A smaller number of people willing to buy an expensive product can really add up, as Valve has found with its high-end Index headset. At the third anniversary of the headset’s release—despite its age and never-discounted $1,000 price tag—the headset has continued to rank among the 10 highest grossing products on Steam.

Valve has been pretty quiet about VR in the last year, but its first and only VR headset, Valve Index, has shown impressive longevity. The now three year old headset continues to been seen with regularity among the 10 highest grossing products on Steam, with only a slow decline in the long run.

That’s despite the $1,000 price for the Index ‘full kit’, and significantly cheaper options like HP’s Reverb G2 and Quest 2 which have immerged after Index was released.

Even with the incredible pace at which Quest 2 has ascended to become the most used headset on Steam, Index has has been incredibly resistant, managing to maintain a share of around 16% of all headsets used on Steam—hanging onto its place as the second most used headset on the platform.

Other headset makers haven’t been as resilient to the onset of Quest 2. HTC, for instance, has seen its share of headsets drop from around 28% to just 11% over the last two years.

Despite continued demand for Index, questions remain about Valve’s commitment to VR. The company’s VR efforts have significantly slowed, at least from the outside. However there’s hints and rumors that Valve is working on a next-gen VR headset.

The prior update, which tracked Index’s demand at its second anniversary, continues below.

Back in January Valve head Gabe Newell said that the company was “very much manufacturing constrained,” regarding its ability to meet the demand for the Valve Index headset. Even so the headset has managed to earn enough revenue to place it among the 10 highest grossing products on Steam for 50 weeks running, nearly an entire year.

That tracks with the headset’s clear success versus other headsets on Steam. Despite an exceptionally steep $1,000 price that has remained static since launch—and newer and more affordable alternatives—it has grown to become the third most used headset on Steam; second only to the much less expensive Oculus Rift S and Quest 2.

The original article, which discusses the caveats and takeaways of Index ranking among the best selling products on Steam, continues below.

Original Article (January 26, 2021): From a unit standpoint, it’s unlikely that the $1,000 Valve Index is selling all that many headsets compared to cheaper headsets like Oculus Quest. But from a revenue standpoint, the headset seems to be treating Valve very well.

Although Valve doesn’t share how much revenue individual products make on its platform, Steam does rank the top selling products, by revenue, each week. SteamDB maintains an archive of the weekly top 10.

With Valve Index supply ramping back up after supply disruptions, we can see that the $1,000 headset has been among the top five best selling products for 13 weeks running.

It’s worth remembering that the ranking is by revenue; to put things into perspective, each Index kit sold costs the same as about 17 games at $60 each. Still, it seems quite impressive that the headset’s revenue is ranking alongside some of the world’s best selling games. On certain weeks over its 13 week streak, Index has surpassed the weekly revenue of major games like Cyberpunk 2077Red Dead Redemption 2, and others.

Looking at the historical data, we can see how often the headset has permeated the top 10 best selling Steam products of each week, including eight separate weeks where it’s topped the charts at #1.

Given how infrequently Valve’s own Half-Life: Alyx has appeared in the top 10, we’d wager that the headset has earned the company far more revenue. Granted, profit is a different story; Valve isn’t believed to be making much profit from each Index sold, but still, a large revenue stream generated by the headset is overall a good thing for the company, as long as it’s breaking even or better.

While the headset’s placement among the top 10 best selling Steam products is certainly affected by the seasonal nature of major game releases, the long term look at the ranking likely also signals how the headset’s availability has fluctuated since release. We can see large gaps in the headset’s top 10 appearance for 6 weeks right after its release in mid-2019, as well as a 12 week gap at the start of 2020, and a 4 week gap in mid-2020.

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In a recent interview with New Zealand’s 1 News, Valve head Gabe Newell explained how the Coronavirus pandemic hampered the company’s ability to meet the demand for the headset.

“We actually have components that are manufactured in Wuhan [where the outbreak began] and when you’re setting up your manufacturing lines it doesn’t occur to you that you’re suddenly going to be dependent on this peculiar transistor that’s sitting on one board that you can’t get,” Newell said.

“[Everyone who builds electronics] ended up running into the same problem simultaneously—you go from, ‘Oh, we’re in great shape,’ to, ‘What do you mean Apple or Microsoft just bought the next two years’ supply of this just so they could make sure they aren’t going to run out?'”

“You went from a situation where everything was getting done just in time to people buying up all the available supplies.

“[…] we’re very much manufacturing constrained.”

While the company indeed struggled to keep up with demand in 2020, supply appears to be picking up rapidly as 2021 gets underway.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • area51

    Be surprised if they have broken even and not lost money on Index. It’s sold directly to customers, eliminating the middleman, not to make extra profit but probably because there isn’t enough margin for regular retailing through distribution and retail stores.

    Then all those warranties are not inexpensive, currently RMAing another controller after trigger failed; the replacement will be my 16th controller since launch…add in 2 headsets, 2 tethers, 5 ear speakers… safe to say they lost money on mine, and because it’s been faulty 1/3rd of my ownersiof course I haven’t been confident buying more software titles…

    • asd

      I use my index every day rigorously for development for over e year now and have only had one drifting thumbstick….. whatever you are doing, its you whos causing these issues. wtf are you doing to go through that much hardware?????
      are your kids using it when youre not around? are you running into walls? wtf

      • Cless

        Same here, and not only that, but my unit is one of those “early rushed” ones that are supposed to fail even more.

    • I’ve only had mine since March but no issues so far.

    • wheeler

      16th controller? I don’t know how some of you pull this off (assuming you’re even telling the truth).

      I’m on a launch Index which I use every day. Only problem I’ve had just occurred recently with the left controller’s joystick drifting, which I fixed myself quite easily for just $10. The only real precaution I take is avoiding using the joystick click.

  • MosBen

    I sold my Rift CV1 a few weeks back, and I’m thinking about selling my Quest 1, though that would leave me without any VR gear at all. My plan this year was to upgrade my GTX 1070 to something a bit more modern and then upgrade my VR gear. But considering that I’m not going to be able to buy a graphics card any time soon, I’m wondering if I should skip straight to buying a new VR HMD or just commit to waiting for whatever the next generation of headsets is. The Index is getting close to 2 years old, which starts to feel like it’s going to be time for Valve to start talking about a new version at some point this year, with a release in 2022. Or, if Valve doesn’t do a new HMD, then someone will put out an HMD that well and truly eclipses it. The Reverb G2 has some compelling screens, but still seems like it falls a bit short of fully surpassing the Index.

    I’ve considered a Quest 2, but frankly the Facebook integration is a big negative for me, and while the hardware is more powerful than the Quest 1, it doesn’t seem like as big of a leap as I’d like. Sure, the screens are better and the refresh rate is better, but you’re still ultimately having a fairly similar experience with the same games. My hope is that someone other than Facebook puts out a good portable HMD that I can pick up, otherwise I’m hoping that the Quest 3 has a wide FOV.

    • I know this is 7 months old, but I found myself in a similar boat to you (and am still that said boat). With the recent patents that were made public adding to the bevy of patents valve has released in recent years, it seems like the next Index will have some kind of markerless inside-out tracking that’s also backwards compatible with lighthouse.

      Pair that with the release of Steam Deck and Valves statements on the compute being up to the task of standalone and I don’t think it’s too out of left field to think Valve might be building toward a standalone headset.

      Fingers crossed for me. As long as my Quest keeps up, I think I can hold out a couple more years.

      • MosBen

        The sad reality is that while I’m still interested in VR and follow this site every day, my actual use of VR has dwindled. I still haven’t been able to upgrade my graphics card, and I still haven’t seen a new HMD that really compels me to buy it. I do still have my Quest 1, but my general feelings on Facebook’s control of VR have soured me on it. And also, realistically, my Quest saw the most use when I’d have friends over to the house for parties where we’d play VR and have the games streamed onto the big screen TV, and that’s not something that has happened in the last year and a half. I do want to get back into VR, but I feel like I’m waiting for something that will let me take a step forward from where I was in 2017, and unfortunately it just hasn’t come.

        • Stefan

          My feelings, exactly! I have preordered the DG1, but don’t expect it to be a huge improvement over Quest 1, more a way to get away from Facebook while having a slight upgrade in image quality. Hopefully.

  • Good to know it is selling well

  • Dj Arcas

    Highest grossing, not ‘best-selling’

    • benz145

      Thanks, that’s a more concise way to put it! Steam uses the terminology of ‘Top Selling’, but I think your suggestion is clearer.

    • LoL, good one!

  • Dj Arcas

    “The joystick is diminutive (poor quality too) and cannot handle adult hand loads especially in VR”

    I mean… be more gentle…

    • Cless

      He doesn’t have a picture on his profile. But I bet he probably is a 150kg hunk of a man made out of pure muscle, and that is why this puny controllers can’t even dream to withstand lasting more than a month under his normal usage.

  • R315r4z0r

    I haven’t had any technical issues with my Index, though I haven’t used mine extensively, but it does have a few hours of play on it. The thing is, I really, really, really do not like the controllers. They are very uncomfortable on my wrists. It feels like they are oriented so the angle that they “point” at isn’t the same as the angle that you’d point your fingers in. Basically, they have this outward tilt that forces you to strain your wrists outwardly in order for them to be angled the proper way. And, no, it isn’t an orientation or sensor issue because the virtual depiction of the controllers in VR is perfectly accurate to their actual positioning.

    My normal resting position for my wrists would have the controllers pointing at an inward angle. So, my right wrist would have like a 30-40 degree angle to the left and my left wrist would be the same just to the right. So in order for me to play a game like Beat Saber, for instance, I have to flair my wrist outward like Spider-man shooting a web just angle the saber straight. It gets really uncomfortable after about 15 minutes. Even navigating menus or using a virtual keyboard is a pain.

    • kebo

      Try adjusting the pads! Just push them slightly inside the controller and you can move them.

      For me the controllers fit 100% perfect and are the best solution for years to come.

    • I feel this is the case with most VR controllers other than Oculus’ ones, which have a really natural angle for me. It’s just a shame that many developers still lineup the guns in their games to match the terrible Vive original controllers rather than the vastly superior Oculus controller design and angle.

      • SomeGuyorAnother

        It’s definitely still lingering preferences from the Vive controllers, simply ’cause they released controllers first and hardcore players preferred the more precise tracking. Not even certain if there are defaults built into the VR implementations of Unity and Unreal.

  • oomph2

    I am still waiting to buy
    whenever they make a specs like lightweight one
    and instead of controllers , they should have gloves(with rings)

    • Cless

      You will be waiting then… forever I guess.

  • Norbert Kiss

    One of the base stations broke down after purchase:D
    Three days after the thumbstick…The controller was replaced five times in 2 years, for my friend 7 or 8 times,
    many of my friends are 3-4 times…
    and the valve will not be replaced after the warranty expires!
    I am very glad I sold it early:D
    After 12 headsets, it was the first to beat cv1 in terms of errors

    • Cless

      Well, I was the people getting the first batch of index controllers… And mine are fine, just like any other person I know so… Yeah, anecdotes are pretty worthless because of that exact reason.
      I do know that there is people with many issues, the fact that you and your friends are getting really bad luck is probably the exception, and not the norm. (that, or you are doing some crazy stuff you aren’t supposed to do with the hardware lol)

      • 3872Orcs

        First batch owner as well and my right controller developed drifting issues the first year of use. Yes that’s anecdotal but even Valve has acknowledged the drifting issues with the controllers and made sure the quality is much better on the Steam Deck sticks.

        • Cless

          Yeah, it is an issue, never said it wasn’t. But happy customers don’t complain on the internet… so we don’t hear about all the thousands that are perfectly okay with it.

          • Fanboy ATTACKS!

            Seriously, just because YOU didn’t have a problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Don’t dismiss other’s issues.

            And how many “Friends” do you really have with Indexes? Out of the dozens of people I know, I only know two with any VR headset at all. Since both are Quests, by your reckoning “Everybody I know uses Quests”.

            You talk about “Anecdotal” like it doesn’t apply to you.

          • Aeroflux

            Every count for a working Index has just as much value as those who do not have a working Index.

            Now when someone posts that all they’ve ever had is problems, that’s plausible. When all their friends have also had issues? Starting to sound like a one-way street down flameville. This is one guy claiming that Index is nothing but problems.

            I have a launch Index. I have never had a single issue, aside from the clicking range of the joysticks…and that isnt a problem for me. Count for working Index +1.

          • Cless

            Anecdotal applies to me, that was the whole point of my argument and comment. Anecdotal evidence is worth shit.
            Also, literally the first sentence of the comment yo answered to ACKNOWLEDGES the issues, so what the hell are you even talking about?
            You just needed a place to rant and chose my comment randomly by half reading it then proceed to strawman it?

      • Andross

        actually your anecdote just like the other with no issues IS in fact worthless, doesnt matter how few people with index issues are, even a person that has a single friend that for coincidence have the same issue worths much. But most of all, because we are not talking about the problem itself, but it0s about the shitty support that Valve gives us.

        just to add something, we can talk about Oculus too, i bought a CV1 before the S announcement because they was nothing in the air, i had tio replace 4 times the touch controllers just because of that rubber pads shitting glue that has never been changed. and last but not the least, they abbandoned it in less than a year from my purchase. Because no, if you are selling it a product that is the only one in that time, you can leave it alone just because it’s “old” and you launch it a new one shouting “suprise idiots!”.

        • Cless

          The fact about my anecdote being useless is exactly my point, all are.

          Also, I think that if Valve gave them 12 fucking replacements, its pretty amazing, most companies would tell you to fuck off after just 2 or 3, since 99% of the times, at that point is the users fault (not for this case specifically though).

          And yeah, you got basically fucked because Oculus got bought by Facebook. If you look into it, you can find the story of how they dropped the “real Oculus 2” they were working on and just asked a different company to adapt a WMR headset tech to theirs. Sad you got into that, it definitely is not fair.

          • Andross

            so the first stastement doesn’t make sense, because the bad experience, and most of all the experiences with support dept., matters absolutely. your anectode is useless not because it’s rare (hope not) but because as I already told this has to be in the large percentage of products: they need to work. nothing more.

            as a person that work with support, i had some experience that could explain the valve and oculus method: replacing tens of times a products with mediocre refurbished ones is still more profitable than having a more expensive Reparing Dept. it’s a thing adopted by many companies in this last year. the important point is that a considerable number of user that have issues just surrender and stop asking for a repair, because doing this requires time and money too. it’s my example, after a bunch of times i stop ask for replace and repaired the touch myself. pretty rare in my experience, many people just give up.
            So it’s not amazing what Valve did, it’s part of the procedure and avoid some legal trouble (I had a case with a support refused, it ended with the company that had to pay).

            At last, bad multiple experiences even of a single person (like me or the other user) tells much about how many defectable products are distributed. the fact that after different changes still have the same issue, tell that the percentage could be higher than expected. some percentages of issues are intolerable, but of course we can’t know the rough numbers.
            so, the important value in this case is always the bad experience, even the ones with “suspected user fault” (that most company still consider a failure for itself). this is one of the best instrument of companies to balance customers satisfaction.

          • Cless

            That is not the reason why my anecdote is useless. My anecdote is useless BECAUSE it is an anecdote. ALL anecdotes without exception, yours, mine, and your neighbors, are the worst kind of proof you can bring to the table, 99% of the cases they mean absolutely anything for the overall picture and most of the times, they are actually detrimental to the conversation that its being had (specially when we are trying to be as objective as possible like we are here).
            So it does in fact, make sense.

            I agree that having a Repairing Department is expensive, but I almost prefer having sent new stuff to me, even with a very low % chance of it being defective again, than do like most tech companies do (like apple for example) and have the shittiest and cheapest possible repairing department, when half the times they send something back is in worst condition, or it breaks down completely after just a few months of use.

            If the levels where as bad as you mention, we would see article after article in the gaming press about how absolutely terrible their hardware is, so no, it is not, think about it when it happens with a console that MS or Sony fuck up.

            It is not excellent, I’ll give you that, damn, its not even good. But its good enough.

            Needing 1 replacement with valve hardware is relatively common. Needing 2 is rare. Anything over that starts getting into bizarre and really unlucky territory. But I guess some people do win the lottery, and some others get a lightning to fry them dead.
            This is the same.

          • Andross

            pretty hard for me to accept even a single experience with a multiple replace with defective product, as exdperienced by the user above with valve and with me with Oculus. your assumption is just based on positive experience, but in most of the cases the bad experience as I said have values, even the user’s fault ones. the good are just the standard. i understand your opinion but i highly doubt that Valve support works differently from the others in term of rule. a bunch of experience are enough to understand them, pretty hard that can happen so much errors at the same person.

    • johann jensson

      The Nr.1 reason why i never was interested in the Index after launch. Shitty reliability and no longevity. Mediocre engineering, and cheap parts used in the controllers. The reports from Anthony (VR365) and ThrillSeeker just reinforced my opinion further.

      The day i’ll trust Valve with hardware is yet to come. []-)

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    • PK

      my warranty ran out and they recently replaced my headset, without me having to fight for it, which i thought was great of them. and while i have issues with some of the design, the build quality was decent, other than mysteriously not working suddenly after owning it for a while.

  • OK but how many products does Valve actually sell anyway? I’d kinda expect it to be top to be honest.

    • Caven

      Steam has tens of thousands of games on it. That’s why its revenue is being compared to games like Cyberpunk 2077 and GTAV.

      • Well, if this is including the games then okay, but is it really. . . .

        • Caven

          Yes, it is. Not only is there a screenshot in the article showing that fact, there’s also a link in the article that takes you directly to the source of the data for independent verification. As of the time of this reply, the Valve Index is in 6th place, just behind Destiny 2.

          Battlefield V currently occupies the top spot.

  • wheeler

    People always talk about how impressive it is that FB controls 60% of VR headset marketshare on Steam. But I don’t see why it’s all that impressive that hardware priced artificially low (to the extent that it is pushing others out of the consumer market) is dominating. That’s not impressive–rather, that’s to be expected. The only other worthwhile-ish consumer PCVR headset available right now is the Reverb G2 at twice the cost of the Quest 2. Rather than expanding over time as the medium grows, the consumer PCVR hardware market is thinning out due to artificially low price points destroying the low to mid range market.

    What’s truly impressive is that a $1000 enthusiast headset commands ~16% of market share in this context.

    • ViRGiN

      Lmao, talk about being blinded by valve. Steam deck is artificially cheap. It’s destroying an entire mobile pc market.

      • Cless

        Lol, didn’t you downvote me up there when making exactly the SAME argument, but for Facebook and the Quest 2? Talking about double standards jeez…

        • ViRGiN

          There isn’t a single Quest 2-alike device out there, except for the very recent Vive Focus or something, that is still sold to businesses only, but you can get one as a consumer.
          Meanwhile, PORTABLE PC in handheld form were sold for years, both from kickstarters, and straight out of chinese companies. For way more than what Valve is offering. Valve is DESTROYING THE MARKET BY SELLING MORE POWER FOR CHEAPER, while with VR, there is STILL NOT A SINGLE DEVICE DOING EVEN 25% OF QUEST 2, NO MATTER THE PRICE RANGE.

          • Cless

            Oh man, the fanboy is hard in you, I’m pretty sure you were projecting hard before by calling me that.

            I really don’t care about Valve in itself, I’m not going to buy any of their hardware either (except for the index controllers that I already bought because they are unique).

            Now, I’m just going to use your own argument against you. Valve is doing what consoles are doing in their own markets, they sell at a loss that they make up later by selling games. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and any other console/pc (let’s not kid ourselves, they are all pcs nowadays) are welcome to do the same.
            So again, why is it wrong for Steam to do it when consoles do get to get away with it?

            “There isn’t a single Quest 2-alike device out there” And then you follow that with the vive focus… 3. You kind of forgot this is not the first iteration of that product, or that the previous one was oriented to consumers. Not to say you are completely ignoring the Chinese market where there are more than one headset with similar specs to the Quest 2. So… yeah.

            “Facebook is DESTROYING THE MARKET BY SELLING MORE POWER FOR CHEAPER!” we could say, but your logic is just flawed.

            The reason we don’t see competition against the Quest 2 is, because they could build a Quest 2 replica, but it would easily have to be sold at more than 50% over what the Quest 2 costs so… yeah, they are welcome to try. We won’t see any small company try, it needs to be the big/medium companies that already have experience that need to try.

          • ViRGiN

            I’m only responding by “attacking valve” cause people totally don’t see it when they do the same as Facebook. I’ve been advocating for years for Oculus, because they were always the only, not one of, but the only actually working on vr. They are where they are now, because of their extremely hard work. Htc, valve, hp, Samsung – they all have done nothing, and they are all huge companies. Not fb size, but that doesn’t mean they can’t compete. They simply don’t believe in vr that much, Facebook does as a long term strategy. It’s not a monopoly because nobody else picks up a fight.

            Not even Valve invested into vr developers, and they have exclusive monopoly on pc gaming market. Why would they deserve any praise for doing literally nothing? Deck is a clear view what their goals are. Nobody buys pcvr games in great numbers. It’s a dead platform.

          • Cless

            To be fair, yeah, both are companies, and they mostly only care about money. But if I have to choose what company is best to their customers… I’ll say Steam until I go hoarse.
            There aren’t many companies out there worse than Facebook, and most people know that, that is why is so “automatic” for Facebook.

            Also, Facebook cares about social VR only because by getting this early in, they can get an easy monopoly after, and it will cost them 4 quarters, that and to protect themselves from a different company becoming the “social network VR” that would eventually fight with Facebook.

            Also, damn man, you don’t know that the original Oculus team was HEAVILY helped by Valve when doing VR? When Oculus started working on stuff, Valve was experimenting with it for quite a while too, so I don’t know where the hell you get your info.
            Valve doesn’t care about VR developers because… valve doesn’t care about ANY developers. If not, you would see them doing the same thing that Epic does paying for games to go to their platform, but they are quite neutral about it instead, so its not like they “have it out for VR” more like the opposite. Also… you realize that “Steam VR” is developed by Valve, correct?
            And about the deck, I agree, they don’t deserve any praise, its nothing more than a portable console made with PC parts. Nothing impresive about that. But they will be the first big company to do that instead of “4 dudes with a kickstarter”, that is why its all over the news.

          • ViRGiN

            I know valve helped. But they had no interest making hardware. Palmer sold his company overnight, and valve got jealous and partnered quickly with htc and released Vive even shortly before cv1. But that’s it – they have clearly shown lack of long term interest. Also fun fact, back in 2016 valve said hardware will get cheaper.. and it never did. Every product after Vive for vr, is only more expensive than before.

          • Cless

            Not quite… Valve is not interested in making hardware, exactly, they are “forced” because they want the market to move forward, that is the whole reason they partnered with HTC and not Oculus! Well, also because if I remember properly their offices where in like the same building or super close together, which was very convenient lol
            After they saw that HTC didn’t know what they were going their own fucking way, and only then, they started doing their own stuff.

            How did they lie…? You can buy VR headsets for as low as $300 bucks nowadays that will be decent enough. Of course top of the line VR is going to keep being expensive.
            Smartphones are as expensive as they’ve ever been, but will you tell me that they have NOT become cheaper? Even when you can get one for like $150 that does 60% of what the top of the line does?

          • ViRGiN

            We are purely discussing valve vr products that were supposed to be cheaper. Search for valve lighthouse cheaper 2016. 5 years passed, valve released 1 tech demo, 1 game, 1 new generation of lighthouse and new controllers, and that’s all their vr achievements. I’m never gonna bank on them to be the leaders in vr/ar. I don’t know why you felt telling me smartphones are cheaper now, how is that relevant? Valve talks a lot and do very little. Remember the brain interface? The technology so great and advanced, that you can tune your mood with a single button… But yet nobody every tried it, and valve doesn’t want to show it just yet cause of some extra tellestial reasons. Purchasing anything valve is like stepping into gamers circlejerk. Having a Facebook account to use a headset is so bad.. gives me flashbacks to half life 2 release, having to make steam account, install steam app, and be always online. How the tables have turned, not steam is glorified haha

          • Cless

            Yeah… they are not a hardware company, you shouldn’t bank on them to be leaders in VR at all. They don’t want to be that either, that is why they want to push the market, so others start making shit.
            You weren’t very clear of what time you were talking about in your argument, so I misunderstood you and thought you were talking about that other time Valve said that, in the future, VR would be cheaper. Not about the very specific one time comment of the lighthouses becoming cheaper. In that context my argument makes perfect sense.

            Also, of course they are not going to show it, they are experimenting with things, just like VR was an experiment for them and didn’t show it until it was many many years in. Just because they are not releasing it like 2 years after you heard about it, doesn’t mean they aren’t working on it or that the potential isn’t there. And BCI isn’t even that new or revolutionary of a technology, I was using it back in 2010 in game developer shows, and it was quite interesting back then already.

            Steam is glorified because they basically singlehandedly resurrected the whole PC market and killed most of its piracy by giving a easy to access service that people want to pay for. Like they’ve said correctly, piracy is a service problem, not a price problem.
            And excuse me if I don’t believe Facebook is in any way comparable to Steam, not even the earlier one, no matter how much you want to put it in the same level, its been 20 years, get over it, the world has changed since, and so has technology.

            And again, I’m not saying that Valve is the second coming of Christ or anything, they are a regular business like any other, and sometimes they suck hard. But Facebook isn’t a regular business. They have proved time and time again being the worst of the worst companies have to offer.

          • ViRGiN

            I heard about competition being great ever since DK2 started… truth is, there never was one. Either you got a VIve 1 or CV1, based on features available (Vive didnt have audio, shipped with controllers, CV1 the opposite). Vive users did not even have an option to upgrade their outdated controllers until 2 years ago, for a hefty price for something that is barely supported by software (despite 3+ years of prototyping and sending them to developers). And it’s not much of an upgrade when you just keep stacking hardware, there is no use for old controllers, you can’t give them to someone to start enjoying VR, the only people that would be interested are pimax users who still to this day don’t have controllers of their own.

            WMR headsets from HP, Samsung and others were never an ‘competition’ – it was simply for those who couldn’t afford a proper options. I think only with G2 people were consciously choosing it because “resolution”, and those are mainly sim players.

            Valve wanted more companies to produce SteamVR headsets/accessorries – but it’s a complete failure. There is basically nothing outside Vive/Index and Pimax (company that not even Steam acknowledges and refuses to add support in their game store). The technology was so great that nobody actually used it. Same with HTC trackers.

            I have nothing bad to say regarding Facebook – how could I? After all, I just have an account there, I don’t post to social media, I don’t upload selfies, I don’t like fanpages, I’m not checking the wall. Never ever I saw any advertisments from them either, since they are all in facebook.com which I never visit. Facebook isn’t here to blame – people are. People made what services like FB, Twitter, Twitch are today. I’d be more afraid of Google that is present all over the internet.

            I don’t believe in BCI in any form Valve has recently discussed for the next 10 years or even more. It’s more of an abstract thing than reality. Just because you used in 2010, doesn’t mean a huge progress has been made. That’s exactly like omni treadmills – lots of time passed, no significant progress has been made – but if you were to look into the companies that are selling it, obviously they paint a much better picture.

            Hand tracking existed in like early 2010s, forgot the name of the company, but you could attach it even to a headset. Cool gadget, but since no software, it was totallly obsolete.

            I love my Quest 2. Tech is perfect enough, I’m only waiting for true polished content that is yet to be seen. Nothing to do with fanboying or shilling for Oculus – I went through all these years and I’ve seen what each player did (not).

          • Cless

            Damn man, let’s agree to disagree.
            I can’t barely agree with a sentence there, and I’m usually quite agreeable. I don’t have time to answer you right now since its 3am here, but I’ll get back at you tomorrow.

  • xyzs

    I wonder why this product still cost that much…
    When it was released why not, but today, that’s absurd to put that much money in the Index.
    It’s like buying an iPhone 8 for 1000$.

    • Very true, I just did a check, and the Quest 2 has higher resolution. What’s that down to now? $300 for the 128GB version?

      • Cless

        You mean the heavily subsidized Facebook headset that is sold at a loss? Yeah that one makes for a good example.

        • shadow9d9

          They sell it the exact same way consoles do. And valve makes its fortune by steam, so could easily do it as well.

          • asdf

            no they dont sell like consoles they reduced the price knowing hat they can make up for it with analytics and ads. consoles dont do that

          • shadow9d9

            Many consoles throughout history have been sold at a loss. There have been no ads thus far.

          • Cless

            I never said they didn’t!
            Also, Valve is technically doing it. We do know they sell them basically at cost, at least last time I checked, If that is so, they are taking all the RND cost of a whole decade with it.

    • Daniel Gallo

      Your analogy doesn’t add up. the reason an iphone 8 isnt a grand cause every year they release a new Model which keeps its price. but every year we get a new model an features.

      but i do agree Index is the same, no new features, just a new assembled headset from 2019s Design.

    • Charles

      Given inflation, the actual cost has gone up significantly.

      • Sven Viking

        Inflation means $1,000 is worth less than it used to be, so if anything it’d be a lower cost now.

  • Kinda seems like so-so demographics if you ask me. HTC is still shown holding a sizable share, and I know it’s not from huge Cosmo sales. That has to be legacy VIVE’s. The Index is a niche in a niche. The real sizable new VR Headset sales are under the “Facebook” chunk, in Quest 2 sales. That chunk should be much, MUCH larger, if new headsets are being adopted at a good rate.

    What I’m seeing is a market that is growing very slowly and still constrained by old hardware. Alot of VR users aren’t upgrading. HTC shouldn’t BE on that list if the market was more active.

  • TechnoHunter

    Ya…. No, the controllers break after a year or less under regular gameplay and the cost of the headset needs to go down. I would say that the 1000 price tag is too much for premium VR and that has got to change. Even though the technology is amazing and feels awesome, the cost is just going hinder VR users from expanding into VR sooner. The Quest 2 even though controlled by Facebook (big brother IOI) is going to be the most used headset. Sigh, can’t we just get genuine premium VR headset without the downsides?

  • shadow9d9

    A 2019 era wired vr, stuck with the dying pcvr market, where no one is funding vr games.

    • david vincent

      And where no on can buy high-ends GPUs… (Bitcoin is cancer)

      • Hazmat

        A good kinda cancer!

        • david vincent

          Useless and super-polluting

      • Charles

        Well at least it drives massive GPU sales, which should give the researchers more money to develop better products a bit sooner, right?

        But yeah, I think Bitcoin is dumb.

        • david vincent

          Well cryptos are crashing now and the market is flooded with used GPUs (I see some GTX 3070 sold at 450€ here).
          But it’s just the beginning, let’s wait a few more months and prices will be ridiculously low (new GPUs are coming and cryptos are switching to proof-of-stake).

    • Charles

      I still think the late-2018 Samsung Odyssey+ is best overall.

      But late this year it will finally be superceded by something much better overall: PSVR2. Just hope it can be hacked to work well with SteamVR.

      • Roadrunner

        Pico Neo 3 Link is the new value-for-money winner, even if the software is still in beta.

        • Charles

          Hmm… high resolution, but it’s TFT LCD and makes no mention of having a dynamically-adjusting backlight. Probably can’t believably portray dark environments, and makes bright environments dull.

          • Roadrunner

            OLED suffers greatly from Mura. I had 2 Rift Cv1s and 2 Quest 1 Headsets and all of them had to struggle with Mura. LCD doesn’t have such great black levels, but I can live with that because the colour consistency from pixel to pixel is better.

          • Charles

            Hmm, are you sure? The RoadToVR article on that headset lists the specs, and says “SFR TFT LCD”. SFR means super fast response, but it says TFT.

            I’ve owned several OLED headsets. I’ve never seen mura on any of them, except when trying to display mostly-black screens (but that’s much easier to get used to ignoring than mid-gray blacks). Maybe you meant SDE? The original HP Reverb had mura, but that’s LCD.

  • Rafael

    Why nobody bothers to say that iPhones are expensive?

  • 144Hz

    The valve index has better tracking and controllers than the other headsets.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      The Vive Pro and it’s wand controllers are just as good. I even use the wand controllers more than the index controllers as a lot of game just don’t work properly with them.

  • jj

    Ive used my index and knuckle controllers every single work day for the past 4ish years and its been flawless.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    I hardly use the index controllers which I bought for my HTC Vive Pro as ut seems a lot of game still work better or even only with the original Vive wands. Funny thing is, I was looking to buy Half Life Alyx this weekend as it’s half price, but then I noticed it was already in my library. I guess they added it automatically when I bought the controllers, but I never got a notice it was added to my library, haha, so I could have been playing Alyx already for more than half a year.

    • Juan Ritz

      Oh man, I’m happy for you and the journey you have ahead.

  • tc tazyiksavar

    I would just buy a clean second hand Index rather than paying the full official price. Eithe way, I don’t thing Valve is making money out of this. Why not to subsidy it further to increase market share? They have to come up with an advanced version of Quest 2 but at a reasonable price. Hope Deckard would do it!

  • Lulu Vi Britannia

    I honestly wouldn’t trust Valve’s figures about Valve’s headset. It sounds paradoxical, but this is a situation where the referee is a competitor too ; I wouldn’t be surprised if their algorithm were emphasizing their own hardware for surveys (thus artificially increasing their share in the market).

    What we need isn’t estimations, but actual figures. How is that allowed for companies to not divulge their official sales number????