Valve is "working hard" to replenish Index VR HMD stocks

by Mark Tyson on 15 January 2020, 15:11

Tags: Valve

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We are only two months or so away from the release of Half Life: Alyx. Valve officially announced the VR title on 21st November 2019, describing it as "a new full-length entry in the Half-Life series, built by Valve for VR". In the wake of that announcement demand for Valve Index VR headsets surged - as it will likely offer the best in-game experience in the highly anticipated title.

Valve's Index VR headset was revealed and became pre-orderable in May last year. On launch day Valve teased a first party "flagship VR game," sparking some speculation about new Half Life and Left 4 Dead games, of course. Despite its high end specs, and 'Fidelity first' ethos - beating out competitors in areas like display quality, FOV, and precise hand/finger motion controllers - the pricing of a full kit (over £919/$999) made many pause for reflection, without any killer app to inspire confidence.

RoadToVR has been watching the stocks of the Valve Index kits closely since the announcement of Half Life: Alyx. In brief, Valve's strategy of rekindling one of its cult franchises to propel sales of the VR hardware appears to have been more successful than it had expected.

Just a week after the announcement of Alyx, RoadToVR noted that US and Canada most Index kits were marked as sold out with a ‘Back in Stock Soon’ message in place of the order button. The UK's supplied were significantly impacted a day later with 4-8 day delivery times on all Index kits, and Italy was very close to being in the same position. Demand continued throughout December and more and more regions sold out while waiting times seemed to be moved further down the line.

As of 14th January, the stock levels of all Valve Index kits worldwide look exceedingly bleak - with only Japan having a few hardware morsels left to offer (but no base stations). Valve seems to have revamped its ordering pages with granular Index kit notification levels to prevent customer disillusionment. On the sales page it asserts that "We're busy catching up with demand". With this in mind RoadToVR reached out to Valve and got the following statement in return: "We are working hard to build more units and meet the high demand. We are targeting to be back in stock before Half-Life: Alyx ships."

If you are hoping to be playing Half-Life: Alyx as soon as it becomes available please note that Valve has confirmed the game will be compatible with all PC SteamVR headsets.



HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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Wow, people clearly have more disposable income than I thought.
Dashers
Wow, people clearly have more disposable income than I thought.

That's just what I was thinking. My PC's barely able to meet minimum VR requirements let alone do a good job… I could almost replace my whole machine with something medium to high end (Ryzen 3600 with 5600 GPU) for that sort of money.
If only the VIVE Cosmos had better reviews..
Dashers
Wow, people clearly have more disposable income than I thought.
And more than Valve thought too, from the looks of it…!
However, we have just had Christmas and (IIRC) a Black Friday/Cyber Monday thing, so maybe that's a factor?

cheesemp
That's just what I was thinking. My PC's barely able to meet minimum VR requirements let alone do a good job…
Mine will do alright, as I understand it, but remember that only my PSU and my w/c kit was brand new. Everything else inside my case was second hand, and at impressively low prices. The case itself was the payment for a job I did, as was the monitor, and my SSD was only funded as a result of someone failing to kill me with their car.
Point is, people don't always get the srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishiest top end kit brand new, or they scrimp in some areas so they can afford others. People also have other sources of income and funding that aren't necessarily ‘disposable’ in the official sense, from insurance claims to scratchcard wins, or just outright savings. I could just about buy one of these HMDs with what I have saved up over this past year, for example.
I was strongly considering buying one of these in the future, but I'm going to cancel Half Life Alyx now too.

Lost all faith in Valve. It's becoming more and more clear all those interviews
With debs and behind closed doors information was all true.