Valve Explains Why Steam Frame Uses Half-Life: Alyx Instead of a New VR Game
The sci-fi FPS is included with the Steam Frame kit and can be played standalone on the device.
In case you missed it
In case you missed it
Valve
Valve has unveiled price for Steam Frame, its VR headset coming with controllers and a copy of Half-Life: Alyx, which will run as a standalone VR.
In a talk with Rock Paper Shotgun, the company explained why it decided to include the 2020 Half-Life VR title instead of creating some new title.
SteamOS developer Pierre-Loup Griffais shared that the developers considered such an idea but decided to focus on the compatibility with the existing Steam catalogue, and games from the platform's library can provide enough compelling experiences to introduce people to the Steam Frame. Griffais said the option with the titles already presented on Steam might already serve as a "good launching experience for most people because they maybe haven't played them yet."
"We decided to focus on just making sure the Steam catalogue as a whole would be a good experience, and trying to put most of our efforts into that compatibility. Because there's a tonne of existing experiences I think that can intro you to whatever side of the devices you're more interested in, right?"
Also, the process of bringing Half-Life: Alyx to the new device helped Valve focus on the functionality of the VR headset, as Valve programmer Robin Walker points out. He also shared that adapting Alyx to Steam Frame brought the team valuable experiences, and the "vast majority" of fixes caught during that process are applicable to other titles running on the headset.
"When you're building a new piece of hardware and there's a whole bunch of new software in that software stack, and there's drivers and all that sort of stuff, having a clear target is incredibly useful for you to make the tradeoffs."
Engineer Autumn Aston shared that it was worth to conduct that work because it helped the developers fix numerous issues.
"So many, y'know, bugs, performance things in the driver. It was like a great way to get everything like up to scratch for the whole [Frame] project."
Valve
Steam Frame is available in two options: the 256GB kit, priced at $1,059, and the 1TB kit, priced at $1,299. Pre-orders are organized via a lottery-style system. Valve stops accepting sign-ups September 17 at 10 AM PT; after that, buyers are randomly sorted into either the pre-order list or the waitlist. The first invites should be sent on September 18.
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