// PC GAMER — GAMING
Valve had next-gen VR 'headsets ready three, four years ago and they were big, bulky devices' but went back to the drawing board after actually putting them on
The versatile Steam Frame's focus is "on being lightweight and being comfortable".
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The Steam Frame is here and it's one of the best VR headsets I've ever had attached to my face, just don't ask me about the price. But when we spoke to two of the people at Valve who helped create the device—Joy Lyons and Jeremy Selan—they told me the company actually had its new VR headsets ready years ago, but they made the tough decision to pull the plug on those designs.
"We had the headsets ready three, four years ago," Selan explains, "and they were big, bulky devices. They were more in the style of the Valve Index, and we put them on, and we're just like, this doesn't feel like what we would want the next round of our product to be."
We'd asked why now, why is this the right time to release a new VR headset? With sales dropping year over year and 2026 potentially being the worst year effectively since records began for PCVR releases, it doesn't necessarily seem like the perfect time to be putting out new virtual reality hardware, and that's before we even mention the memory and hardware pricing crisis.
"You asked, why now?" says Selan. "The answer with all Valve projects is 'as soon as we can'. Right, this was the soonest we could release the headset, but we had to make sure it was ready.
"The hardware engineers went back to the drawing board many, many times to finally achieve sort of the very small form factor, the comfortable, the lightweight. Figuring out all the system trade-offs with regards to power versus battery weight, versus cooling, and thermals. So this was absolutely the fastest we were capable of shipping the device that we were proud of.
"Now we thought that was going to be early 2026, and it turns out due to supply and component shortages and economics that in fact now was the soonest we could release it."
But it's not just about the hardware. As Valve engineer Joy Lyons notes, "The focus was on being lightweight and being comfortable", but while it's the hardware that makes that possible, all of the work Valve has been putting in with its previous releases on the software side have made this headset the one that actually gets released.
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