D3M1G0D:

It seems Valve is going all-in. The least we can do is shell out the hundreds of dollars for a VR headset so there can be more VR exclusives. 😛

With VR exclusives makes all the sense in the world. In order to make a game truly tick in VR the same game would need completely being remade to work as good without VR, they are that different in nature. You can add view-controll to make any game VR, but that would be very far from what a true VR experience could be, so I’m happy they separate them for now.

Love watching First Plays on Twitch. Saw a guy quit yesterday before he even got to the test chamber. He was impatient, cursing at NPCs, not listening, looking for a map keybind and didn't know how to open doors.

jaggerwild:

Anybody have half life blue, I do. Just wondering..........

I still got all 3 original boxes and for half-life 2 i have the tin box collector's edition on display.

I have all of HL games except episode 2 but the first episode was so boring i never cared too much about it...

I love the half life universe. played through every game and episode at least 15 times. Will probably go for a 16th run this year with black mesa included. I'm glad valve is creating alyx , i just hope it is a lengthy campaing, with future DLC added later for additional story. This franchise deserves so much more. I would love to see a remake of all of them with next gen graphics.

Interesting to note that in 2014 it was predicted that by 2018 there would be 141 million VR owners. In reality 22 million people in 2019 owned VR, 83 percent of those being U.S. citizens. When asked what's wrong with VR, Twenty six percent of people said they wont buy VR because it is too bulky and the gaming experience was not satisfying to play to make it worth the investment. Another 24 percent said there were not enough gaming library to make it worthwhile to buy VR. Another 10 percent said it just costs too much. That's 60 percent of your possible market who will never go VR. The rest of reasons given were mostly business side of the VR market, investing, sales, etc. The VR gaming industry made 22 million dollars worldwide last year, SO THAT IS $1 PER VR OWNER spent on gaming. https://media2.giphy.com/media/14aUO0Mf7dWDXW/giphy.gif So good luck in making any money on the ALYX release. Btw, I own all the Half Life library on Steam. And do not own VR.

They already sold out of the Index and according to them they completely underestimated the demand.. so I would imagine they are making money on it. Honestly I bought a Oculus DK2 back in the day - I could see the potential but I feel like the hardware needed to bake a few more years. Index seems like it's right on the threshold of what's necessary - I'd probably want slightly higher res and OLED/better contrast but Index looks like it checks a bunch of boxes. Probably going to buy one for this game + I'm hoping the new MS Flight Sim gets VR support relatively soon.

There is also HL2 Update which installs to a separate game folder, free to download. Is there a difference between them (gameplay wise) and will this be disabled once the HL2 free run ends?

I suspect that they did this as pre-orders for Alyx (even with the discount) are lower than expected. Alyx will likely be the biggest VR hit ever, but, due to VR headset ownership, there's a cap here, where a normal HL game would've sold many times more. After Alyx is released, I anticipate a new non-vr HL game to be announced. Cue dev video talking about lessons learned with Alyx, and technologies from Alyx put into new HL. Further cue; Will continue to monitor the market and no further vr games to announce at this time (then releases 2 much smaller scale titles)...

Stormyandcold:

I suspect that they did this as pre-orders for Alyx (even with the discount) are lower than expected. Alyx will likely be the biggest VR hit ever, but, due to VR headset ownership, there's a cap here, where a normal HL game would've sold many times more. After Alyx is released, I anticipate a new non-vr HL game to be announced. Cue dev video talking about lessons learned with Alyx, and technologies from Alyx put into new HL. Further cue; Will continue to monitor the market and no further vr games to announce at this time (then releases 2 much smaller scale titles)...

Reading your comment made go go ohh I wonder if Valve has started selling the index yet in Australia.. and... nope... this is what I see through Steam. https://i.imgur.com/Nk048HG.jpg

KissSh0t:

Reading your comment made go go ohh I wonder if Valve has started selling the index yet in Australia.. and... nope... this is what I see through Steam.

It's sold out in every region regardless and Valve's wording on stock makes it sound like they won't even have more prior to release of the game. They either ran into a production issue or completely underestimated demand.