Valve today announced that it’s bringing its wireless PC VR streaming software, Steam Link, to five more headsets from PICO and HTC. The company also plans to make it easier for headset makers to bring Steam Link to even more headsets in the future.
The News
Valve has released Steam Link on the PICO Store and HTC’s Viveport store.
Supported Pico headsets include the Pico 4 Ultra, Pico 4 (and 4 Pro), Pico Neo3 (and Neo3 Link). The first supported HTC headset is the Vive Focus Vision, and Valve says support will be added for the Vive XR Elite “later this year.”
Steam Link makes it easy to play PC VR games by allowing supported headsets to connect wirelessly to a PC on the same network. Users can then access their library of PC VR content through the SteamVR interface, and delve deep into the largest library of PC VR games, many of which aren’t available on standalone headsets, like Half-Life: Alyx (2020).
As part of the announcement of Steam Link launching on new headsets, Valve said it also plans to release a Steam Link APK so that “other hardware manufacturers [can] validate Steam Link support on their headsets.” That should mean that future headsets will be able to more easily add support for Steam Link with little to no involvement with Valve.
Valve also said the APK will “allow users of unsupported headsets to explore compatibility and available features,” which means modders and tinkerers might be able to tap into Steam Link’s capabilities even on technically unsupported headsets.
My Take
Steam Link was first launched on Quest 2 and Quest 3 back in 2023. It was an unexpected move, but reaffirmed Valve’s commitment to make SteamVR accessible to as many headsets as possible. Adding support for a new wave of headsets shows that the company, despite its often glacial pace, still wants to make SteamVR a great platform for developers, users, and headset makers.
Compared to typical corporate behavior, Valve’s focus on making SteamVR as widely accessible as possible is shown to be a priority even higher than selling its own VR headset. In fact, Steam Link is the reason that Quest 3 became my main PC VR headset over Valve’s own Index headset.
While Pico headset support had been rumored for some time, the announcement of the forthcoming Steam Link APK release wasn’t something I saw coming.
This should make it much easier for headset makers to enable Steam Link support on their headsets, perhaps without even needing a thumbs up from Valve. This move appears to be in anticipation of future Android XR headsets, the first of which are expected to launch before the end of the year.
And it sounds like users will also be able to get access to the Steam Link APK, which means people will be able to experiment with sideloading and modding onto other headsets.
It’s unlikely (since the APK is for Android OS), but there’s at least a chance that someone could reverse-engineer it and make a derivative version that works on something like Vision Pro. That remains to be seen and will depend heavily on how open Valve is with the Steam Link APK and associated developer documentation.
If you want an idea of where Valve’s broader VR strategy is likely headed—including future VR hardware—I wrote an extensive analysis of the company’s recent and rumored VR developments earlier this year.
