Half Life Alyx: Will It Change VR Forever?

After 12 long awaited years, Valve has recently announced that there will now be a new release of a half-life title, entitled Half Life: Alyx, but unlike any other game Valve has produced – Half Life: Alyx will be exclusive in VR (Virtual Reality). With its expected arrival date March 2020, this opens up an array of new PC VR tech, that will hopefully change the views on the VR and the gaming industry at once. 

While some have questioned Valve’s lack of investment in VR – it is said that most successful game developers and businesses in the industry have been very frugal regarding their investments and team size. Not to mention, they have built in the VR Index Platform, headset, and controllers along the way. All this to say that Valve’s critique was a bit harsh.

With Valve’s SteamVR platform, Valve has made it easy to access with the support of nearly all PC VR headsets; With that said, Half Life: Alyx is compatible with the Valve Index, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest.

The HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Quest account for 82% of the Steam community, according to the new Steam Hardware Survey, another 5% was accounted for Windows Mixed Reality – thus  concludes that Half-Life supports nearly 87% of all Steam headsets.

Resulting to Valve’s own statistics, over 1% of all PCs surveyed, had VR headsets attached, seeing that Steam has 90 million active users worldwide, it brings in around 1 million headsets; which helps the expectancy of Half-Life: this year, will drive many users to invest in VR hardware. 

With Valve’s slow and steady approach for Half life: Alyx and index platform, the potential for this game will pay off; In addition, bundling the game for free is a great way for Valve to help support users with the best experience possible.

Compatible with Oculus Quest it ensures that it will hold an even larger amount of VR headset users, that can play on Steam and enjoy Half-Life: Alyx. With previous following years, PC VR has been in a slump, but with the results Half-Life: Alyx is  bringing in now; but, increase the sales of VR headsets and PC hardware and the potential future of the VR industry.