If you're going to spend $3,500 on a mixed reality headset, you're going to want to get the absolute most out of it. As cool as the latest Apple Vision Pro M5 is, there aren't a lot of reasons to justify spending that much money on the headset. But what if I told you that Steam will soon be accessible on the Vision Pro?
Valve has officially announced that it is bringing an official Steam Link app to the Vision Pro. This will allow a connection between the Vision Pro and your existing PC hardware via the local network, and stream games from your Steam library directly to your face computer.
You can already use Steam Link to stream PC games to a bunch of devices, including TVs and tablets, as well as other VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3s. The ability to stream to the Vision Pro means you can enjoy all your favorite non-VR games, untethered, with all the benefits of Apple's spatial computing system.
It's important to specify non-VR games, though. The Vision Pro will only be able to stream traditional 2D games from your Steam Library, and anything that requires an actual VR headset to play won't be accessible. There's no word on whether Steam VR games will ever be playable on Vision Pro. So if you want to play those games, you're going to need a Steam-compatible VR headset and some kind of physical link cable.
Steam has said that the Steam Link app is currently able to stream your games in up to 4K resolution and "allows you to dynamically adjust the curve of the display in panoramic mode." However, since the app currently isn't listed in the App Store, you're only able to access a beta version of Steam Link via Apple's TestFlight program.
Access to Steam Link isn't going to be the Vision Pro's killer feature, and something that finally makes the headset worth buying — not when the price tag is this high. But the ability to link up with your existing PC and play games that didn't come from the App Store is a big deal.
The lack of gaming ability is one of the things we criticized in our Apple Vision Pro review, and Steam Link support is going to make a huge difference. Stay tuned for our hands-on impressions.
