We’ve known for some time that the long-rumoured Valve Deckard will supposedly be an entirely standalone VR headset, but now we have an idea of roughly how powerful it’ll be. The goggles are touted to run Half-Life: Alyx without the intervention of a gaming PC, although there might be a small caveat.
Tyler McVicker, formerly known as Valve News Network, says that “Steam Deck and Deckard are one in the same in terms of philosophy.” Both are portable devices that grant access to the majority of your Steam library (give or take) out of the box, provided you tinker with the settings to ensure it runs smoothly. And that’s the kicker. When it comes to Half-Life: Alyx, both he and I “would assume on lower graphics” rather than the full whack.
It’s not too surprising considering McVicker states it’ll run on an ARM-based CPU, much like Deck. With a lower power draw, this ought to keep battery life reasonable where a traditional x86 variant would drain it in minutes. The trade-off is that computational output isn’t quite on par with your usual desktop CPU, unless you’re talking about Apple’s M Series specifically.
Granted, it doesn’t take much to run Half-Life: Alyx from a raw specifications standpoint. An Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 gets the job done with 12GB of memory and a 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 in tow. Steam Deck’s custom Van Gogh APU already has similar muscle to an RTX 1050 Ti or RX 570, so it doesn’t require much tinkering to reach those minimum asks.
Still, it’s impressive to imagine you can take a SteamVR headset with you anywhere in the world without lugging a desktop behind you. It’s a one-of-a-kind feature that at least goes some way to justifying the rumoured eye-watering $1,200 price tag. More accessible standalone headsets, such as Meta Quest 3, still require a link cable to play Half Life: Alyx.
Some questions remain, such as how a truly standalone gaming VR headset will render standard 3D games. The YouTuber muses that it might take a stereoscopic approach, splitting the depth buffer between both eyes. We also still don’t know what lenses or tracking the goggles will use.
So far, it doesn’t look like Valve will launch Deckard with any form of flagship system seller, instead focusing on a handful of small-scale first-party games and at least one third-party title. McVicker states Half-Life 3, also known as HLX, won’t be one of them come its speculated Winter 2025 release date since it’s not a VR or hybrid game.
There were no further details on a potential launch date buried in the three-hour AMA, but should Deckard still be on track, we’ll see new Valve hardware at least announced by the end of 2025. Then, the team moves swiftly onto Steam Deck 2, which has me practically vibrating with excitement.
