We haven’t heard anything about Valve’s new VR games in over a year now, but it still sounds like they’re coming.
PCGamer reports that, during a presentation on the company’s new digital card game, Artifact (which doesn’t support VR), Valve president Gabe Newell confirmed the studio was working on multiple new titles. “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us,” Newell said. “So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again.”
If you’ve been following the VR industry for the past year that shouldn’t really come as news; Newell revealed that Valve was making three VR titles for VR headsets in early 2017, though we still don’t know anything about them. We’re expecting them to be compatible with all PC-based devices, though, and not just the official SteamVR devices like the HTC Vive and LG’s unreleased kit.
While Newell didn’t specifically reference the new VR games, he did make a comparison to Nintendo’s control over both hardware and software that has made Valve “jealous” in the past.
“We’ve always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo,” Newell said. “When Miyamoto is sitting down and thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario, he’s thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things. And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he’s designing the software at the same time that’s really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we’ve been jealous of, and that’s something that you’ll see us taking advantage of subsequently.”
That control over both aspects makes us think of Valve’s upcoming SteamVR Knuckles controllers, which allow VR users to realistically grab objects. Could we see the company’s new VR titles take specific advantage of this feature?
As for what those VR games could be, well, do we really need to say?
