Valve Index is a Critial Milestone | Games ReCAP Episode 014

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of games recap morning everybody glad to have you with us again as we do this every day all day can't stop won't stop Brandon was the biggest news in gaming from over the weekend that we can talk about today well before we get to that news welcome to games recap of course we're going every day but also if you're watching us live on twitch.tv forward slash blue underscore champs you can watch and interact with us if you are watching after the fact you're of course watching on our youtube calm ford slash blue champs please leave a comment we will respond as well if you want to support us directly go to patreon.com/scishow scribe reallocate

reallocate that $5.00 that you have just lying around in your Amazon Prime account and give to us to the people who needs it it's only worth 5 bucks when you use it it's worthless if you do nothing with it you know just so you know alright that's 250 that's at least 2 McNuggets for both me and Larry to take on 2 double cheeseburger so here comes today's top you ready for this Larry far away so here we go there we go valve index has a huge milestone question mark yeah is a huge is it Gabe thinks it is so we're gonna watch what he they had a little launch party valve index came out right on Friday actually for $1000 it's it's going after the high PC VR market that everyone's exiting right now how many coffees or how many units do you think

they sold over the weekend be honest I don't know but I think the pre-order actually sold out really let me look this up no no I didn't want to tangent I just let's go to Larry thousand dollar VR that was a tough one from even the five Pro is already discounted as price I believe is down the vibe obviously you can get it for like 400 bucks right now well here's the opportunity right um Facebook or oculus already made it very clear they're exiting the high fidelity VR high-end PC VR right vive is probably the only one left but they too are kind of putting half in half in the cordless and lower lower lower power VR devices but they're actually I feel losing a lot of market share between all the view our markets it's just you don't hear as much hype and oculus is the only one seems like they are kind of forging ahead and carrying the pack right now in terms of

excitement right and that leaves a lot of room in my opinion for people who have like high-powered pcs and still want the best of the best VR devices and that is still a market obviously within the console business we see that with PlayStation and Xbox and then vs. Nintendo right there's plenty of room for victors the only difference now is of course we're talking about a thousand dollar price point plus probably two thousand two thousand plus so we're talking about a three thousand plus setup and I don't think they're selling it at a loss right okay right from the top there's room to chop but also they're kind of betting on the next devices and Gabe did went on to to note like yeah I mean they're aiming to make this cordless good but do not sacrifice the

high-end parts of it yeah I think cordless is the way to go I think even a headset in a backpack would be appreciated more than heavy ass headset you know I mean yeah I can carry you know well the average person could probably comfortably carry up to 50 pounds on their back for two hours versus carrying a heavy said on their head for two hours I think I would prefer to have backpack light headset then just have a headset but I would prefer you know ten years from now when it's like oh the cell phone powered VR headset it will blow your mind because that's just how fast technology grows and jumps well I will say is uh I was assuming they probably sold maybe 4000 units I don't know how many pre-order allocations they had well look this might skew my line I do still think that yes there is high-end market available for people who are interested in VR I think it's a lot less I think anybody trying to make money in VR right now is gonna face a huge uphill battle five years from now

maybe not 10 years from now definitely not right now I believe so but I think the cool thing that I did see is like valve finally showing support for VR that's another platform for developers to make money off of potentially if they're going completely after the high end I want to get my hands on it somehow someway to demo it I don't necessarily know when or how I'll be able to afford to buy it anytime soon but I would love to try it if anyone else out there in the Orange County area has an index pre-order coming your way let us know we'd love to come by and check it out other than that there was a shiny piece of information that gave kind of let slip so to speak or you know he just intentionally stirred the pot to add some you know some clout to valve where he was like you know this is an important milestone he was like us getting half-life 2 leads to source 2 leads to us being able to develop you know really cool games he says source 2 led to this sucks too led to what was it Team Fortress 2 Orange Box stuff and then they're like

now we're doing this VR thing and then he says who knows maybe we might get to add the shiny new numerical addition I forgot how he phrase it but everyone in the audience knew that he was kind of doing the alluding to a development of half-life 3 at some point yeah so it's all that we can confirm is it's not off of his mind or off of his radar the idea that there could be a half-life 3 will we see it anytime soon like because he was still being innuendo ambiguous this many years after half-life 2 you know we're talking what is it 15 years yeah I mean that I have no new news to stand on in my opinion as a fan if I'm waiting for halflife3 what he said didn't give me any new hope that people are actually working on it right now yeah well I do have some facts because we are a show about facts remember it valve index when it was first announced it was sold out in pre-orders I forgot to look at how many units it was a good amount right so everything's backlogged until August

31st it seems so you're not if you want to preorder you won't be able to get a new shipment until September okay basically which is pretty good a lot of art there's a lot of hardcore fans obviously they bought in and get their hands on their device and it definitely helps the fact that gaben valve is very serious about this even though we make fun it's like what are you thinking they are formidable appointment's and maybe because they're trying to work their way up to IPO they're like oh we can't just sit on our hands we actually got to do things it is weird right because we did mention they did have like a sector before dedicated the VR but they fired that department to say it's not the focus it's not gonna work out - to go back and say this is actually a huge deal for us here's some valve index that comment that stuff on the top of her trash pile let's see what she's worth yeah that was wonder what happened there because obviously there was someone a whole team that was very qualified for their job got you let go thinking that it wasn't part of the future but for them to turn around the company to turn

around and say like this is our future wonder what happened the last year basically where they would feel like that we can only speculate obviously we don't work there we should ask our friends that do work there but I would imagine that you know they look at the game before they look at steam kind of like being paraded away from to the competition right third party support is fastly disappearing even the double-a studios the smaller studios are vastly leaving steam for other options there I guess it is a time where they're like or what can we control and kind of strengthen our market share to make sense to investors in the future to be like valve is still a very strong company yeah I don't know how much they would have invested in putting this together but I'm imagining a sizable amount of money so much so that it was actually like a decision

yeah versus like when they know 200 million and you know they're I'm pretty sure they're close to the half of B if not the B mark of investment both in research development but then also production manufacturing yeah so getting this thing ready to be able to sell 20 30 40 50 thousand units first year and I hope they hit those numbers I really do I think even fifty thousand units is still modest considering how big you would need something like this to be successful yeah but I think they could I think they could hit that number in a year's time yeah with the amount of money and marketing push that they have as valve I think they can do 50k well let's check the sell list because they had this launch party in the valve office with vibe index being you know in players hands I think s in our personal circle this is actually a good kind of fueler of how excited people are I don't really see anyone post any valve index demos if it's already out in the public right usually we would see our Facebook

feed or Twitter feed like hey I just got this check this out I've been seeing more if the quest to be honest so I feel like maybe there's maybe a thousand units out there at most I mean from anybody that I've seen in the media who a chance to see doing this I remember seeing stuff like mixed reviews in the sense of by far they'll say that like it was visually impressive and they think that it was like the best it's definitely the ball I have no doubt that vibe the valve Alma kind of five and fell oh they're gonna it's a marketing nightmare the valve index is the best VR set out there right now no doubt yeah late very late to the party and it's super matrix II with all the cords it's but it's the best one for sure I haven't even tried it but I can pretty much say it has to be the best one for them to put it at a thousand price point and be like this is where we are this is we're gonna be the Lamborghini of your yeah and this is how we're gonna and VR

itself already feels like such a gaming privilege right because you're already like look I'm $300 plus console price gives you PlayStation VR yeah $400 gives you oculus plus PC right vive $4.99 plus PC if I have Pro I think is now like seven eight 99 plus PC yeah this is a thousand plus PC this has been a luxury gaming experience yeah already yeah right like I haven't seen any of broke people and I hate to use the word like that but I haven't seen like the broke a lot of people who didn't have like significant disposable income also saying like you know what I'm gonna invest in this risky platform that's completely fragmented right now without a lot of feature titles because like that's where the gaming is going I think I've seen that people play a lot of safe bets yeah but the people that do like VR hands down all believe that it's the next-gen it's the future it's where things are going yeah everyone thinks nobody doubts that VR isn't like mind-blowing when you try it for the first time especially if you try something really good yeah so for me it's just we're on the timeline are we

right like if if here's today and here's VR is like finally like as successful as a PlayStation Xbox Nintendo right let's just say this is the line I don't know where on that line we currently are I don't know how many more heartaches VR companies are gonna have to absorb before we hit mass consumption critical success yeah that's the scary part for non valve non-microsoft right for everyone oh maybe not Facebook Facebook is doing well enough they own Instagram which I bet is probably eclipsing Facebook or if not getting close to it so I'm glad that they own that so I can see that Facebook will still be in the game for a while yeah Sony I don't know yeah I don't know I don't know well let's just see what valve are Gabe knows with this because someone purposely filmed this event right so we pull the oops yeah I I don't think it's leaking I mean it's not like they're coming up being mad at everybody if it's in 4k quality it's not a week I'm gonna play this video all right switch to me switch to you can you move the court in front of him I think I just

pulled your headphones oh yeah everybody's filming everybody's here and this is a look behind the scenes of valve it's very warehouse it's where they stick the interns valve is pretty much a digital warehouse let's be honest they do work chairs and everyone has a hard drive start loading up transferring to customer miss you guys want to see like the most paid lease predictive not kidding like these are the people who ship the lease games in the industry right now this this is this is where lt's valve no one in this room

is holding like champagne or anything like today's a huge day like a huge accomplishment yeah right no one in there looks like they even give a about celebrating right now yes what does success mean at the health yeah yeah may transfer so we do our cam there's not one single glass of champagne that guys holding maybe a Martinelli's apple juice back there how let me get this down the other guy's got his arms folded like the by now it's a weird huh they don't my latest yeah the body language does not tell me celebratory moment for us it's like everybody we need to fill up the camera space can you just stand behind let's go to the shipping dock and watch out if a truck pulls in we got to load these pallets of indexes but that's very interesting but is primarily known as a software business this is not the first time right they used to ship like those little steam streaming pcs right

I assume like we've built the infrastructure to ship those out and now it's a little bigger they're self producing VR headsets for yeah I mean that's a huge deal and all of our jokes is light-hearted jabs dude we want valve to be successful we want all game developers would be successful hey all right yeah thank you the claps are unenthusiastic look at the dude with the hoodie he's just like we need jobs clap if you want this genius Twitter

right now literally counted for clothes oh here we go everyone bounce where's the hobo all the kids are here okay hey guys Oh Oh get on my way gaben george RR martin or best friends yeah see that's what a billionaire looks like dude this cell does he mean use it Mike oh I love n gaff attitude dude all black with the sandals man Tommy yet get him a mic he still looks who said that you're fired he still looks like he has a little fun though I'm not gonna lie nah man this is a guy with no stress hey this is just a

hobby there's no way he can lose his billions this is like charity work for him at this point can you pause it for a second they literally are in like a shipping receiving loading dock like I hear heavy machinery happy no this is for sure where they have the look these boxes are probably index all the old of you know what the valve index is repurpose steam box is pretty much but that's the thing right I think they've acknowledged and I think in this speech he acknowledges how artifact gave weighted odor under Lourdes how all the steam hardware gave way to finally develop index or how source became the source it is nowadays encounter shape yeah and that like artifact being a failure edge I just didn't see it hit well with the audience but Auto Chaz being a new genre kind of thing now like there's a lot of steam getting picked up there yeah so nobody blames valve for any missteps right like they he's

talking to Mary now dude Gabe Newell could walk through any hole greens in the world and nobody would even know who he was he would fit in so well yeah I mean this was the whole Greek what whole booth oh great that's the cool thing about being a niche celebrity yeah and so you can still live your life oh yeah secretary wrote up the speech friends who do I think yeah okay minions sandals right they're relating it's he's got a this is one time that he gives out his houses I guess you got a run my company Oh sandals you guys get sandals at the best but wondering you think I mean I'll given with the benefit

of doubt saying that this is pretty much how he dresses right I'm pretty sure but they're billion dollar level you don't think people would try to recurse that you know it's not part of his maybe he maybe knows self-consciously that he this is a way to fit in I've always said this millionaires do their best to look like millionaires billionaires do their best to what Yeah right like yes you don't care I'll say that like some people do but I've seen a lot of billionaires feel like I'm gonna be comfortable I'm still gonna do great works and if I showed up in a suit or if I showed up in a t-shirt you guys are still gonna listen to me talk yeah you know what I mean like it the perspective from where I stand it seems like the perspective shifts game could have walked in there in a suit yeah he could have also walked in in sweats yeah like a mesh polo and sandals yeah this moment doesn't change because of the clothing that he wears and like I think billionaires understand that millionaires I feel like are the ones like they'll try and seriously push for the like team I'm somebody I have

bravado I mean I guess millionaires did if I have just a few thousand up you know this is me cuz I made it I don't need to work for you can't wait for the Brenna fan pajama already I know you made it I can't me dressing down is just becomes like a like a indecent you walk across I hate but I will wear Crocs to to demonstrate my power my goal I hate to say this because crime sucks dude like always to be sweats hoodies no matter how old how long I've just love the comfort more than I love ya so if I can get away with having a hoodie be my signature thing I'm wearing a hoodie I don't care if I'm talking we're a bank like hey buy our business look this hoodie doesn't change how well my company performs I promise you you look the Assassin's Creed at that

clients wearing honey all time think I can hear like people yelling at each other the gates future valve warehouse workers bring your kids yes show them around yes okay half YCA can forever sad ladies makes you far like if I'm trying to explain something tangible but you see me doing this kind of and not even thing about man please there's not even a single task there's not even a JIRA but what

he just said is enough to half-life 3 confirmed it just maybe two will lead to something I'll say this before Gabe Newell dies you will see half-life 3 no of course that's how when I see this that's what that means to me yeah he's thinking about it he wants to come to be in position to do it he's willing to go on like video reference to like allude to the fact that he wants that to be a hand but when you do like yeah yeah and they're not even discussing telltale sign it's like hallway time but I want to ask you this right we've always said with every hardware it's the software that fills the hardware software that drives the hardware a man if valve is so all-in with all their games coming out for their own VR set and house well how many games would it take for you to be like this is a full VR great title

would you buy in to be like I want to I want to have $1000 wait how many games yeah for valve to come out with obviously portal right sure that's gonna be one of there and you look at that and it's gonna look dope and it's gonna feel dill sure no doubt and then they come out with a maybe half-life 3 right or like they probably will come out with the original experience most likely and then maybe they're they've stated they don't want to do the left4dead thing on vial of on vuitton the VR thing because it's too violent they're staying away from violent games but let's let's say they bring back half-life 3 right those three games one would be the point where you be like alright this is something I need to get my hands in not just as a designer but as a gamer as a non-professional consumer yeah if I were to spend a thousand books and I'm actually gonna go with the low bar I'm not gonna talk about the wealthy I

can spend the money but I'm literally gonna talk about the like I'm willing to save up and sacrifice in order to get this I think that all the alternatives would have to be so far under the bar set by the valve headset plus all my friends like it has reached social climax level of everybody yeah that I know that plays games is playing it on this headset so that layer the gamer latest I'll take a long a while it will take a multiplayer game yeah it's because I think the low-end consumer is like I spent 300 bucks on a Playstation 4 or a Playstation what is it PlayStation 4 I think see you anymore gettin old 300 bucks through $2.99 or whatever on a Playstation 4 not the pro regular ps4 and I'm playing like with everybody I'm playing the top level stuff VR is it so important that I'm willing to forego the expense yeah to that person right now I will say this valve specifically if they made half-life 3 like as a launch title for their headset I could see them doubling the amount of headsets that

they sold but pissing off an entire community of people who are expecting that's like who won put in sound dollar pay gate in front of half-life 3 wow I won't think they will make it they'll make the VR exclusive to the valve headset but they won't make the game non first-person you think it'd be best if any way shape or form half-life 3 came out in the VR headset in exclusively even time exclusivity like hey because we want to sell this set we're gonna put it on here first but I think that'll be a very effective way to sell those headsets yes you will I will you'll go from 30,000 to 60,000 let's say and then you'll have seven eight nine million people who are clamoring for half-life 3 like severely pissed but they will hear you don't think those people hearing the great experience hearing why the experience can only be experienced through VR sure it's I guess my well what did they say like it's just VR exclusive but any of the arts it

would work but with our VR said the the special sensors have added component 2 if they do that way that would help I think that would help I think there's a lotta oculus whatever there a lot of options there let's say oculus is like the Louis spec cuz I don't think not the quest what was it to go I don't need to go would be like I don't want that to be nice yeah maybe Louis question let's just assume like the oculus is like the low-end what that's still like a $400 initial investment and then 60 bucks but it's like a console yeah I think that helps the bleeding especially if they're like look guys we understand but we wanted half-life 3 to be life-changing we know that people wouldn't accept just another PC game we had to do something that really emerged it really gave the immersion which really gave that feeling of you know being the crowbar - excuse me being it was the crowbar yep Noble was his name the doctor Gordon Gordon Freeman thank you being Gordon you know what I mean like we're really selling you that that's why half life 3 is way better and I think that's what they're presenting himself as as long as it came across all

the VR platforms I think the blowback would not be to the point where they couldn't they couldn't course-correct it they couldn't like at least like hey you know yes we understand but play we promise you if it went across all VR platforms I think that that would be a better step if they were going to be our exclusive but if they just were like nope it's just on artists dead on a road in Iran Iran I would say you buy it my prediction of 30 to 50,000 units might hit 60,000 70,000 units but that's it you would have way more people pissed off that they couldn't play it because they don't have the thousand bucks right but I definitely know if I just wanted to sell that valve headset having half-life 3 being exclusive I would whatever the projection was I'd be willing to double it with like with with no with no like sort of uh with no fear or no worry that I was wrong I think you could double your projections if half-life 3 wasn't exclusive but I think in the long run you would cannibalize your business or your potential market because of that move all right that

sounds a pinion oh let me switch you can when I fix this mouse bro I'll speak directly to gave in the valve team though personally I'm excited to see that you guys did take it for a into VR I was a little shaky when we saw that you had some internal hirings and firings on the team I was excited to hear that you were in it then sad to hear that you had fired the young lady who was kind of pushing for it and no disrespect to wherever that relationship is now I'm happy now to see that you guys did come out with a really cool top-end box or top end system I want to play it I want to try it I'm excited to see how it does in the marketplace and definitely I'm not sad that the steam box didn't work out looks like Google stadia kind of might be what the steam box was kind of cutting into as the the other console option but as far as I'm concerned I'm really excited

to see where things go from here and I don't know I wish them the best I really hope half-life 3 doesn't come out as a VR exclusive but I would love to see what half-life as a VR thing could be I think also portal could do well so long as I'm not traveling through the portals the way that I did in the video game were like I could create those infinite loops and you could just like have all that extra motion I think that would make me sick but if I could set the two portals and then like teleport through a portal the way that we traditionally do teleporting in VR I think that could work I think that could be actually pretty cool but me personally if I had to bet all my money on one type of video gaming experience to do the best I personally want to see VR explode I think VR for me has been the most fun thing that I've had to look forward to as a gamer in my generation of gaming from 1984 to today I've had the most fun playing inside of a virtual reality game space it's it's

just been the most exciting that's been the most immersive we don't have locomotion completely solved yet but for what we have now I freaking love it it's it's been the best and now that we have head tracking actually inside the headset and you can walk that maybe that is the locomotion problem solved I actually myself haven't used the quest yet so I can't confirm nor deny so those are my thoughts on it and we'll probably start pulling this episode to an end anyway I think we have to cut early we've got something else coming after this I'm trying to hold it down while we figure out some technical behind the camera guys so you know forgive the forgive the additional verbal content that I seem to be offering at the moment you're doing the best I can Brandon if you were to put your money and bring this off-camera but I want to speak to it before you guys ran if you were to put your money on one experience whether that be console VR stadia AR where would you use yourself as the selfish game way if you could just write the winner which one would you say it

would be the best for you alright Brandon says AR he's more excited about air you like the idea of like game layer on top of the world that you're actually living okay oh why do you say immediately okay so Brandon says the next couple years two things an AR is going to be the biggest impact so I can see lots of great opportunity for advertisement base games I can see lots of opportunity before I think ARS is really cool it's really neat I've always loved the idea of like take your iPhone and like you see a portal into a world that exists in the one and I love that you can you know go into the same warehouse and depending on what Africa playing you just downloaded a new game layer and boom now I'm in a haunted house boom now I've been Pokemon later boom now I'm inside of you know whatever you want to be and that's the power of a RvR we're gonna see bills kind of arcane community I can pop back up which I'm excited about is the idea of just printing out like a hoping space especially like escape room people if

you get a team of four and unreal and just make virtual escape rooms and let people put on for oculus quests and work together you don't have to actually go and reconstruct each smooth escape room you can just leg up which one do you want to play we've got 15 come here and play one of our 50 escape routes way different scenario especially when people like escape rooms there's not 50 different escape rooms within driving distance usually there's one or two and they have to wait half a year before those people change the escape rooms I bet if you promise me that I can do want escape room a week I would actually do it I love this burn is back alright our mouse is stuck right here so we're not gonna have some fancy music playing we're just to say goodbye and so if you're in Washington Court it's gonna be busy mad at music movie so until then see you guys [Music]

you [Music]