Valve today confirmed to Road to VR that the company is planning a full reveal of Index on May 1st, accompanied by pre-order availability of both the headset and Knuckles controllers. The company says the actual release date of the headset and controllers will come some time in June.
Update (April 1st, 2019 – 2:16PM PT): Following the leak of the Steam product page for the Valve Index headset (detailed below), a spokesperson for Valve tells Road to VR that the information “while not comprehensive, is accurate.” The spokesperson also said that the company is targeting May 1st for a full reveal of the headset which will include pre-orders, with shipping planned some time in June (though the exact date is not yet confirmed). Knuckles will also be sold alongside Index, and Valve plans to call them “Valve Index Controllers” going forward.
Original Article (April 1st, 2019): Last week’s teaser reveal of the Valve Index headset came with very little information save for a single picture of the bottom of the headset with a tagline “Upgrade your experience. May 2019.” Now, an apparently leaked Steam product page reveals a new rendering of the headset and a release date of June 15th.
Twitter user Wario64 appears to have uncovered an official Steam product page for Valve’s Index headset; though the page has already been taken down, screenshots remain. As it’s April 1st, we’re on full alert for jokes and outright fakes, especially with regards to a highly anticipated product about which little official information has been released. However, SteamDB—a massive third-party database of everything in the Steam catalog—confirms the existence of the Valve Index page with the very same header photo, lending credibility to the authenticity of the screenshots.
- “Ships June 15th”
- “Displays. Optics. Audio. Ergo. Experience the infinite virtual worlds of Valve Index”
- Mention of pass-through camera feature
- GTX 1070 GPU “recommended,” GTX 970 “minimum”
The page also notes “Controllers, Base Stations, and PC required, suggesting that the headset will be sold on its own, which would be useful for users who already own controllers and Base Stations from their previous Vive purchase.
The render on the page also shows something curious—the big rectangular pocket in the front of the headset (seen also in previously leaked photos) still appears completely open, even if hidden behind the semi-translucent cover. It’s possible that this opening is filled in with some component which simply wasn’t part of this particular render, but it increasingly seems like the cover may be removable and the gap may be reserved for aftermarket add-on modules, especially considering the USB 3.0 port on the right side (spotted in the leaked photos).
It would be somewhat surprising for this to be the case, considering Index seems by all accounts to be a consumer focused product and not a development kit, but it may be Valve’s effort to future-proof the headset against VR’s rapidly changing sensor landscape.
A placeholder page for Valve’s upcoming Knuckles controllers was also spotted, though it contained almost no information beyond the fact that the page was titled ‘Valve Index Controllers’, which suggests that the company may drop the Knuckles name when it comes time to ship.