Wednesday, February 26th 2025
Valve "Deckard" VR Headset Touted to Launch Around Late 2025, with Speculative $1200 Price Point
A Valve-designed next-gen VR headset is a compelling prospect, but not many details have emerged online since the company's (2022) teasing of new developments. Press outlets noticed a September 2023 registration of a mysterious device in South Korea; following this discovery, many anticipated a steady flow of leaks. Relative silence ensued; brewing speculation that Valve Corporation had shelved another top secret project. Fast-forward to the present day; Gabe Follower—a self-confessed Valve/Half Life 3 tipster—believes that all systems are go for a codenamed "Deckard" VR headset. The amusingly-named leaker (referencing Gabe Newell) claims to have an inside track: "several people have confirmed that Valve is aiming to release new standalone, wireless VR headset (codename Deckard) by the end of 2025. The current price for the full bundle is set to be $1200. Including some "in-house" games (or demos) that are already done. Valve want to give the user the best possible experience without cutting any costs."
The "Index" was Valve's first attempt at cornering the VR gaming market, but the buying public (back in 2019) largely favored rival models. A long-gestating follow-up would need to really "hit it out of the park," when placed against a new generation of competing hardware. Valve's alleged Blade Runner-themed device, was linked to a set of previously leaked VR controllers; codenamed "Roy." Additionally, Gabe Follower reckons that Valve is prepared to make financial sacrifices, in order to establish a foothold within an extremely competitive market: "even at the current price, it will be sold at a loss. A few months ago, we saw leaked models of controllers—Roy—in the SteamVR update. It will be using the same SteamOS from Steam Deck, but adapted for virtual reality. One of the core features is the ability to play flat-screen games that are already playable on Steam Deck, but in VR on a big screen without a PC. The first behind closed doors presentations could start soon."
Sources:
Gabe Follower Tweet, Notebookcheck, Wccftech
The "Index" was Valve's first attempt at cornering the VR gaming market, but the buying public (back in 2019) largely favored rival models. A long-gestating follow-up would need to really "hit it out of the park," when placed against a new generation of competing hardware. Valve's alleged Blade Runner-themed device, was linked to a set of previously leaked VR controllers; codenamed "Roy." Additionally, Gabe Follower reckons that Valve is prepared to make financial sacrifices, in order to establish a foothold within an extremely competitive market: "even at the current price, it will be sold at a loss. A few months ago, we saw leaked models of controllers—Roy—in the SteamVR update. It will be using the same SteamOS from Steam Deck, but adapted for virtual reality. One of the core features is the ability to play flat-screen games that are already playable on Steam Deck, but in VR on a big screen without a PC. The first behind closed doors presentations could start soon."
43 Comments on Valve "Deckard" VR Headset Touted to Launch Around Late 2025, with Speculative $1200 Price Point
It's like when you start wearing wireless headphones at home and realise you can go to the bog to take a dump without taking them off. Life is never the same after that.
I think that's the issue with VR, and midrange headsets like the psvr2 and the quest 3 both have flaws that makes people reluctant to get them (blurryness for the psvr2, faded colors for quest 3).
I wish that for the next gen we could get a $600 oled set with better lenses than what the psvr2 has
With the death of WMR, there is a shortage of affordable headsets to keep the market growing, and every sale of a Meta Quest is shoving Meta's own storefront and experience front and center - with users having to jump through a few extra hoops and additional software/accounts just to get SteamVR working.
Valve basically needs a simple, cheap, wired, modern, headset with inside-out tracking and passthrough, that is just plug and play with a Steam account and nothing else. Controllers can be optional, since many people will be using wheel+pedals, HOTAS, gamepad, keyboard+mouse etc. A super-basic, one-button wand with huge battery life for menus and UI would be a great optional controller too, but now I'm falling into the category of "wishful thinking"
I think it's that people have some expectations of VR that aren't being met.
I don't think VR is a good platform for most video games and never will be. But that's what a lot of this is marketed as, so its a marketing failure.
VR does better as a social experience, AR does interesting things as a productivity experience, and both have a fitness angle. I guess they're just having trouble getting this point across. But $1000 to meet new people and have a good time with them is a much better deal than $1000 to play like 2 games a few times a year. Yet it's the same hardware, same purchase.
Took them over two years and accumulated stockpiles to actually get them to make a solution for PC and it's an 80$ adapter, blistering idiots...
HDR screens, eye tracking, capacitive controllers and haptics feedback, all gone to the trash because they couldn't let themselves think outside of their own platform...Pico was owned by ByteDance after they made the Neo 3 Link, they launched the TikTok account locked Pico 4, it flopped hard, they resold it back to the guys they bought it from, the TT account lock has been patched out of the headsets with an OS update, then they released amazing stuff like the FBT pucks and the Pico 4 Ultra
TL;DR : ByteDance owning Pico is already old news !
Let's say VR is food, and we're talking delicious burgers. I've already got my favourite, niche, hand-made AAA beef paddy with double cheese and all the fixins I like. I'm looking at Deckard and I'm thinking 'Whoa...is that a double paddy??'
You want VR to be McDonalds or something? Cheapen the experience (to lower the price) and obtain the "mainstream" designation? So people who don't usually burger, can now burger?
I'm happy that people enjoy Nintendo Switch or Meta Quest 3S. But those lower-quality platforms only degrade my experience.
It's good that VR works for you, but if it doesn't start working for more people it might go back into the dustbin and even you won't get your double bacon cheeseburger anymore if its just not profitable to build and sell a very low volume of units...
Meanwhile, VR is the forefront of hardware innovation. Seems like all other PC peripherals and accessories are stagnant. Just a rat race to integrate the most RGB.
The VR enthusiasts and unique industry applications are driving the development of future headsets:
Big Screen Beyond = $1,000
Deckard = $1,200
Pimax Crystal Super = $1,700
MeganeX superlight 8K = $1,900
Pimax Dream Air = $2,000
Somnium VR1 = $3,800
So, far everything we know about the Deckard we can already do with a Quest 3 since they released Steam link on the official meta quest store. I've seen some people in this thread say they don't want passthrough. I can 100% say it will have passthrough just from the code name Deckard = (steam)-Deck-(AR)-(device).
Ultimately, I don't think VR will be a common thing for a long time - too many standards (SteamVR, Oculus, others), too much variation in headset specs.
But what I really want from VR is a continued push towards immersive and easy social purposes.
You can use VR to play VRChat, and VRChat in theory is a one of a kind social prospect.
BUT - the solutions for immersion mostly suck.
To represent full body tracking, you have to do all sorts of half-working nonsense.
And that's only the first step. Few headsets do eye tracking and even fewer do mouth tracking.
You can find all sorts of frankenstein setups where people have a whole USB hub of nonsense on their face because they had to make their own solution for lack of good headsets that do it all natively.
Genuinely the only headset that handles eye+mouth tracking elegantly is the Quest Pro and not only is it discontinued, getting that technology to even work required a series of software hoops to jump through.
People are getting incredibly anti-social these days, and increasingly comfy staying at home.
Bringing the social world to your house, at your convenience, is an important part of modern mental health that people have not yet realized they need.
So I'm waiting for this to be realized. People thought the Quest Pro was overpriced junk rather than being the only headset that tried to solve these issues. So we're still not there yet.Recently I got a Varjo Aero used.
Its not perfect - particularly pathetic FOV, but it's otherwise quite sleek and easy to use, without even mentioning the high resolution.
I'd put that and Varjo as a company right up there with the others in that as an "industry", the rest of the headsets Varjo makes seem to be marketed towards governments and militaries where although $4000+ is a lot for a consumer, $4000 is probably cheaper than whatever non-virtual application they were trying to do.
So, I hope that Varjo and other "enterprise" headsets are successful in that I would expect the technologies they create will eventually be brought down to consumer devices.
VR has been around for a VERY long time (Sega was prototyping VR headsets for commercial use back in 1991...) and while its definitely seen a resurgence in the last 10 years I honestly don't think VR is ever going to be anything other than a niche. There are simply inherent issues with the human body that make VR and headsets as a form factor severely limiting (overcoming the nausea curve, neck strain immediately leap to mind) and the demand for high performance tech means that VR is always going to lag pancake rendering on either performance or visuals with an inherently high cost of entry.
I think we're seeing a sort of VR Heatset explosion that the total addressable market cannot really support and a lot of these companies are going to eventually settle out. There is enough of of a market here to properly support 2-3 players in a healthy way I think after all is said and done.
Besides, it's not like the current standard is free of issues - RSI, backpain (from poor posture), eyestrain are all things that are not all that uncommon with PCs. Consoles add poor precision to the mix for good measure. All that said however, things have not really changed in PCs since the late 90s when mice became an expected peripheral, and consoles ever since the PS1's Dualshock controller.