It appears Valve has been developing a standalone XR headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, for some time. Now, an industry insider has apparently gotten a peek at the headset’s design, calling it “quite amazing,” further noting it’s potentially arriving sometime next year.

Stan Larroque, Founder of XR hardware company Lynx, confirmed in a recent X post the he’s actually seen the design for Valve’s next XR headset.

Larroque further confirmed that neither him nor his company Lynx, which released the Lynx R-1 mixed reality headset, is under any type of non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Larroque tells Road to VR that Valve Deckard won’t compete against Lynx’s upcoming hardware, as they separately “address two different markets [and] price points.”

Still, beating around the bush somewhat, Larroque tells us Valve and Lynx “might share suppliers for some components,” which definitely smells like a supply chain leak.

“I would be equally pissed if Lynx nextgen ID got leaked so I won’t share more,” Larroque says in an X post. “I’m just excited for good new XR HMDs. The HMD-making world is so small, we all share the same suppliers for some components.”

Valve Patent from 2022 | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Furthermore, he tells Road to VR that he’s heard that mass production and eventual availability is slated for 2026, which differs slightly from a previous report wherein leaker and data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ alleged Deckard would arrive by the end of 2025, priced at $1,200.

While Valve hasn’t confirmed anything yet, the rumor mill has been drumming up its fair share of speculation even since the Deckard naming scheme was discovered by data miners in January 2021.

There have been leaked prototype designs (seen above) from 2022, as well as leaked 3D models hidden in a SteamVR update late last year (seen below), which appeared to show off a new VR motion controller, codenamed ‘Roy’.

Valve ‘Roy’ Model Leak | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Then, last month, tech analyst and VR pundit Brad ‘SadlyItsBradley‘ Lynch reported Valve was gearing up production for the long-awaited device, evidenced by Valve’s recent importation of equipment to manufacture VR headset facial interfaces inside the USA.

Lynch alleges the equipment in question “is being provided by Teleray Group who also manufactured the gaskets for the Valve Index and HP G2 Omnicept.”

Exactly what and when are still relatively big question marks, although it appears Valve is moving forward with its standalone XR headset at an opportune time. Provided Larroque’s supply chain leaks are true, and it is indeed coming in 2026, a number of previous reports suggest there will be some healthy competition out there when it does.

SEE ALSO
Meta's Next-gen Smart Glasses Reportedly Set to Include a Display & Wrist-worn XR Controller

In July 2024, The Information alleged Meta is planning to release two flagship consumer headsets sometime in 2026, codenamed ‘Pismo Low’ and ‘Pismo High’. Beyond that, a competitor to Apple Vision Pro, tentatively thought of as ‘Quest Pro 2’, is reported to arrive in 2027. Meanwhile, we’re waiting for any real shred of evidence to come from Apple of any forthcoming headset.

By then, Samsung’s Project Moohan should be in the wild, which when it launched in late 2025 will run Google’s upcoming Android XR operating system. The device is slated to bring the full-fat Android App Store to an XR device for the first time in addition to XR content.

While we’d expect Valve to skip the flashy keynotes and simply seed developers first with hardware in its usual lowkey manner, you never know when a random purchase link might just pop up on Steam, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled from now until whenever.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DR: we may have a lot of available high resolution XR HMD's by 2026, but none of them outside of Horizon OS will have a noteworthy library of games, and instead have to rely on PCVR streaming. Which would give a Valve standalone HMD able to play both flat and VR games a unique selling point. We are seeing more similar HMDs because the hardware is becoming more commoditized, so available content will make the difference again.

    Provided […] it is indeed coming in 2026, a number of previous reports suggest there will be some healthy competition out there when it does.

    While it's true that by 2026 there will be a number of powerful ~4K HMDs out there, they aren't pitched directly against each other. Meta dominates the low price standalone market focused on gaming, and after the Quest Pro debacle, their future XR HMDs will heavily rely on this strength. But all 2026 Horizon OS games will have to run on a Quest 3S or even Quest 2. Given Qualcomm's yearly performance gains, a 2026 XR2 Gen 3 could again provide a 2-2.5x GPU performance boost, but part of that will be eaten by increased resolution, and 4K would require working ETFR and/or massive upscaling. So even if Meta releases a 2.5K Quest 4 or a 4K Quest 4 Plus, you'll still need to stream from a PC to fully utilize the resolution.

    Samsung's Project Mohan, Play for Dream, Shiftall MeganeX 8K, Pimax Dream, Bigscreen Beyond 2 or the mysterious AVP look-alike/name-alike HMD Vivo presented two months ago will also rely on a PC. Obvious for the tethered HMDs, but the standalone ones running AndroidXR will sell in low numbers at high prices, so they'll at best get a couple of Quest ports, and won't see "native" games anytime soon due to their tiny user base. For the first few years AndroidXR will focus on non-gaming content like AVP, simply because this allows leveraging Google's Play store and user base against Meta's large VR game library.

    Maybe Apple manages to quickly reduce the AVP price enough to make it bearable for at least high end iPhone customers, but I doubt that there will be a sub USD 2K Apple Vision next year. Whatever they release may have PSVR2 Sense controller support thanks to visionOS 3, but just like with the first AVP
    (1), Apple very clearly doesn't see or promote the HMD for gaming, focusing on media, productivity and communication. So again high profile VR gaming on visionOS means streaming from a PC.

    Whatever Valve releases will be gaming focussed, and apparently allow playing both VR and flat games. Deckard using a future mobile AMD APU to run existing Steam (VR) games is pretty much the only reasonable solution, as even the best case x86 emulation on ARM will lose more than half the performance compared to native binaries, plus about a dozen other reasons. Based on AMD's and Qualcomm's SoC/APU roadmaps, this could/should put Deckard's performance way above a Quest 4, allowing for a superior standalone gaming experience. You'll still need a powerful streaming PC with a painfully expensive GPU gobbling up lots of Watts for the best performance though, as no mobile chip can beat the laws of physics..

    The rumored USD 1200 will be challenging to hit, though waiting till 2026 may help with dropping component prices, esp. for currently very expensive microOLED displays. If they anything below USD 1500, Valve will still have the "cheapest" high resolution (probably ~4K) PCVR option, simply because all others need an additional PC for this. The only one seriously competing with them for VR gaming would be Meta, which is constrained by its price sensitive audience that largely buys USD 300 HMDs, mostly around Christmas. These sales define what game devs target, so even if Meta would offer a USD 800-1000 high end Quest at production costs, it would sell in too low numbers to justify creating high end games for it.

    So a 2026 Deckard may face competition from lots of other HMDs usable for PCVR streaming, but would be the only one able to actually run these games standalone. And looking at the quality of the experience Valve achieved with Index and Steam Deck, that alone might be enough to make people pick a Deckard even if they'll only use it for streaming.

    • guest

      You're assuming Valve wants 100% of their x86 apps to run on their standalone. What if they threw overboard the bloated, worst performing percentage of all their apps (perhaps 65%), and got the rest running in standalone ONLY? Just those (say 35%) of all their apps would be a death-blow to Meta!

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        That not how that works. There is no way for them to optimize 35% of the mostly third party apps to run better than the rest. They can use an ARM version of Proton, the library they use on Steam Deck to translate Windows to Linux calls, but game code doesn't spend a lot of time there, so Proton running at native speed helps a lot less than it would on an ARM Windows laptop running productivity apps.

        They can in theory transpile x86 binaries to ARM, but that doesn't work all that well. Apple had pretty much the best possible starting point for x86 on ARM: with MacOS 10.15 they had cut off all the old code by no longer allowing to run 32bit binaries, so the emulation only had to deal with clean code. Mac programs have always made extensive use of system libraries, so having these as native ARM code provided a lot more performance benefits than it would on Windows games. They also already had already switched the architecture twice before, 68K -> PowerPC -> x86 -> ARM, so they knew what the problems were. And they have a very expensive ARM architecture license and used this to extend their Apple Silicon to handle x86 command flags directly, something that would otherwise be expensive to emulate.

        And even under these best-case conditions, x86 binaries achieve only 1/2 to 1/3 the performance of ARM binaries of the same app run on the same Apple Silicon ARM Mac. For the longest time ARM on Windows was pretty much unusable due to the slow x86 emulation, and only recently Snapdragon X SoC have made this a realistic option. But this is brute-forced by Qualcomm using new higher performance cores with significantly more power draw, and still only makes sense if you mostly use ARM native apps and only occasionally have to run old x86 binaries.

        x86 emulation on ARM is simply not an option for mobile VR, because this is a constant high load application, and all HMDs struggle with battery life, usually running out of juice after 2h. This is not a situation where you can afford to throw away 50% of the performance for emulation.

        And while a pure streaming headset that doesn't run any local apps might benefit from using ARM SoCs, it simply makes no sense whatsoever for Valve to go with ARM for a standalone. ARM has benefits in low power modes, which is why it dominates in mobile phones. But these have a typical burst/idle use, with the phone occasionally having to activate the faster cores to for example scroll a page, and then drop back to low power mode. The Snapdragon SoC have specific high performance cores that draw more energy, but get the task done quicker, so the whole phone can switch back to low power faster. The XR2 Gen 2 in Quest 3 dropped both the high performance and the low power cores from the SD 8 Gen 2 it is based on, because VR causes a constant load. It never falls into low power, so ARMs main advantage never comes to play, and it also cannot use the high performance cores because these would overheat the SoC when run for a longer time, causing the headset to throttle.

        The reason why Meta used ARM for their mobile HMDs is because that is what was available from mobile phones, even though the configuration didn't really fit VR. And they didn't have an existing software library, so going ARM was fine. Valve has a gigantic existing software library, all based on x86, x86 emulation isn't technically feasible at acceptable performance levels, and even if it was, it would still make little sense, because ARM doesn't provide any significant advantages when run under constant load. And AMD APUs have gotten a lot more power efficient over the last few years and offer much faster GPUs than Qualcomm's SoCs.

        • guest

          Yes, "emulated x86 binaries achieve only 1/2 to 1/3 the performance of ARM binaries" is what I implied. Just make the battery external and they could do what I suggest. That would inject them well into the middle price range between the extremes of Apple and Meta.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Increasing the battery size will help with increasing/restoring the battery life with a more power hungry APU, but not with gaining back the lost compute performance. And unfortunately power consumption rises exponentially with increased compute, not linearly. So if you pick a 30W TDP APU instead of one at 15W TPD, you don't get twice the performance, you'll get maybe 50% more. So to compensate for 50% performance loss from emulation, you'd probably have to invest four times the power, with a whole bunch of follow-up problems like a lot more heat that needs to be removed, requiring heavier cooling and fans.

            When I say that x86 emulation on ARM (currently) makes no sense for VR, I really mean that. And I'm pretty sure the reason why Valve had to wait till 2026 for Deckard is because the technology for a PCVR standalone simply wasn't available before. Years ago AMD's roadmaps already showed that 15W TDP APUs with about the performance of a PCVR entry level GTX 1060 would appear around late '24/early '25. But this is of course 2017 entry level PCVR with 1.3K per eye HMDs.

            eMagin showed a 4K microOLED display labeled "Steamboat" at Display Week 2022, stating that it was created with a larger partner for a proof of concept HMD from a smaller company. The customer was very likely Valve, the bigger partner Samsung who later bought eMagin. What's special about eMagin's microOLEDs is their true RGB backlight compared to current microOLEDs with white backlights and filters that remove/waste 2/3rd of the colors, causing significant power draw. So Valve was very likely aiming to release a 4K HMD with highly efficient microOLEDs that apparently are still not production ready yet, as Samsung's own Project Moohan HMD will launch with Sony microOLEDs later this year.

            What Valve is creating with Deckard will very likely be cutting edge for the price they are aiming at, and wouldn't be technically possible this way right now, because some core technologies are still not ready. And when it releases in 2026, it will probably be well balanced between performance, resolution, FoV and all the other factors important for VR. In such a constellation, you cannot simply cut off half the performance or quadruple the power budget.

            I'd really like to understand why you all so desperately want Deckard to be ARM based, when this is objectively a horrible idea for a company who's success is almost completely based on selling x86 games.

          • Traph

            >What Valve is creating with Deckard will very likely be cutting edge for the price they are aiming at, and wouldn't be technically possible this way right now, because some core technologies are still not ready

            This cuts to the crux of the problem. If you want to release an HMD “early” when only some of the tech is ready – you end up with the Quest Pro. And in Valve’s case, without the infinite pockets of Meta enabling crazy overengineered “solutions” to the problems created by kit bashing old and new tech inside the Pro, they’d end up with something even worse.

            (To play the tiniest devil’s advocate for Meta, I’m convinced the Pro was a victim of Covid supply chain shutdowns and was originally slated to launch at least a year earlier.)

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: Quest Pro failed because of lacking software, which was a result of project mismanagement; Valve has proven with Index and Steam Deck that they not only can create very good hardware that is universally praised, but also provide an improved experience that goes way beyond just the hardware, esp. with the tight SteamOS integration.

            The problem of the Quest Pro was never the hardware. Meta wanted to enter the professional XR market, and came up with the idea of VR conferences, a somewhat decent concept as lots of businesses had switched to excessive amounts of zoom calls during CoViD-19. And the Quest Pro was pretty well designed for a HMD intended to use for several VR meetings each day, always charged, easy to put on and set up, well balanced, not messing up hair or makeup. It was just way too expensive as a gaming HMD, a role it was never designed for and only slipped into because the whole business VR conferencing concept utterly failed due to the lacking software.

            Horizon Rooms as the main selling point was in no way ready, lacked lots of features and later even removed the whiteboards that many considered the only thing that made it somewhat useful. And Meta had no other applications at all that would have made the Quest Pro attractive to business users, their only approach was using the web version of Office 365 in the Quest Browser, and we never heard of that again after the initial presentation with Microsoft. So I'd say that the hardware was absolutely fine for what was available in 2022, but as so often with Meta, the software was the real weak point that doomed the device. Which is mostly a project management failure, not something related to cutting edge tech being too finicky.

            Valve has proven with the Index and Steam Deck that they can provide very solid hardware, and even addressed the reliability issues that plagued the Index Controllers by making the Steam Deck highly modular, user serviceable, with cheap replacement parts available from iFixit right from the start. So I have little doubt that the Deckard hardware will be well designed at a similar quality level. And the software is where Valve really shines. I'm somewhat biased as a Steam Deck owner, but they managed to make a Linux game console be way better at playing Windows games than Windows itself, and constantly improve on an already excellent product. It may not qualify as a miracle, but they did a damn good job there.

            The moment Apple demonstrated AVP, it became the template for future XR user interfaces. The moment Valve released the Index, it became the goalpost in comfort, audio, frame rate, controller capability etc. other manufacturers were compared against. The moment the Steam Deck was released, it redefined what a good handheld gaming experience should be like. I fully expect Deckard to have a similar impact. Not because it might uses brand new tech that nobody else has, or a great cost/benefit ratio, or introduces something never seen before. But because tight integration of hardware and OS similar to the use of SteamOS on the Steam Deck will allow for a much more polished and smoother VR experience than we are used to.

            Which admittedly isn't that high a bar, given that VR still comes with a lot of friction, and that Meta as the main player in VR gaming has been criticized for years for their cumbersome UI, permanent changes not necessarily improving things, messing up core functions like multiplayer invites or breaking features or performance in OS updates. I trust Valve to do better, and IMHO they have earned that trust in the last few years by listening to user feedback, consistently improving things and continued support. The Steam Controller was released in 2015, discontinued in 2019, and still gets software updates.

            In contrast the Quest Pro was released in 2022, had its price slashed by 1/3rd five months later, with the production shutting down just nine months after launch and Meta stating they'd sell them until they ran out of parts. And apparently they never even managed to sell all the Quest Pro they had already produced and in the end officially discontinued it after less than two years, with sales stopped in January 2025. Products like the Logitech MX Ink VR stylus for Quest, clearly targeting a productivity/professional use never got support for the Quest Pro, as Meta had quickly abandoned it, just like they very actively killed the Go after 2.5 years, no longer even allowing developers to update their games, even though they still sold them on their store. So I'm pretty sure that the failure of Quest Pro is less an indicator that "early tech" will fail, and more that Meta sucks at product maintenance.

      • Not at a $1200 pricetag it won't …. lol

    • ZarathustraDK

      I'm not quite sold on the AMD APU yet. It's gonna add weight, require more battery and add to the price, for what reason? Assuming they're going with the latest ARM XR-chip that's going to be plenty enough for running anything Meta will put out in the next 2 generations of their HMD's.
      I imagine if you'd want to play Quest-games it'll be a matter of loading up a USB with apk's and put it in some kind of frunk-slot, if you want to play 2d games you can either stream from a pc or a Deck/Deck 2, and if you want to do pcvr, well, then you stream from a pc.
      The only way I can see an AMD APU reasonably come into play, is if the XR-chip is not enough for all the upscaling/framegen/tricks needed to make the wireless transmission quality acceptable enough. Creating a second, higher hardware-spec for standalone that software can build towards is just going to confuse everyone, and of course devs will target the lowest common denominator, ie. the lowest relevant Quest headset when building for standalone anyway.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        TL;DR: SoC size/weigh difference is negligible, faster APUs will require a larger/heavier battery, Deckard design hints at battery as counterbalance; technical differences between ARM and x86 APU are not really important, the relevant part is the Steam x86 library, and the easiest solution is simply using an x86 PC in HMD form, just like the Steam Deck was an x86 PC in handheld form.

        AMD mobile APUs aren't much larger/heavier than Qualcomm ones, so their weight difference is negligible. Below Steam Deck motherboard on the left, Quest 3 on the right, roughly at scale. The red frame marks the SoC, AMD Aerith vs. XR 2 Gen 2, the orange blocks are RAM (4*4GB on Steam Deck, 1*8GB on Quest 3).

        The battery would be different due to the different power requirements, and this would actually add weight. The Quest 2 drew about 9W, the Quest 3 up to 12W, the Steam Deck can draw up to 25W at max brightness/volume, the APU itself is limited to a 15W TDP. A Deckard with a higher TDP APU would therefore require a larger battery with higher weight, but total weight is much less of an issue than balance. The 2022 Valve patent image in the article shows cables going to the back of the head, hinting at the battery being used as a counter balance in the back similar to Quest Pro.

        The Steam Deck APU beats the Quest 3 SoC in CPU performance, with a multicore Geekbench score of ~4200 compared to ~1550 for Quest 3. Lack of suitable cross platform benchmarks makes comparing the GPU more difficult, but Meta said the Quest 3 GPU is about as fast as a GTX 960 (Geekbench 6 Vulkan ~22000), slightly faster than the Steam Deck at ~18500. The Steam Deck GPU has only 8CUs, as these allow to run current PC games on the build in 1028*800 display, and the silicon is from 2021 vs 2023 for the XR2 Gen 2. By now AMD has released mobile APUs that beat an RTX 3060, but those draw too much power for a HMD.

        AMD can provide a lot more GPU performance by adding CUs at the cost of higher power draw and larger battery requirements, so it is kind of up to Valve to pick the best balance for Deckard. But the real issue is still that the whole Steam (PCVR) library is x86 based, and emulation would drop (CPU) performance by more than half. Going ARM would only make sense for Valve if either a) Deckard is a streaming-only HMD or b) they think it is somehow a good idea to have no VR games on their VR HMD, hoping that developers will recompile existing Steam PCVR games for ARM.

        Which would obviously be very stupid. Valve's strength is their vast software library for flat and VR games, so Deckard will be build around that. The Steam Deck is the template here: a device that is actually just a regular x86 PC in handheld form, applying a lot of clever trickery with the Linux based SteamOS to play all the regular x86 Steam games, while most other handhelds use ARM. Similarly Deckard will be just another x86 PC, this time in the form of an HMD, applying a lot of clever trickery with SteamOS, like enabling game-independent ETFR and FSR3/4 upscaling in the Gamescope compositor that can access the required motion vectors from OpenVR, with whatever wizardry they can pull out of the AI generators in RDNA4.

        All this is of course speculation up to the moment Valve actually releases Deckard, but it is somewhat reasonable speculation along the lines of what they have done in the past few years with esp. the Steam Deck. But in general a x86 based Deckard solves pretty much all problems with software compatibility, performance or unified platform, allowing it to be used like any other PCVR machine, without any significant disadvantages. Using ARM simply makes no sense for a Valve standalone not limited to streaming.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a721ceccfdc4f817af7ee1bc290da676f4a33879f25a94d2609a03092aa17a8e.jpg

  • Stephen Bard

    True Valve worshippers still clutching their obsolete Index headsets in solidarity tribute until the mythological Deckard becomes available will be quietly disappointed with the rumored 2K LCD displays, however they will rave about some other feature like the controllers that facilitate unimmersive 2D gaming, while they happily pay the $1200+ price.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Hm, this is the fourth time you have posted this almost verbatim during the last two months, twice here and twice on Upload. So I see where your confusion comes from: others actually improve upon things over time, they take the lessons from their first attempts and then come up with something better instead of just repeating their mistakes over and over again.

      So we can firmly assume that the "Proof of Concept" Valve prototype from 2023 using a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and 2K LCDs you are referring to is not what a 2026 Valve Deckard will look like. It was created to test something specific with one of the fastest mobile SoCs available at the time that wasn't powerful enough to run VR in 4K. Whatever Valve CPU/GPU Valve will use in 2026 is very likely not on the market yet, for the Steam Deck they also got privileged access to the first AMD mobile APUs with RDNA2 graphics, about a year before these became available to others.

      But I'm sure you will find a reason to dump on Valve users again with your fairytale of specs from an early prototype. Maybe you can even improve on that. Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot as a quasi Proto-smartphone without the phone in the early 90s, tested the concept by for weeks carrying around a piece of wood of roughly Palm Pilot size, pretending to take notes, make calendar entries, look up addresses etc. I'm sure Valve similarly created some Deckard prototypes that were just 3D printed dummies with some lenses looking at a piece of paper, so you could claim that Deckard will have the worst refresh rate and lowest FPS of all the mobile HMDs ever released, and can run no games at all except for tic tac toe.

    • polysix

      LCD is gonna kill this on release. I seriously hope Valve reconsider. uOLED or GTFO, even if it means reducing the FOV a bit.

    • Draylynn

      That Index HMD we hold onto can be customised, has unique selling points many others don't and is one if not the best headset for wired tracking (and ease of setup), as well as physically intensive gameplay, with one of the best audio delivery systems, and a decently ignorable weight. The only thing wearing it down at the moment is the graphical fidelity, which is still usable which is literally the only thing at the moment you can really brag about between wired sets (I ain't even going into standalone sets that can't track for pennies, they are truly worthless).
      Yes, it's expensive, but I guess you get what you pay for… But expense doesn't break down every <6 months, so I guess long run it's actually cheaper to stint the £1000 for a full set than pay the £3000+ in replacements from cheaper sets that overheat, snap cable ties and have locked in cabling, in the 5+ years my unreplaced still fully functioning Index HMD has lived with me.
      Just common sense, but if that makes me a valve worshipper so be it.

  • Stephen Bard

    True Valve worshippers still clutching their obsolete Index headsets in solidarity tribute until the mythological Deckard becomes available will be quietly disappointed with the rumored 2K LCD displays, however they will rave about some other feature like the controllers that facilitate unimmersive 2D gaming, while they happily pay the $1200+ price.

  • polysix

    Everyone needs to stop making HMDS until the SONY panels (used in pimax dream air) are cheaper and/or bigger to increase FOV.

    Nobody wants shit LCD anymore. Nobody wants <105 FOV anymore (or higher fov with bad stereo overlap), nobody wants standalone shit anymore, nobody wants compressed wireless anymore (we all want DP for anything you can use on PC), nobody wants giant boxes anymore, we want something smaller than a quest 3 and (to allow a bit more FOV) a bit bigger than bigscreen 2/MeganeX…

    anything released from now until the above is 'true' is an expensive stop gap and pointless.

    Until then just stick with a PSVR2 for both console and PCVR with OLED and display port + good stereo overlap and nice FOV at a BARGAIN PRICE.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Oh please stop making your whishes as if everybody thinks like you.. I don't want anything with a wire anymore, not to a desktop, nor to a battery on your belt. PSVR2 sucks because it is only usable with a cable.. And keep dreaming about a bargain price, yeah maybe in 5 to 10 years, but till then I'd rather have incremental affordable headsets.

      • So estatically glad to downvote your devisive horseshit.

        How DARE polysix have a – gasp – opinion!1!1

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        Interestingly the only way to ever get to bargain prices is to start with the expensive ones, sell at least some of these, improve the process with the gained experience, thereby lower production costs and consequently the price users have to pay. Repeat this several times, and you get to mass market products where economies of scale have driven down the price to a fraction of the first generation.

        Wanting everybody to stop releasing HMDs until the technology has become cheaper means asking to stop the very process by which the technology would eventually become cheaper. So not exactly a smart approach..

      • Peter vasseur

        Yeah non wired is great but the trade off isn’t worth it yet.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          To me the trade off is, as I really dislike the cable, ut always annoyed me with my HTC Vive Pro, even after replacing the original cable with a lighter one and a trolley system. The very expensive 'wireless'module was such a big way forward, but still the batterycable was very annoying. Now I use a Pico 4, and it's so much easier to pick it up, put it on and play. The slight inferior visuals aren't a problem, hell, even on my old PC with still a 2060super and connected through wifi5(!) with the standard Pico connect software without any fiddling with the settings yet. I was so much surprised that it actually looked better as my HTC Vive Pro/wirelessmodule and performed similar.

      • ichigo

        I'm a sit down VR player i play games to relax. I have no problem with wires but i understand the Teens who love to swing their arms around and run in circles love wireless. I mean them cheap/F2P games where you move by swinging arms are top sellers and it's mostly Teens.

        The problem here in my humble opinion and real life experience is the Teen group will drop VR after the fad of running around in circles after a few months (ALL! my Teen nephews) and go back to COD on their xbox….While the "true VR believers" have no problem with wired headsets and want smaller comfy* device and have hours upon hours playing different games.

        Personally i see XR glasses being the wireless and VR being Wired the ideal solution. Kids running around with XR glasses will be more safer for them.

        • simon cox

          A bit of a generalisation to say that anyone who prefers room based VR is a teen who plays Gorilla Tag. You're entitled to enjoy your sit down VR experiences as I am to enjoy room scale VR, as an older person, playing Aliens or Behemoth or whatever…but. certainly not gorilla tag or any of those unbearable free games.

          You may be right about the teens dropping off in time. Whether they're replaced with younger models or not we've yet to see. I'm hoping they'll leave and make all of the multiplayer experiences much more playable

        • Andrew Jakobs

          If only I was still a teen, but I'm already passed the five-oh.. even when I play sitting down I dislike the cable. I like the freedom of wireless, I can connect it (wireless) to my PC for better graphics or take it with me to my parents or my brother or friends.
          And FYI, I'm a true VR believer and do have a problem with wired, and the Pico 4 is very comfortable and I can also play hours on end.
          And XR (as in mixed reality) is something I'm not interested in.

    • The reason standalone is shit is a SOFTWARE problem.

      Devs for the most part are shortsighted, greedy crumb-bums.

      • Peter vasseur

        Wasn’t much of a success, people were locked I. Their holes and meta was under cutting the market massively to get marketshare. If they allowed their fake prosperity to make their heads swell then they deserve their losses.

      • ichigo

        "The reason standalone is shit is a SOFTWARE problem"

        "Devs for the most part are shortsighted"

        Some hard truths in them i'm not sure if you're pointing to the ones i see though. WITH the extra problem that the Devs are listening to game "Journalists" over the customers. And getting the wrong ideas implanted into them on who/what their games should be for.

        imagine certain niche "ideas" and pandering being FULLY! rejected in the mature flat 2D gaming market with multiple examples (Concord *cough*). And then some niche VR Devs thinking it's a good idea to bring them "ideas" into a niche VR game.

        And only have the game "journalists" clapping for them on how seen the game "journalist" feels in the game. But i'm sure it gives them some Government funding by ticking a few boxes. I mean they will NOT get customers but at least they got 10% of cost covered.

    • philingreat

      The issue with increasing the FOV is that it also increases motion sickness

    • Dawid

      Thank you for letting us know that nobody is buying LCD headsets like Quest 3 as nobody wants LCD anymore. I was not aware of it.

      • NicoleJsd [She/Her]

        people who bought it have it already and further incremental upgrades of this solution are not really exciting. Let’s say they make quest 4 with 1.25 more resolution and 2x more performant chip. Would you buy it? I doubt there would be many buyers.

        There are certain checkmarks that give actual progress and new possibilities and incremental upgrades during early technology era is synonymous with stagnation

    • NicoleJsd [She/Her]

      xx

  • Sven Viking

    If it really does launch next year, I look forward to purchasing it in Australia in 2032!

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      You're in luck. The Steam Deck shipped in 2022-02 to NA and Europe, and made it to down under in 2024-11, so 33 months later. So if Deckard releases mid 2026, you might get one as early as 2029!