Valve is a infamous black field relating to principally all the pieces. A current replace to Steam shopper for VR although suggests the corporate remains to be working behind the scenes on what seems to be its long-awaited standalone VR headset.

As revealed by tech analyst and consummate Steam knowledge miner Brad Lynch, a current replace to Steam’s shopper included various VR-specific strings associated to batteries, which appears to assist the concept that Valve is at present readying the platform for some kind of standalone VR headset.

The replace additionally included point out of recent UI components, icons, and animations added to the Steam Shopper for VR—one thing it in all probability wouldn’t do for a competitor’s headset, like Meta’s soon-to-release Quest 3 standalone.

In the meantime, South Korean’s Nationwide Radio Analysis Company (RAA) just lately licensed a “low-power wi-fi gadget” from Valve, additionally noticed by Lynch. It’s nonetheless too early to say whether or not the gadget in query is definitely a standalone VR headset—the radio certification solely mentions it makes use of 5 GHz wi-fi—nonetheless headsets like Meta Quest 2 are equally as imprecise relating to RAA listings.

Granted, Valve hasn’t come out and mentioned it’s growing a standalone VR headset but, though with mounting competitors from Apple and Meta, 2024 stands out as the 12 months we lastly see the ‘Index of standalone VR’ come to the forefront. Valve Index has broadly been considered the ‘finest match’ PC VR headset, owing to its wonderful high quality, efficiency, and luxury—one thing we referred to as “the fanatic’s alternative” in our full evaluation of the headset again when it launched in 2019.

However it hasn’t been totally mum both. In early 2022, Valve chief Gabe Newell referred to as its handheld gaming PC platform Steam Deck “a steppingstone” to standalone VR {hardware}, nothing that Steam Deck represented “battery-capable, high-performance horsepower that finally you would use in VR functions as properly.”

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Whereas a succesful, high-end standalone VR headset from Valve is actually one thing to salivate over, a number of massive questions stay: What’s going to occur when Valve opens Steam as much as standalone VR content material? How would the largely Meta-heavy ecosystem react as Steam turns into a brand new outlet for VR video games? And what if Valve’s headset is as an alternative able to enjoying some subsection of normal PC VR content material? We don’t know the reply to any of those questions, however with Valve’s continued curiosity in VR, we’re nonetheless fairly hopeful to search out out.