Yeah 2022 is too late if they want to compete at the High end.
By that time, everyone with a sizeable budget will have light houses in their possession and likely persist with the Valve eco system.
I don't think Valve's price is that bad apart from their base stations. The headset at £450 given the superior build quality, the better FOV, the better resolution the better panels, an actual best-in-class audio solution, better ergonomics, all seem fine.
The controllers are truly next gen when you look at them and worth the money. They are sadly worlds ahead of the touch controllers now.
Its just the base stations which seem a bit over priced but then only Oculus fans are crying about this because they chose Oculus over Vive.
2022 will be the start of the next generation, a 4K headset with a 140 degree FOV priced at £600 will bring anyone that bought a Valve headset back to Oculus. And you're assuming that the Index 2 will also have base stations, which is quite a big assumption tbh.
And the controllers being 'worlds ahead' means nothing unless developers actually code for the things. Developers are more likely to code for the lowest common denominator when it comes to finger tracking, index finger pointing, making a fist and a thumbs up. Yes, you'll have a few allowing players to waggle their fingers and counting to five like we've seen but the vast majority of them won't bother. The problem, as I've already mentioned, is that those extra two fingers are pretty much useless in terms of both real world use and gameplay use, same goes for the pressure sensitivity too.
Possibly and 2022 is a long way way away. Not sure if I can be content with what we have other than the index until then.
Looks like they're having issues with their Reverb headsets. Black screen issues. They've issued a recall on some of their Enterprise ones apparently. So that's both the Rift S and Reverb having problems at launch. Makes you wonder what the Valve Index headsets will be like when they release! data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Absolutely fine... Of course data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
New hardware generally always has teething issues (I learnt this lesson with the 2080Ti...which is still suffering from problems apparently). Both the Vive and Rift had their share on release, and I'm sure the Index will be the same - there are known bugs in the press release versions, I'm sure Valve won't be able to address them all come end of June.
The Rift S sounds like a firmware or driver issue, so not the end of the world. The Reverb is more likely to be a physical panel defect though.
A mixed review from Tech Radar...
HP Reverb VR Headset review | TechRadar
So that's a no then.