Valve first-party VR headset pictures possibly leaked

Valve is a super secretive company. They spend most of their time counting money from Steam profits, but there are some people in the world who still believe there are people at the company working on new and cool things. Valve founder Gabe Newell has been a huge supporter of virtual reality development and the company has done a number of partnerships in the space, most notably the collaboration with HTC on their Vive products. One thing that has been great for Valve is shifting the risk of profit and loss on hardware to partners, much like Steam machines. Today, some rumors have surfaced that Valve is making their own virtual reality head-mounted display. Please take a look at these pictures.

Some of these materials are similar to Valve's Knuckle controller prototypes.

There is definitely some resemblance to Vive Pro, but there are enough differences to raise suspicions that this is a new HMD.

One has to wonder if Valve is just prototyping some stuff that they wanted to test out.

It says Valve right there.

Reddit users have posted some ideas in the Vive subreddit about what this mythical product could have under the hood. One key takeaway is that this device does not look anything like the Oculus Quest, Vive Pro, or Vive Focus VR HMDs. There is a Valve logo on the PCB, and as Reddit user shoneysbreakfast points out, "it has LH sensors, a guide for a cable. This is a PC HMD. It has a Valve PCB inside that does not come from a Vive or Vive Pro. The padding matches the Knuckles padding. It has a slot in the front with USB port for some type of add-on." Other posters suggest that the USB port could be for adding on a Leap Motion device.

What do you think, Shackers? Is this leak as bogus as a Half Life 3 confirmation? Do you think Valve is willing to take the financial risk of making their own VR headset? Let us know in the comments section and keep it locked on Shacknews as this story develops.