A self-contained unit that matched the Quest and wins on not price but privacy was the only reasonable direction for Valve here.

I do agree that the niche they've chosen to fill is valuable, having a good self-contained unit free of Meta's spyware was the entire selling point for me.

I know a lot of people who were looking into PCVR but didn't buy an Index because they didn't want to spend $1000 on a VR headset. PCVR is a niche of a niche audience, so I'm not surprised that they didn't release a product that was just Index v2.

Maybe, in the future they could offer a low-end SKU that was PC-only, without onboard gaming hardware.