The Valve Index has now sold out across the entire United States and Canada, making it the second time this has happened since the launch back in May of 2019. This is coming only a week later of Valve’s announcement of Half-Life: Alyx. A game that is going to be best for and optimized for the Valve Index. This was one of the biggest VR announcements of the year.
Not only is the headset back-ordered, but a new note has been added to the full kit on the Steam Store. It noes that “delivery before December 25th cannot be guaranteed” due to “recent high demand” inside of both the Canada and United States Steam Stores. The other hardware that isn’t the full kit is still sold out, and is expected to follow the message of “Back in Store Soon” that has accompanied it for the last few days.
There weren’t any sales for the Steam hardware this past weekend, so getting sold out is simply a testament to how good their headset truly is. Some customers won’t be getting their headset until after Christmas, and they are taking the thousand-dollar splurge to get this headset in front of their eyes. The price tag is the largest on the VR consumer market right now for hardware, and the headset is still getting in front of people. It truly tells the story of making a premium product for a community and getting rewarded by selling out multiple times.
If the Oculus Rift S is the consistent Ford car in the headset community that is always running, the Valve Index is the Tesla of headsets. Not only is it reliable and consistent, but it possesses the sexiest and most sleek design out of all competitors. The Valve Index is also the best performing headset as well. There are plenty of similarities between the Tesla cars and the Valve Index.
Half-Life: Alyx is going to bring thousands of new people to virtual reality, and the numbers are already showing that. Whether these sales won’t be shown on the use of Steam until January or this month, we are certain that there is going to be a new crowd of people being introduced to virtual reality. The community is growing and the excitement for new and exclusive games from top studios is going to continue to be a driving force in generating buzz around this relatively small community.
Half-Life is a fantastic game, but it is going to be interesting to see how this game is going to be pulled off inside of a virtual reality headset. We know it is being built from the ground up for VR, but there is a lot of things that could go wrong in this pursuit of a great VR first-person shooter game. We already know that FPS games are hard to master in VR, but it usually isn’t the shooting that is hard to master in these games.
The way you move in this game, the locomotion system, is going to be what makes or breaks this game. Just like most great ideas for VR, being able to move properly is going to be the name of the game. There are three different ways that we have been told that we will be able to move, but until we have a chance to try them out first-hand, we are going to have trouble believing that they are going to be perfected. For more VR hardware and community updates, make sure to check back here at VRGear.com.
