{"id":255335,"date":"2025-09-26T04:58:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T04:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/255335\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T04:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T04:58:19","slug":"valve-expands-steam-link-pc-vr-streaming-to-more-headsets-and-opens-the-door-to-android-xr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/255335\/","title":{"rendered":"Valve Expands ‘Steam Link’ PC VR Streaming to More Headsets and Opens the Door to Android XR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valve today announced<\/a> that it\u2019s bringing its wireless PC VR streaming software, Steam Link, to five more headsets from PICO and HTC. The company also plans to make it easier for headset makers to bring\u00a0Steam Link to even more headsets in the future.<\/p>\n

The News<\/p>\n

Valve has released\u00a0Steam Link on the PICO Store<\/a> and HTC\u2019s Viveport store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Supported Pico headsets include the\u00a0Pico 4 Ultra, Pico 4 (and 4 Pro), Pico Neo3 (and Neo3 Link). The first supported HTC headset is the\u00a0Vive Focus Vision, and Valve says support will be added for the Vive XR Elite \u201clater this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steam Link makes it easy to play PC VR games by allowing supported headsets to connect wirelessly to a PC on the same network. Users can then access their library of PC VR content through the SteamVR interface, and delve deep into the largest library of PC VR games, many of which aren\u2019t available on standalone headsets, like\u00a0Half-Life: Alyx (2020).<\/p>\n

As part of the announcement of Steam Link launching on new headsets, Valve said it also plans to release a Steam Link APK so that \u201cother hardware manufacturers [can] validate Steam Link support on their headsets.\u201d That should mean that future headsets will be able to more easily add support for\u00a0Steam Link\u00a0with little to no involvement with Valve.<\/p>\n

Valve also said the APK will \u201callow users of unsupported headsets to explore compatibility and available features,\u201d which means modders and tinkerers might be able to tap into Steam Link\u2019s capabilities even on technically unsupported headsets.<\/p>\n

My Take<\/p>\n

Steam Link was first launched on Quest 2 and Quest 3 back in 2023. It was an unexpected move, but reaffirmed Valve\u2019s commitment to make SteamVR accessible to as many headsets as possible. Adding support for a new wave of headsets shows that the company, despite its often glacial pace, still wants to make SteamVR a great platform for developers, users, and headset makers.<\/p>\n

Compared to typical corporate behavior, Valve\u2019s focus on making SteamVR as widely accessible as possible is shown to be a priority even higher than selling its own VR headset. In fact,\u00a0Steam Link is the reason that Quest 3 became my main PC VR headset over Valve\u2019s own Index headset<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Pico headset support had been rumored for some time, the announcement of the forthcoming Steam Link APK release wasn\u2019t something I saw coming.<\/p>\n

This should make it much easier for headset makers to enable Steam Link support on their headsets, perhaps without even needing a thumbs up from Valve. This move appears to be in anticipation of future Android XR headsets, the first of which are expected to launch before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

And it sounds like users will also be able to get access to the Steam Link APK, which means people will be able to experiment with sideloading and modding onto other headsets.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely (since the APK is for Android OS), but there\u2019s at least a\u00a0chance that someone could reverse-engineer it and make a derivative version that works on something like Vision Pro. That remains to be seen and will depend heavily on how open Valve is with the Steam Link APK and associated developer documentation.<\/p>\n

If you want an idea of where Valve\u2019s broader VR strategy is likely headed\u2014including future VR hardware\u2014I wrote an extensive analysis of the company\u2019s recent and rumored VR developments<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valve today announced that it\u2019s bringing its wireless PC VR streaming software, Steam Link, to five more headsets…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":255336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-255335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115268832642029809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}