One thing gamers love: Rumors and speculating about what could be on the horizon.
This rumor, though, is quite a doozy (and probably nothing more than fantasy): It is being reported that Valve is apparently working on its own VR headset.
That alone isn’t shocking. Remember the Steam Box? Valve has traveled this road before, but those mixed results apparently didn’t scare the company away.
Their development of a VR headset would be great for the segment and a real vote of confidence for its future.
But that’s not all.
In fact, that’s probably the smallest detail in the whole rumor.
What has everyone’s tongues wagging today is that Valve is not only developing its own VR headset, but it is doing it alongside a virtual reality Half-Life title.
You read that correctly.
But to burst your bubble, it’s not Half-Life 3.
Apparently, the game in development is a prequel to Half-Life 2.
Regardless, fans are going nuts – either way. As to be expected, some people are wondering what in the heck Valve is doing releasing a prequel to a game that needs a sequel.
But from a business standpoint, it’s quite genius. What better way to launch your new VR headset than by also launching Half-Life VR?
A report from Variety alleges that images leaked to Eurogamer show a headset in development from the company. That alone isn’t enough evidence that Valve is developing its own headset.
Yet the images show the company’s logo on the hardware. That’s a pretty good sign.
As for the rumored development of a Half-Life game, itself probably the biggest news of all if it is true, the source of the photos is merely saying it is the case. There are no screenshots or anything else to corroborate that.
Nonetheless, as you can imagine, this news is taking the Internet by storm.
Released in 2004, Half-Life 2 is regarded by many as one of the best gamers of all time. Ending on a cliffhanger, fans have waited since then for some resolution to Gordon Freeman’s story.
Whispers of a Half-Life 3 title being in development have been with us for a long time. It would be classified as vaporware if it had given us anything to go on in the first place. As it stands now, though, there really isn’t anything out there so it isn’t a Duke Nukem Forever situation.
Valve can probably expect a little bit of backlash because of the title being a prequel rather than a sequel. We can’t imagine why Valve would choose to go down that road, but, either way, it is good for VR as a whole.
And maybe even a prelude of things to come? If Valve was waiting for the right time to bring Half-Life 3 and sees VR as the platform to do it on, imagine the kind of game we will be playing. That could be, to excuse the pun, a game changer for VR.
