HoloLens creator Alex Kipman tried Valve’s upcoming VR title Half-Life: Alyx and shared some choice words about his experience.

Microsoft and Valve have long had close ties, both geographically and historically. Valve was co-founded after two Microsoft employees, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, left the company after working on some of the earliest versions of the Windows operating system.

They didn’t go far. Valve’s office—just outside of Seattle—is but a 10 minute drive from Microsoft’s Redmond, WA headquarters. Especially considering their proximity and history, it’s no wonder that at least two Microsoft executives have swung by Valve’s offices to check out their flagship VR title, Half-Life: Alyx, for a glimpse ahead of its release next year.

Alex Kipman | Image courtesy Microsoft

Alex Kipman, the chief visionary behind HoloLens, had some serious praise to share after trying the game just last week.

“Had the great privilege to play Half-Life: Alyx at Valve yesterday. Most inspiring and immersive VR game I have ever experience and I have played a few,” he shared on Twitter.

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While Kipman (who is also closely associated with Microsoft VR projects) is clearly understating the number of VR games he has played as a matter of emphasis, his focus is much more on AR (which is typically not as game-focused) than VR.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, lives and breathes games. And while he maintains that the company’s next console, Xbox Series X (formerly Project Scarlett), won’t focus on VR, he also got to try Half-Life: Alyx this Summer and called it “amazing.”

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • –Will–

    This game is going to raise the bar on VR considerably. Playing it with the Index (I have the knuckles controllers, will get the HMD when it has wireless) will be awesome, as is playing Skyrim VR with VRIK & knuckles. Alyx is already selling headsets, as Index is now back-ordered. I hope it spurs new interest in AAA game development for VR.

    • James

      might I suggest the VR pulley system? you get a couple hooks suction cupped to your ceiling and you run the vr wire through, and it feels basically like wireless. it saves you money and also is faster with the more direct connection. I plan on doing this when I get my index.

      • John McLean

        I have that setup, with 4 pulleys, but mine are permanently anchored to the ceiling. I have to unfortunately tell you that it’s not nearly as good as wireless is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s MUCH MUCH MUCH better than having the cable drag along the floor behind you to eventually be tripped or tangled on. But you definitely still notice it as it still gets tangled from rotating too much, and you still feel like your pulling something behind you, maybe even more so than if it was on the ground as it’s actively pulling you back.

        Wireless is still MANDATORY for full VR immersion, but we still have to wait a few more years for that to be possible with such massive data needed to be sent and received making it currently impossible on high end VR. (Let alone the even higher resolution headsets that will come in the next several years.)

  • blue5peed

    Met him In alt space once cool dude seems to own a lot of headsets too so its not just empty praise.

    • Debbra

      I am outsourcing from the solace of my home, by completing simple jobs which only require from you a PC and web access and it’s the best occupation I at any stage had…. 6 months have passed since I started this and I made so far total of 36 thousand dollars… Basically I earn close to $80 each hour and work for 3-4 h a day.And great thing about this is that you can make your own schedule when you work and for how long and you get a paycheck weekly ==> hackflowerpot.am-strand.de

  • AlanWake

    Waiting for this game so much..

    • Gonzax

      Almost as much as your f**** sequel, man!! LOL
      Actually more, I’m all about VR now but AW2 in VR would also be amazing. Not that it’s going to happen any time soon but…

      • Adrian Meredith

        Alan wake would be great in vr if remastered

        • Gonzax

          Remedy don’t seem to have much interest in VR at the moment but who knows, maybe one day. I’d love to play AW that way, it’s one of my favorite games of the last decade.

  • VR4EVER

    Yes! But please, dont hype it to much. I fear the higher growing expectations of some might never be fulfilled ….

    • Gus Bisbal

      This is inevitable. Unfortunately hype is an economic mechanism built to satisfy investors AND MEDIA. They are the ones making the hype really. Valve doesn’t have to use investors so this may not happen as much but the rest of the media have an economic opportunity to bring eyeballs to their pages (just had an mental image of a bucket of eye balls and a happy media creator) but the point is…. they are going to hype because people want to read and they are the ones that make money from peoples interest. Its the only game they have. The more interest they crate the more they make so literally they will hype it as much as is humanly possible. If they can print “its the second coming of God” if that will make you read the article, they will publish it. Get ready to not believe what you read.

  • Mateusz Pawluczuk

    Not a big follower of AR but I genuinely like Alex Kipman :) You can see his main goal is not to get rich or to inflate ego but to innovate and create amazing cutting edge tech ^_^

    Glad he enjoyed Alyx!

  • The hype is growing!

  • Holdup

    Anything coming from magic scam I mean magic leap is bull.

  • aasdfa

    wrong post bud.

  • Immersive doesn’t really equal fun to me. Serious Sam vr fusion has been the only vr game that i enjoy all the others i try bore me. I do have hope this game will be different but I wouldn’t be surprised if I am let down again

  • brubble

    Slow clap