Not sure what they are trying to achieve.
So at $1200 it comes with on-board compute and also targets SteamOS so you can play flat games in VR...not sure how much of a selling point that is.
It also could mean it likely can play Alyx pretty decently native? But what mobile hardware can achieve that right now? If that existed I'd imagine they'd just put a chip like that in a Deck 2, but it sounded like such a chip does not exist yet.
There is also a secondary rumor that project "HLX" which seems like an FPS project with heavy emphasis on physics/simulation is coming close to being done, so very well there could be a HL3.
Will HL3 be VR only? It could. Valve did not give any fucks about making Alyx VR only, they seem to be interested in experimenting and pushing the gaming genre forward, as Steam basically prints money for them at this point so they can take big risks or pursue projects with modest returns.
HL3 could also be a flat game with a VR extension, like like there is an HL2 mod that makes it feel almost native VR.
The reality is VR can't be carried by 1 company and $1200 is really for the super enthusiast market, so whether VR sinks or swims is not up to Valve.
A much bigger player in VR is Meta, and any moves they make has profound impact on VR and how many studios decide to develop for it. Thankfully Meta has been willing to BURN BILLIONS of dollars on their VR adventure, selling fairly decent headsets at cost (like Quest 3). It is after all an excellent PCVR headset.
Still very excited to see where they go with it, and seriously hope HL3 is not VR exclusive, though I'd enjoy it nonetheless.
I fully believe the Deck 2 will be able to play everything the Quest 3 can, power wise. It should even be stronger than that IMO.
The Quest 3 most likely could run Alyx, after seeing the Deck 1 run it at 60fps on VR headsets (albeit on potato mode), and I do think the Quest 3 is better suited to VR than Deck 1. Quest 3 can run the RE4 port at 120fps and over 4k res. I'm not sure how many games the Deck 1 could run at 120fps and 2160p, and again the Deck 1 runs Alyx, so Deckard could definitely run Alyx, Deck is pretty slow at this point, and the next round of handhelds should thoroughly trump it - as if the Ally X and others haven't already - they have.
I think the idea of a VR fork of Steam OS sounds pretty neat. SteamVR / Home is pretty antiquated IMO at this point, and if you've used a Quest 3 enough, the mixed reality / passthrough UI is just so much faster and more modern than Home. There's a lot they could add to the VR frameworks which it is currently missing if they do a relaunch with Deckard.
I'm definitely more excited to see this happening with a $1200 price point than a $300 one. Even if a lot of it gets eaten up by the lens and internal hardware powering it, it sounds like there's still plenty of money left to add some pretty unique things for VR. But we'll see!
If it takes $1,200 to do this right as a standalone, that's all right by me. I don't think they're trying to rip anyone off. This is going to be some nice stuff.
I think the only drawback is there's a lot of die-hard PC VR users who don't like wireless/native play, and would 100% use the device wired to a PC, so having $400 or more of hardware in it that they'd never use could seem a bit annoying? I dunno. Certainly I think it will have to show why someone should be buying a $1200 device for PCVR over spending 1/3 of that on an OLED PSVR2.
