After the dismal performance of the Apple Vision Pro and the lukewarm response to the more expensive Quest 3, virtual reality gaming appears to be in crisis. and I'm a little worried. But the Steam Frame headset, the hardware cousin of the Steam Deck and the upcoming Steam Machine, might just change that. And the updated VR game has shed some interesting light on what this could mean for developers.
Follow me here, this has some pretty deep context. Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset. like the Meta Quest serieswhich runs on a Qualcomm Arm chip, has its own battery and head-mounted security cameras. This is in stark contrast to Valve's previous virtual reality hardware, such as the Index, which needs to be connected to a PC to play games or other programs.
There will be a new frame Also connect to your gaming PCs and enjoy full-fledged virtual reality. But it uses Valve's native ARM-based version of Linux's SteamOS, which is designed to run local games in a portable format with relatively low power consumption.
This opens up some interesting possibilities, especially for mobile games. especially especially for Android games. You see, Meta Quest uses a highly modified version of Android for its operating system and games. So, not only will it be fairly easy to port thousands of Android games from the Play Store to an ARM-based Steam Frame, but it will also work great for almost any game on the Quest. And many of these developers are already familiar with Valve's virtual reality systems on Steam. It's not surprising Valve is courting Android developers for the new Steam update.
Now, with all of this in mind: the VR game on Steam has released an update that brings the Android version free to owners. In particular, this is a well-reviewed Mini golf walkand the update was spotted by Twitter/X user and VR enthusiast Brad Lynch (via PCGamer). Judging by the game official update log from the beginning of this weekThe full APK (Android EXE equivalent) is now included in the download. The download is not mentioned in the game update text; it is currently only visible in SteamDB.
This seems to indicate that the developer is releasing an Android version of the game (presumably a modified version of the game that appears on Android-based Meta Quest headsets) on the Steam platform. The developer doesn't specify why exactly, but Lynch suggests that Valve could use something like WeidroidAn open source tool for running Android programs on Linux, allowing it to run on the Steam Frame version of SteamOS. Valve is taking a similar approach to Windows games, but without a Linux version. Proton Compatibility Layer.
It's difficult to draw any conclusions based on the developers' changelogs. Without comment from the developer and/or Valve itself, we are reading the tea leaves. But it seems a safe bet that developers who already have PC VR games on Steam, and those selling VR games on other platforms like Quest, PlayStation VR and the upcoming Android XR, will be looking to get those same games running on the standalone Steam Frame headset as well.
