Deckard won't sell a million units, and Valve is okay with that
Valve's next VR headset won't save virtual reality in 2025, but it might hold the key to VR's long-term future.
In his column "Gaming In Focus", MIXED guest writer Jamie Feltham regularly looks at current developments and shares his experiences from over 10 years in the XR industry.
The potential behind Deckard is impossible to ignore — a standalone VR device that lets you access certain titles in your SteamVR library without the need of a PC. Realistically, you’re not going to be playing Half-Life: Alyx, Skyrim VR, or Assetto Corsa – at least not without some serious optimization efforts — but it is reasonable to expect that Valve is working with its usual partners to make a device that’s a good bit more powerful than Quest 3 and its ilk.
But, let’s be honest, at $1,200 – a price listed in a rumor that news-starved VR fans are willing to baselessly entertain (myself included) – Deckard is not VR’s savior.
Recent estimates put Steam Deck – a handheld console I absolutely love – at possibly 4 million units sold. The most expensive Deck model is $649.99, a little over half the rumored price of Deckard. A much more experimental device priced at double that cost doesn’t have a hope in hell of reaching the same sort of install base. Even if it did, that would put Deckard at much less than a quarter of the estimated total of Quest 2s and 3s out there.
Valve’s past comments outline it’s thinking
That might be a rude wake-up call for studios and fans looking for the industry’s next big moment, but it won’t be news to Valve itself. Pending the rumors’ truth (which is by no means assured), Valve knows exactly how Deckard will perform, and it’s already okay with it.
How might SteamVR Home grow with the addition of Deckard? | Bild: Valve
Ex-Steam VR evangelist, Chet Faliszek offered sobering comments last year that shined a light on the company’s slow and steady approach to building VR. Referring to Meta’s cash-rich strategy as “distorting the market”, Faliszek made it clear that Valve itself (at least based on his time there) wasn’t in a rush to upend VR by offering huge sums of money with no-strings attached or subsidize hardware by an enormous margin.
Gabe Newell’s own measured comments about VR being “a very long haul” help further frame that thinking, too. “They are fundamentally important technologies that are being developed,” Newell said of VR in a 2021 interview with IGN, “and if at any point you're sort of narrowly defining the goal posts and saying “Well, how's that doing against the latest CS: GO update?” It's gonna — you're always going to end up making bad decisions based on that.”
In the context of Deckard, Valve isn’t going to judge success against Quest. It isn’t even going to measure it against second and third place competitors like PSVR 2 or Pico. Instead, Newell suggests that the company records success of experiments such as this in terms of reactions; what do press and gamers say at launch? What do they say a year after launch?
In this regard, Deckard could be a big win for Valve.
Where Deckard will succeed…
It’ll be the first system that breaks free of SteamVR’s millimeter-accurate but undeniably archaic lighthouse tracking system. It’ll give the company data on how many people want to take a VR headset on a flight and play normal games on a big screen. It’ll reveal how many PC enthusiasts value the comfort and ease of a standalone system when weighed up against the might of a proper gaming rig with a wire attached to it.
It’ll also be a big opportunity for SteamOS to grow and show Valve where to place its focus. Is SteamVR Home more widely used in a standalone device? Will people collect achievements, mod games, and engage with communities inside a new form factor? There are big learnings ahead for the studio as it moves onto its third headset.
Data gathering might not be the most exciting case to build the success of Deckard upon, but for Valve’s slow-and-steady approach, it stands to be hugely beneficial for what could be further down the road.
…and where it won’t
What Deckard won’t do, however, is save any of the VR studios laying off staff or closing their doors over the course of 2025. And, yes, that sucks, but Valve will point to the inevitability of the aforementioned market distortion rather than their refusal to be financially competitive with Meta.
For studios like the now-closed Archiact Interactive, Deckard’s arrival will be too little, too late. | Image: Archiact
Their bet remains long-term, and that Deckard is just another step on the now 10+ year journey towards widespread VR adoption, not their arrival at it.
So set expectations accordingly. I fully anticipate Deckard to be one of my new main-stay headsets, I expect Valve to support it with some interesting launch content, and then I expect them to return to surveillance mode and let the market do what it will for the next 5-ish years. Frustrating? Yes. Sensible? Most definitely.
And, no, you should not expect any sort of VR support for Half-Life 3. Sorry.
What do you think of Valve's Deckard? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
For feedback, topic suggestions, or other ideas, please email us at hello@mixed-news.com.
Jamie Feltham has 10+ years of experience working in VR, first covering the industry for a number of publications including UploadVR, where he created the UploadVR Showcase. After handling biz dev for HTC Vive and global PR & marketing for Fast Travel Games, Jamie founded the VR Games Showcase, the premiere digital showcase for VR game announcements and updates. You can follow @VRGamesShowcase on YouTube to get ready for the next VRGS events. Jamie can be reached at jamie@thevrshowcase.com.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
