Three of the biggest companies in PC gaming, Valve, Microsoft and HP, announced that they are working together on a new VR headset. According to the headset’s Steam store page, it will become the new standard in VR. Not much is known at the moment about the headset. All consumers have to go on at this point is a hard-to-make out trailer showing the front of the device, and that it’s going to be called the HP Reverb G2. Even checking HP’s website yields the same description that was on the Steam store listing.
The HP Reverb was released in 2019 as “the new benchmark in commercial VR”
While the announcement of a new VR headset by some of the biggest developers sounds exciting, the teaser trailer raises a lot of questions. Questions about things like cost, compatibility, specifications, and release date are left to the imagination. The HP Reverb goes for $649, so the question is how steep the price for the G2 can get.
According to the listing, Reverb G2 will become “the new standard in VR”, but it doesn’t go into any specifics as to how. It’s also unclear how much input Valve and Microsoft will have on the device, and whether or not the Reverb G2 will use controllers similar to the Steam VR headset.
The Steam VR Index was Valve’s most recent foray into the VR market
Since all three companies have good track records for making VR headsets, it’ll be interesting to see what the Reverb G2 turns out to be. It remains to be seen if the G2 will be compatible with the upcoming Xbox Series X, since Microsoft’s console is the only major one that doesn’t have some sort of first-party VR support. For fans of VR, they’ll have to go with the “wait and see” approach to figure out if this headset will be worth giving a shot.
