Valve considered making a new VR game for the Steam Frame, before tackling the "ludicrous" task of getting Half-Life: Alyx running standalone
Valve have sometimes – if perhaps not often enough to call it a grand old tradition – massaged interest in their hardware by pairing the kit with a new game.
Valve have sometimes – if perhaps not often enough to call it a grand old tradition – massaged interest in their hardware by pairing the kit with a new game.
The short version
- Why not make something new, even a smaller tech demo like ADJ or the Index’s own The Lab collection of Portal-themed minigames?
- According to Valve staff, several of whom I spoke to prior to the Frame’s Monday night launch , there were several reasons why a return to Alyx was considered more valuable – even though a brand new VR game was, at least briefly, on the table.
- "We had talked about things like that," said SteamOS developer Pierre-Loup Griffais.
What happened
"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. "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," Walker explained.
Why it matters
So many, y’know, bugs, performance things in the driver.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Rock Paper Shotgun via the links above and below.