I had missed this change when it happened, and I suspect that a lot of other people were also unaware that the methodology had changed. This isn't the first time that Valve have made changes to the VR section of the Survey, though; the VR Survey results are the only ones which are presented with the detailed breakdown first, and only then states the overall value, "Steam users with VR Headsets."
In what has to be the biggest hype/news to hit the VR scene for quite some time, Valve Software have finally released another full-blown game, for the first time in forever. But that's not even the big news -- the big news is that the game is a Half-Life game. And while it isn't Half-Life 3 (it's actually a prequel), Half-Life: Alyx is not only a new Half-Life game, it's a VR-only game.
Oh, and it looks pretty good, too.
The stakes couldn't be higher; TechRadar called Alyx, "a gambit where the very future of VR gaming is at stake." And while that might sound hyperbolic, it might not be wrong, with the announcement of Alyx prompting some VR evangelists to dub this the "killer app" that VR has long been lacking.
But, while some of the gameplay we're seeing will clearly need either Oculus Touch controllers, or the Knuckles controllers that ship with the Valve Index, I'm not convinced that the experience on offer here is different enough to convince skeptical consumers to suddenly jump onto the VR hype train; and I'm not convinced that the Half-Life IP, iconic as it is for the video game industry, is actually broadly popular enough to prompt non-gamers to buy VR headsets just to play it.