Valve announces SteamVR hardware system to demo next week

VR demos of the kit will be taking place at GDC in San Francisco
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Valve seems uncertain about the future of gaming judging by the past few years - is it all about augmented reality? VR headsets? Steam machines? But no matter what the company behind the Steam platform decides on, we want a slice of that action.

Read this: The best VR and AR headsets

And now we have a tease of what to expect from Valve at GDC 2015 (Game Developers Conference) next week. It will show off a "previously unannounced SteamVR hardware system" as well as living room devices and a refined Steam controller.

This SteamVR system will no doubt be built on the prototype VR headset that Valve showed off to developers in 2014. At the time, the headset was just a concept but it has Oculus-like features including head-tracking.

It's still not clear that Valve will end up selling a SteamVR headset itself but its call for game creators sounds promising. If it does, SteamVR will no doubt compete with the Oculus Rift at the high end of gaming VR headgear (rather than say the more mainstream Gear VR). That's with Valve having already helped Oculus integrate the Rift with Steam.

Valve posted the note previewing the announcements on its Steam store and invited "content creators", developers and publishers, to get in touch about SteamVR Dev Kit demos at GDC which opens on 2 March at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Head back to Wareable for all the full details of Valve's VR plans once the conference kicks off.

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Sophie was Wareable's associate editor. She joined the team from Stuff magazine where she was an in-house reviewer. For three and a half years, she tested every smartphone, tablet, and robot vacuum that mattered. 

A fan of thoughtful design, innovative apps, and that Spike Jonze film, she is currently wondering how many fitness tracker reviews it will take to get her fit. Current bet: 19.

Sophie has also written for a host of sites, including Metro, the Evening Standard, the Times, the Telegraph, Little White Lies, the Press Association and the Debrief.

She now works for Wired.


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