Gabe Newell thinks VR is 'a very long haul' for Valve, speaks on success of 'Steam Deck'

Gabe Logan Newell, the co-founder and president of Valve, recently spoke with Imagine Games Network on the occasion of the launch of Steam Deck. Steam Deck is Valve's new handheld gaming device which claims to deliver PC-like gaming performance. In the conversation, Newell says that Valve has always seen virtual reality as a long-term project. 

Virtual Reality in the early stages of development

In a conversation with IGN, the president of Valve said, "With VR our expectation is, it's a very long haul, and that there are fundamentally important technologies that are being developed, and if at any point you're narrowly defining the goalposts and saying 'how's that doing against the latest CS: GO update?' You're always going to end up making bad decisions based on that." Adding to it, Newell also speaks about the success of Valve Index and Steam Deck saying, "Our assumption is that these are long-term decisions that we're making about how we contribute to the health and vitality of this ecosystem, and we're always going to be successful so long as that continues to happen."

That does not mean that the current VR devices in the market are no good. Facebook-owned Oculus and Valve Index are devices that are capable of delivering a high-end PC VR experience. Newell also adds that the success of the Valve Index has helped the company think about what is to be done next and how to improve the immersive VR gaming experience. With what the president of Valve said, it is clear that Virtual Reality is not just limited to strapped rectangular boxes around one's head, and there is much to come in near future. 

Speaking about the fundamental ideology behind Valve gaming devices, Newell says, "A lot of the technologies we've developed and some of these other hardware devices like the game controller applies directly to this: the learning curve has to be zero." He refers to the ready-to-use nature of gaming devices, which makes them successful. In today's era, an ideal gaming device shall be simple to use. Even if the user is holding a device for the first time, the controls and functions shall be easy to identify and use.