by 
Valve's Index was the first VR headset I ever owned, so I was a little sad to see that it has officially been "sunsetted" - no new hardware is being produced and the remaining stock of headsets, controllers and tethers is being sold at a discount. The device will remain supported on Steam and SteamVR.
It's not entirely surprising that Valve would discontinue the Index given that the (technically superior) Steam Frame is available, though when I last spoke to Valve engineers they assured me that they still see a future for externally-tracked VR headsets like the Index to complement inside-out-tracking headsets like Frame.
They pointed to efforts from scientific researchers and enthusiasts, who had repurposed the Lighthouse tracking stations to achieve all sorts of VR and non-VR goals - and told me that they still use Lighthouse internally.
That could suggest another externally-tracked headset is on the way, or it could just mean that enough Index kits were produced for these specialist use cases. It reminds me a little of the Xbox One's Kinect sensors, which fell out of fashion for gaming but were an absolute godsend for researchers looking for cheap, reliable motion tracking in the 2010s when I was in academia.
What do you make of the news? Will you be picking up an Index at a discount? Or trading in your previously purchased Index for a Steam Frame? Let me know in the comments below.