Home Valve’s next VR headset rumored to cost $1200 and launch this year

Valve’s next VR headset rumored to cost $1200 and launch this year

A known Valve leaker, Gabe Follower, has posted to X, formerly Twitter, about the often rumored next VR headset from the company. Codenamed Deckard, Gabe Follower claims that he’s heard from “several people” that it should be expected by the end of 2025.

They also mention that the full bundle will cost $1200 at launch. However, this should be offset by “”in-house” games (or demos)”. According to the leaker, this would still be sold at a loss by Valve.

Valve has been working on Deckard for some time. Since its first discovery, it has been routinely rumored or leaked thanks to intrepid data miners. The most recent leaks included reconstructed visuals for its controllers (dubbed Roy), as well as updates to the user interface for Steam VR that indicate an all-in-one device like the Meta Quest.

Deckard is Valve’s next VR headset

Valve, which runs Steam, appears to be gunning for Meta’s position in the gaming VR space. Rather than running Android, it will apparently run a version of SteamOS – Valve’s custom Linux distro – to allow users to hop into their available games library.

It is currently unknown what will power the Deckard headset. Recent tests by Valve indicate that it’s gearing up to support Arm chips through its Linux translation layer, Proton.

Proton is the special sauce that allows Windows games and applications to run like a native Linux app on Linux. If Deckard is powered by an Arm chip, we could see some serious movement in bringing inaccessible parts of gaming to the architecture properly for the first time.

Gabe Follower also claims one of the ideas is to allow users to access their Steam library on a “big screen” without the need for a PC. They also assume that demos for developers could be starting soon, however this appears to be pure speculation.

Valve has made no direct hints at Deckard, but hasn’t made any major VR moves in some time either. It launched the Index headset in 2019, and followed it up in 2020 with Half-Life: Alyx.

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Joel Loynds
Freelance Journalist

Joel Loynd’s obsession with uncovering bad games and even worse hardware so you don’t have to has led him on this path. Since the age of six, he’s been poking at awful games and oddities from his ever-expanding Steam library. He’s been writing about video games since 2008, writing for sites such as WePC and PC Guide, as well as covering gaming for Scan Computers, More recently Joel was Dexerto’s E-Commerce and Deputy Tech Editor, delving deep into the exploding handheld market and covering the weird and wonderful world of the latest tech.