success of PSVR to other PlayStation add ons. The PS Move, for example, sold 15 million units in two years. The EyeToy? 10.5 million units in five years. The PocketStation, which was a Japan-only portable add-on for the PlayStation, sold 5 million units, and that was exclusive to one market.

So even with everything going its way, the PSVR didn’t do too well, and that’s actually not the platform’s fault, the issue appears to be that for the broader public, VR simply is not appealing enough to sell in anything remotely resembling mainstream numbers. So why, then, did Sony persist in sticking with this segment at all? Why, after PSVR, and after seeing the state of the broader VR market, did Sony decide to do a PSVR2?

I don’t ask this question out of spite, but out of consideration for some very basic and straightforward logistics that Sony themselves admitted to back in 2013-14, when the Vita was floundering after being all but abandoned by them. Sony, back then, admitted that supporting two platforms was an increasingly difficult endeavor, that maintaining two distinct development pipelines, with their own distinct set of services and games, was challenging in an era of resource intensive game development. This explanation rang true! It made total sense!

As games become more and more time and resource intensive to develop, supporting multiple systems at a time becomes increasingly difficult, and so Sony wisely made the decision to focus on their core competences, as well as the market where the bulk of their audience lies – high end home consoles. It’s the exact same problem Nintendo faced in the early 2010s, which led to the infamous struggles of the Wii U and 3DS, and which led Nintendo to consolidate their own pipeline and platforms into one hybrid system – once more, we’ll get back to the Switch later, but right now, the point of bringing it up is, Sony’s explanation made sense.

What didn’t make sense is Sony then deciding to… split their resources across two distinct platforms and pipelines anyway, because what do you imagine PSVR is, exactly? Its its own distinct platform, which requires games to be developed for it specifically, and unlike handheld game development, which is just pared back console development, VR game development is a whole other beast, requiring totally different tech pipelines on the development side, and an entirely different set of skills and considerations to be done properly. In other words, it is much more difficult to spread your resources across a console and a VR platform, than it is to do that across a console and a handheld.

If Sony was always going to split resources, why not just stick with the handheld market? Their decision to abandon it does make sense in context of when it was made – this was in the early 2010s. The PS Vita had face planted spectacularly, even Nintendo was struggling to get the 3DS to gain traction, and general wisdom at the time was that dedicated game portables were dead, more or less subsumed by the mobile and tablet gaming market. On the other hand, VR was a promising new frontier with the potential for what then appeared to be massive growth, and with its high tech trappings, potentially very appealing to the audience Sony had cultivated for PlayStation. Deciding to drop the handheld market in favour of the VR one at the time made total and absolute sense! No arguments there at all.

But now, when the state of the VR market, and the performance of the PSVR itself, is on hand and readily referenceable, the decision to double down on VR makes no sense at all. And they’re not just doubling down on the VR market, they are doubling down on it while also stripping away a lot of the advantages the PSVR had that helped it find the traction that it did find in the market. The cost of PSVR2, for example, is eye wateringly high, with its sticker price being at least as much as the PS5 itself in most countries, and higher in several. That sticker shock, which comes right as we are reportedly entering economic recession in years, is already an issue in and of itself, but the PSVR2 also launches in an era where the VR optimism is dead, and the bulk of the development community has decided to jump off the train.

You won’t get an EA Star Wars game with VR compatibility on PSVR2, you’re not getting a Batman Arkham VR game, you’re certainly not getting Bethesda VR games, given that Bethesda is now, you know, owned by Xbox.

Except Horizon, nothing major has been announced from PlayStation Studios! The original PSVR had either full or partial VR support for several Sony games – Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, Concrete Genie, Dreams, Gran Turismo Sport, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, RIGS, Farpoint, Wipeout Omega Collection… remember all those? Games fully playable in VR, games with VR specific modes, games that were VR exclusive, you got everything.

Most of Sony’s bigger IP and developers sat PSVR out (a whole other issue that this really isn’t the place to get into), but there was still a lot. Do you want to know what the PSVR2 has announced from Sony so far? Horizon: Call of the Mountain, and Gran Turismo 7 being fully playable in VR on it. That’s it. That’s all that has been confirmed. This $550 headset is three weeks away from release, and I don’t even know what games I can expect on it from the platform holder. And while I would love to have the faith that Sony will surely support it with their best games and teams, a) they likely won’t, Sony never supports secondary platforms and hardware well (just look at how badly the Vita or even the original PSVR were treated on this front) and b) if you are asking people to buy this extremely expensive peripheral for an arguably expensive console, then you should probably give them some reassurance upfront, rather than holding your cards close to the chest.

Even games aside, the PSVR2 is doing a lot of things that seem to be going against the common recipe for “success” (such as it is) in the VR market – the current trend for VR success mandates wireless headsets. The PSVR2 is wired (though the jumble of wires and breakout boxes that the original PSVR involved have been streamlined to just one). The current trend for VR success is for standalone headsets. The PSVR2 is tethered. The current trend in the VR market is cheap headsets; the PSVR2 is $550 (on top of a $500 console, to be clear), and while, yes, the tech that it packs is amazing, and the price is actually very fair given that, and the PSVR2 is actually cheaper than the original PSVR with inflation considered, that’s not how the market approaches these things.

The average person who might have some interest in PSVR2 but be put off by the price won’t be thinking “okay, the economy is tough and my finances are tight, but it’s okay to spend $550 plus tax on the PSVR2, which has very few games announced for it right now, because the tech is great, and because with inflation considered, I am actually paying less than I would have for the PSVR back in the day.” Arguably, no real person thinks like that, that entire line of counterargument is bunk. The PSVR2 isn’t even building on the success of its own predecessor, with it not being backward compatible, and games having to be updated on an individual basis by developers before they are playable on the PSVR2.

Which now returns me to what is ultimately the point of this whole article – if Sony were going to continue splitting their resources, why did they decide to stick with VR? Again, this isn’t about the original PSVR, as I mentioned, the decision made sense at the time. But in the present day context, the VR market has been shown to be making minimal inroads, and even Sony’s own first VR product was, at most, a heavily caveated success.

You know what market isn’t dying, but thriving? Portables. The market that Sony confidently gave up for dead back in the day made a stunning resurgence off the back of the Switch, which, at 115 million consoles sold, and sales accelerating six years into its life cycle, is currently en route to becoming the highest selling system of all time. The Switch is managing this, by the way, without any price drops. It has demonstrably proven that there is a market for portables, which is something we are seeing in the smattering of imitators that have come up in its wake, the most prominent of which, the Steam Deck, is another huge success in its own right!

Let’s talk about the Steam Deck for a second. It’s a portable system with no exclusives, just the ability to play a portion of your existing library portably. It has already sold over a million units in a year. Before Valve did their fan favorite portable, though, they also did a high end VR headset, a high end VR headset that they pushed with the long awaited next Half-Life game in Half-Life: Alyx. Backed with such a high end, high caliber title from Valve, do you know how much the Valve Index sold? 149,000 units in its first year on the market. You can actually take the lifetime sales of the Index and the HTC Vive (the first VR hardware Valve worked on, albeit in collaboration with HTC) and combine them, and the Steam Deck has still outsold them in a year. With no exclusive games.

All of which is to say, there is a thriving market for portables (given that portables actually represent a real world use case for most people). You don’t have to invest in the portable market, and I can see the logic in not wanting to split your resources… but if you are already doing that, which Sony is, then why are you investing in VR over portables? What sense does that even make? What was the decision making process, not just financially, but also economically, which considers factors such as opportunity cost, which somehow led Sony to this decision?

A Sony portable could have continued subsisting on the kind of low- and mid-tier first party support Sony provided the first PSVR, and it absolutely would have had no shortage of games to play, because the Switch exists – and if you are making games for the Switch (which, see above, pretty much everyone is at this point), then why not also put them on the PS handheld? We no longer live in the era of specialized boutique hardware like the 3DS and Vita, which made multiplatform development across those two difficult.

The Switch uses standardized hardware, development tools, and development pipelines, and any Sony portable would too (in fact, the Vita was actually the first handheld to do that). Any game hitting the Switch or the Steam Deck (which, between the two of them, they cover very literally almost every new game that comes out at this point) would also hit the PS handheld, because why not? Third parties alone could carry it. It would probably not sell Switch levels, it might not even sell PSP levels. But even if it sold 30-40 million units, that would be six to eight times more than the PSVR. And, perhaps most importantly, Sony would still have maintained a meaningful presence in the consumer and development community of Japan, rather than more or less ceding that entire market to Nintendo wholesale and allowing them to encroach upon PlayStation’s territory in terms of success and software support even more.

I just cannot wrap my head around this. What was this decision making? I mean, I know what it was, it was wrong is what it was, but to watch it play out in real time is flabbergasting. Sony has decided to split their resources, and they are going with the VR market over the portable one. I appreciate VR, and I really do hope the kinks that prevent it from catching on are worked out sooner than later, so that the format can hit its full potential, but at this point it is abundantly clear that for the broader market, VR holds less  appeal.

It is an answer to a question no one is asking. To split your resources for that, versus portables, where the financial and strategic advantages would be immense in comparison, and taken on their own as well, is just mind boggling. I wish the PSVR2 well, but in the here and now, if you were to ask me about this entire sequence of decisions and events, I would say this represents some of the poorest decision making ever by Sony in their entire history in the gaming market.

May they prove me wrong.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As spotted by Upload VR, Valve has published a job listing for the position of Software Engineer – Computer Vision that seems to suggest that the company might be working on a new virtual reality headset.

“We are looking for versatile, self-directed software engineers in computer vision who can help us achieve the next steps in VR with millions of customers world-wide,” the ad reads. “The main scope of this position is to prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking (HMD and controllers), camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking.”

Valve has seen great success in the hardware market of late, with the Steam Deck in particular enjoying growing sales since its launch earlier this year. While the company has certainly made it clear in the past that it intends to keep investing in VR, it remains to be seen how it will choose to balance that against its increasing focus on the Steam Deck.

That is important to remember, because the point of this piece isn’t to decry VR’s existence, or to claim there’s no future for it. It’s very obvious VR is here to stay, as one of a multitude of ways people engage with entertainment. However, this growth and entrenchment of VR that we’ve been talking about has come from very specific kinds of VR products and paradigms – ones that are, in fact, entirely different from the kinds of high end VR tech that was originally peddled by so many eager entrants into the arena, back when VR was going to be THE future. 

You know what I’m talking about here – the growth of VR has happened off the back of standalone VR headsets such as the Oculus Quest (Meta Quest now, technically speaking). These headsets – the ones that are extremely cheap to buy and require nothing else to run or be used. You don’t need an expensive thousand dollar PC or a separate home console (another few hundred bucks on top) to run these things. You don’t need to wrangle a few dozen wires and connections and then be tethered to be able to use these. You just put the headset on and you jump into your virtual reality. 

Meta Quest is where the growth of VR has come from. It is overwhelmingly dominant in the market right now. In contrast, tethered VR has withered on the vine and died a slow, undignified death. 

You could argue some part of this is because no company has released a new tethered VR headset in a while, whereas standalone VR sets are a much more vibrant market. But ask yourself, WHY has no company released a tethered headset in years at this point, exactly? Oculus used to do many tethered sets. In fact for the longest time that’s all they did. Why did they stop? Why did Valve never follow up on the Index? Why have companies like HTC not released follow ups to their tethered VR products? With Sony you could at least make the argument they were waiting for the PS5 to be out and be a mature platform before pushing out the PSVR2 – but what about the others? 

PSVR2 is the elephant in the room. Sony’s next generation VR headset looks et to be a very high end effort – but it’s going to be tethered to your PS5. Which means, it’s not standalone, it’s not even wireless (though the amount of wires has been reduced to just one, mercifully enough), and it needs an expensive (and still all but impossible to find) console to even function. Sony has made the market for this headset extremely limited – and this is without considering how much the market for VR has changed to disproportionately heavily favor standalone sets. We talked about Valve earlier – apparently, based on teases and leaks, their own next VR set is a standalone model using the Steam Deck chipset as its base. Even Valve, purveyors of the largest platform for PC gaming, seem to be untethering their VR set and making it standalone and self contained.

Because ultimately you must consider it from the perspective of the customer – how many people exist who will want to spend $500 on a PS5, and then $400 on a PSVR2 (assuming it costs as much as the original set did at launch, even though it’s packing far more expensive tech) to be able to play… Horizon: Call of the Mountain? How big do you think that addressable market really is? The original PSVR, with some incredible killer apps and games, including exclusives such as Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Tetris Effect, and Resident Evil 7, AND after a price drop to $200 WITH multiple games and controllers bundled, AND while needing a far cheaper and more readily available console, sold 5 million units. Does anyone really think the market for a set like that, except more expensive, tied to an even more expensive console and one that is harder to find, AND with Meta Quest preemptively poaching some of the best development talent there is, AND with the market for tethered VR demonstrably having died out, is larger than that 5 million? Why? Based on what, exactly? Why does anyone think people will buy PSVR2 in any significant numbers? Why would they, when they can get a Quest for half the price (if not less), and get some of the best and most talked about VR software there is at the moment? And in a far more convenient package to boot? 

An easy way to counter these problems would be to have many must have exclusives that induce purchases. Fair enough, that’s a proven technique. But what developer making VR games would want to make their game exclusive to a platform with such poor commercial prospects? They’re a business, not a charity, after all. What reason do they have to not put their game on Meta as well? And if that game is available on Meta, what reason do you have to get a PSVR2 for it?

Sony could of course develop its own first party software for it. But only Sony’s flagship tentpole games have system selling ability – in other words, a God of War or Naughty Dog game being exclusive to a platform could sell that platform to the masses. Do you think there is even a snowball’s chance in hell that the next mainline God of War or Uncharted game will be a PSVR2 exclusive? Not just ALSO be on PSVR2 (since the rumors currently say Sony is looking at developing hybrid games, as in games that are for PS5 and VR2 alike). They need to be exclusive, otherwise you are once more counting on dozens of millions of people caring enough about some extra immersion to want to spend literally hundreds of dollars on it. Do you think enough people like that exist? They don’t. Which means the games need to be exclusive. Do you think Sony will make their biggest games exclusive to PSVR2? Right now they won’t even make them exclusive to PS5, their flagship console, because those games are so expensive to make, cross gen is the only way to recoup costs. 

And even if that hadn’t been the case (which it is, but in a hypothetical timeline where it wasn’t), what part of Sony’s history as a platform holder shows us that they have any interest in diverting their top games and talent to anything but their flagship console? You remember the support Sony gave the PS Vita or even the original PSVR as well as I do, I’m sure. And don’t get me wrong, there were many incredible games from Sony on both platforms. This isn’t about quality. This is about the fact that anything less than Sony’s biggest games being made exclusive to PSVR2 won’t sell the PSVR2, given all the challenges it faces. And Sony will never make its biggest tentpoles exclusive to VR. 

Which brings us back to the original point – PSVR2, launching in a difficult market with conditions stacked against it. It’s hard to see it having much of a future relative to standalone sets such as Quest 2, or the rumored Valve Deckard. 

And that’s the thing – VR absolutely has a future, and it is going to be a very bright future at that. But it’s not a future where it has to be tethered to additional expensive tech, with all the costs and hassles that entails, to even function. It’s a future where VR is going to be standalone. Its own thing. The market has spoken. The device manufacturers have spoken. Sony’s PSVR2 may end up being an admirable and premium effort – but there’s a possibility it’ll end up being a product out of time, and with not enough of a market to truly sell to. 

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It releases this Holiday season for Meta Quest 2 and Steam VR (which includes HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Valve Index). From the first trailer, it seems that everything about the social deduction party game has carried over pretty well. The Skeld Map becomes much more harrowing now that you have to look around corners, to say nothing about venting in first person.

While no kills were showcased, the awkwardness of discovering a corpse, hitting the big red button to call a meeting and descent into panic is still intact. Stay tuned for more details on a release date. In the meantime, the original game will still be getting updates with more Roles, Cubes and so on being added.

The one that comes to mind immediately, of course, is Half-Life: Alyx. Valve’s seminal first person shooter is regarded by many to be among the best VR games to date, if not the very best, and according to XboxEra co-founder Nick Baker, who’s been a prominent PlayStation leaker in the past, it’s eventually going to make its way to PSVR2.

In a recent tweet, Baker said that Valve and Sony have already worked out a deal for the same, and though there’s no word yet on when exactly it will happen, Half-Life: Alyx will indeed come to the new VR headset.

As always, it’s best to take this with a pinch of salt until something is officially announced, though it does seem like getting Half-Life: Alyx over to PSVR2 is something that Sony should be attempting to do. The new PlayStation Sense controllers are, after all, much better suited to the game than the original PSVR, and Valve itself has also previously expressed interest in potentially bringing the game to PlayStation.

Whether or not it ends up happening remains to be seen, but we’re certainly keeping our fingers crossed.

From what I’ve been told, they have. Not sure when it’s happening though. I thought this was one of those open secrets? https://t.co/RPrdPArDLc

— Balatro Nick  (@Shpeshal_Nick) January 6, 2022

The Old Ones would eventually slumber and the city would be lost in the Pacific Ocean. However, even as he slept, Cthulhu communicated telepathically with humans, who worshiped him as a deity of sorts. Its appearance was described as part octopus, part dragon and somewhat human. Since then, cosmic horror and Cthulhu have been intertwined.

But it’s not just about Cthulhu’s appearance or cosmic entities that look grotesque. Cosmicism’s core philosophy is that humans are nothing when measured against the totality of the universe. Cosmic horror, as such, is as much a fear of what lurks in the void of space as it is about the lack of agency that humans have over their lives. It’s not fate but the overwhelming brunt of the universe, the terrifying horrors that reside within it, and the utter insignificance of one’s actions. Of course, there’s also the common theme that to know and understand the greater schemes of these horrors is ultimately dangerous. To open one’s mind to the truths of the universe is to go insane.

To say that Half-Life is a horror title would be an understatement. The general mood of the first game is established early on with the body horror of Headcrabs taking over corpses by attaching and feeding on their brains. However, even before that, there is a general theme of venturing into the unknown and attempting to unravel greater mysteries – to understand what lies beyond the veil, so to speak. The experiment conducted by the Black Mesa staff, which sees protagonist Gordon Freeman inexplicably teleporting between Xen and the research facility, is the jumping off point. In Gordon’s shoes and without the benefit of scientific understanding, one could almost think of these trips as hallucinatory, in a sense.

Of course, it only gets worse from there as Gordon is forced to contend with all kinds of real horrors. Xen’s indigenous wildlife is bleeding into the Earth’s dimension, whether it’s the massive and unstoppable Gargantua, the vicious Ichthyosaurs in the water or the Gonarch that can ensnare and consume people whole. There are also the inexplicable tentacles encountered in the Rocket Propulsion Silo and Xen which wreak havoc and are seemingly connected to a larger creature. Said creature never materializes though. Of course, this all pales in comparison to traveling through Xen with its floating structures, cities without windows, immense manufacturing facilities, and eventually, the imposing Nihilanth.

In a way, it all seems so simple – the Nihilanth is the big bad alien that’s trying to invade the world, right? It enslaved the Vortigaunts, forcing them to do its bidding and used them to try and take over Earth. There is more to the story though. Much like humanity, the Nihilanth was but an insignificant part of a greater scheme by the Combine. The Combine is a massive intergalactic empire that has laid waste to several civilizations including the Nihilanth’s. The only surviving member had retreated to Xen. Soon, the Vortigaunts arrived in the dimension due to their own homeworld being destroyed by the Combine. The Nihilanth enslaved them and invaded Earth in order to escape from the Combine, which subsequently led to Earth being discovered and assaulted by the latter.

There is another wrinkle in all of this – the G-Man. The mysterious old man, always wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, speaks in a commanding but altogether unnatural manner. The two would have next to no interaction until the end of Half-Life 1 when the G-Man approaches Gordon on behalf of his “benefactors.” Freeman is then employed for some unknown purpose and sealed away in stasis until the events of Half-Life 2.

The theory here is that the G-Man serves not the Combine but the ones above all, the equivalent of the Great Old Ones in the aliens’ pantheon. Gordon’s actions from the very beginning led to conflict with the Nihilanth and Xen’s inhabitants, which subsequently led to the Earth being discovered by the Combine. As such, the empire was grateful and would “hire” Gordon for whatever they would have planned. Not much is known about those above all but that’s the point.

As the Freeman, you think you’re someone who brings about great change and revolution – heck, Gordon is considered an essential part of the Resistance and praised as the one that liberated the Vortigaunts. His actions would also result in the destruction of the Citadel and closing the portal linking the Combine to Earth.

But to what end? Was Gordon really being guided by the G-Man? What is his purpose? What is the purpose of those above all? In Half-Life, these questions currently can’t be answered. And that’s perhaps the most frightening possibility of all: That there are horrors that lay behind the player’s understanding.

Whether intentionally or not, Valve has handled this aspect of the series incredibly well. There are just enough details to spur the player on as they seek more answers and are confronted by more questions. Very little information about the Combine, save for their desire to invade Earth, enslave humanity and deplete its resources, is known. The G-Man remains as mysterious as ever throughout. In fact, his abilities – whether his own or bestowed by something else – allow for altering the space-time continuum, as evidenced in Half-Life: Alyx.

In a way, Valve could be considered the ones above all, creating these situations to push players to pursue the ultimate truth of the Combine, the G-Man and Half-Life itself, regardless of how long it takes. Perhaps the various delays and rumors of cancellation without any information or context are just another layer on top of the things we’re not meant to understand.

Maybe it’s a bit too meta-physical – after all, the G-Man hasn’t broken the fourth wall yet. The point isn’t that there’s no point but that said point is beyond the human mind’s ability to understand. Maybe one day we’ll finally learn everything and go insane at the vastness of it all. Perhaps the true insanity isn’t just in unraveling the entire mystery but in the sheer scope of it all. Half-Life could be considered peak cosmic horror in that sense.

It could all be connected but humanity will never understand. Alternatively, we could never learn the truth – never know where the series is going, the truth of its development behind the scenes and ultimately what is really going on. But that doesn’t stop us from watching, worshiping and ultimately waiting for more.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.