Valve’s Gabe Newell: VR could “turn out to be a complete failure”

Despite the optimism expressed on the face of our own Sebastian Anthony here, Valve's Gabe Newell has pretty measured outlook for the technology.

With Valve investing so much time, effort, and money into its SteamVR initiative (and the nearly year-old HTC Vive headset), you might think the company would be pretty bullish about the technology's potential to revolutionize home computing. But in a rare round table interview (as reported by Polygon), Valve CEO and cofounder Gabe Newell was surprisingly frank about the company's measured expectations for the entire field.

"We're optimistic. We think VR is going great. It's going in a way that's consistent with our expectations," says Newell. That said, "we're also pretty comfortable with the idea that it will turn out to be a complete failure.

"Some people have got attention by going out and saying there'll be millions of [VR unit sales] and we're like, wow, I don't think so," Newell continued.

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