Valve has revealed that, due to the spreading of the Coronavirus outbreak, it won’t be able to ship the amount of Valve Index devices it was initially anticipating.
The virtual reality headset has grown more and more popular after the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, which is set to release on Mar. 23.
“With Half-Life: Alyx coming March 23rd, we are working hard to meet demand for the Valve Index and want to reassure everyone that Index systems will be available for purchase prior to the game’s launch,” said the creators of Steam in a statement issued to UploadVR.Â
“However, the global Coronavirus health crisis has impacted our production schedules so we will have far fewer units for sale during the coming months compared to the volumes we originally planned. Our entire team is working hard right now to maximize availability.”
According to the latest reports, Valve Index is currently sold out globally. The first wave of the headset has been completely cleared out due to the interest sparked in the community by Half-Life: Alyx, a prequel to Half-Life 2 – it doubled Index’s sales upon reveal.
The game will also be playable on other virtual reality headsets, including HTC Vive and Oculus, so at least its sales should not be impacted.
Before the Coronavirus health emergency, Valve said that “we are working hard to build more units and meet the high demand,” based on the unexpected volume of requests for the VR device.
This isn’t the first time we hear about the game industry impacted by Coronavirus – Nintendo has been reportedly had issues with manufacturing the Nintendo Switch Animal Crossing bundle, and this could lead to shortages during April.
Also, Sony has announced it will skip both the PAX East in Boston, where it was supposed to bring the first playable demo of The Last of Us Part II ever, and GDC in San Francisco due to concerns related to the virus.
