Valve is researching wearable computers

A couple of days ago reports of Valve working on hardware of their own has resurfaced again. Deciding to put all the rumors and speculation to a rest, Valve’s managing director, Michael Abrash has since come forward and announced that they are indeed working on hardware of their own in the form of wearable computing. Many had speculated that this hardware could very well be Valve’s answer to Google’s Project Glass, but according to Abrash in a recent blog post:

“To be clear, this is R&D – it doesn’t in any way involve a product at this point, and won’t for a long while, if ever – so please, no rumors about Steam glasses being announced at E3. It’s an initial investigation into a very interesting and promising space, and falls more under the heading of research than development. The Valve approach is to do experiments and see what we learn – failure is fine, just so long as we can identify failure quickly, learn from it, and move on – and then apply it to the next experiment. The process is very fast-moving and iterative, and we’re just at the start. How far and where the investigation goes depends on what we learn.”

While it certainly sounds like what Valve is currently researching on is similar to what Google had in mind with Project Glass, i.e. a wearable computer that utilizes augmented reality, it seems that Valve has no plans to commercialize their project just yet. Either way it’s a start and we can’t help but look forward to seeing what they or other companies in the gaming industry have up their sleeves.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Valve