With some new comments from the developers of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve has not ruled out an eventual release of their upcoming VR game on non-SteamVR platforms, including PlayStation VR. However, they noted the game will launch initially for SteamVR only.
Speaking to PushSquare, designer Greg Coomer said that the “initial” release of the game will be “available for SteamVR only”.
“We believe Sony’s VR platform has been a huge success for the medium, and we assume that lots of Sony customers would love to experience this new chapter of Half-Life.”
Valve is not currently developing a PlayStation VR port of the game, “because we’re very focused on the initial release”, according to the comments, but at the same time they have “not ruled anything out”.
So while there’s nothing concrete that isn’t exactly a hard no.
There’s definitely precedent for Valve games on non-Steam platforms – The Orange Box (a collection of Valve titles including Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life 2) was available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Likewise, Portal 2 launched on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well, with the latter having heavy Steam integration and crossplay multiplayer with PC players too.
The VR market for consumers is of course early in its development and there are a lot of things that could change as we approach a new generation of consoles, with Sony’s PS5 slated for release in late 2020. We don’t expect a second version of Sony’s PSVR headset at the launch of the system but there are other ways the company could improve it without making an entirely new product. Could we one day see Half-Life: Alyx on Sony VR headsets? We certainly hope so, but for now you’ll need a PC VR headset and 12 GB of RAM to run the game when it launches in March 2020.
Would you like to see Alyx on PSVR? Let us know in the comments below.
