Despite all the buzz around Oculus Rift championing the imminent role of virtual reality gaming experiences, the whole enterprise is still very fragile right now, and Valve mindful to give it their full support.
They won’t be launching their own VR hardware but are ”continuing to work with Oculus to drive PC VR forward”. Valve has very high aspirations for VR and expects HD VR in 2015.
If they released their own VR gear now or anytime soon it would fracture the market before it began as studios would be torn between them, as would consumers - diluting its chances.
It was revealed that Valve has put together a VR prototype to demonstrate what this technology could achieve, and where they hope it will lead. Naturally the question arose as to whether Valve would be getting into the VR peripheral space themselves. Valve’s VR man Michael Abrash confirmed they have no plans to.
”Who’s gonna ship VR? @Oculus of course!” tweeted Hot Blooded Games CFO Dave Oshry at Steam Dev Days.
Abrash has identified key features that must be in place for VR to succeed for studios and gamers, and Valve predicts a ”great VR system at a consumer price in 2015 is primed to happen.” Oculus Rift will be launching this year with a consumer model and former id Software founder, now Oculus VR CTO, John Carmack, is busy with first-party treats.