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Half-Life: Alyx Adds Nearly 1 Million VR Users to Steam in Record Gain

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
A new article from R2VR.

https://www.roadtovr.com/steam-survey-vr-headset-growth-april-2020-half-life-alyx/


The launch of Half-Life: Alyx saw nearly 1 million additional monthly-connected headsets over the prior month, a leap that nearly tripled the previous largest monthly gain.
Each month Valve collects info from Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population, and to see how things are changing over time, including the use of VR headsets.
The latest Steam Survey data is the first time we’re seeing the impact of Half-Life: Alyx in the numbers; although the game launched in late March, Valve advised that most survey data is collected early in each month, so the impact of the game’s launch wasn’t truly revealed until now. And it’s a doozy.




System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
109 REPLIES 109

RattyUK
Trustee
Valve probably did spur a boost in sales of VR HMD's as there have been many posts over the years asking for HL3 etc.  Alyx is certainly a new generation of fidelity for VR and hopefully is just the start of many good things as Valve have been able to demonstrate admirably just what can be achieved in VR (if you have the resources and time to throw at it!)

PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RattyUK said:

Valve probably did spur a boost in sales of VR HMD's as there have been many posts over the years asking for HL3 etc.  Alyx is certainly a new generation of fidelity for VR and hopefully is just the start of many good things as Valve have been able to demonstrate admirably just what can be achieved in VR (if you have the resources and time to throw at it!)



I just hope Valve hasn't set the bar too high - making all upcoming games look more or less bad. 

Then again, maybe that's nothing new - I've had that feeling due to Lone Echo for more than 2 years, lol. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RattyUK
Trustee

RuneSR2 said:


RattyUK said:

Valve probably did spur a boost in sales of VR HMD's as there have been many posts over the years asking for HL3 etc.  Alyx is certainly a new generation of fidelity for VR and hopefully is just the start of many good things as Valve have been able to demonstrate admirably just what can be achieved in VR (if you have the resources and time to throw at it!)



I just hope Valve hasn't set the bar too high - making all upcoming games look more or less bad. 

Then again, maybe that's nothing new - I've had that feeling due to Lone Echo for more than 2 years, lol. 


I'm just playing through Lone Echo again 🙂
I read the bit about it crashing so thought I'd fire it up to check, played about 40 minutes...  Now on the quest to rescue Liv...  and several hours have just disappeared >:)
PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Regardless of the actual numbers, a gain is a gain and that's all right in my book. 


In other news...

It seems some people might be expecting a little too much from PS5 and XBSX. There is only so far games will progress in terms of visuals and despite developers being able to utilise console hardware better, the visual jump for pancake gamers isn't as great as say from the previous gen to the PSOne/ N64 way back when. However, the jump from current gen to VR can be quite staggering as HL:A proves. Hopefully better console hardware means more perspective for VR games on those platforms. Sony already has an edge with its PSVR and potential PSVR 2. If it becomes more standardised on consoles then that's another leap forwards.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

RuneSR2 said:
.....
I'm thinking much the same - if availability of Valve and Oculus hmds hadn't suffered from Covid-19 reductions, the Alyx effect may have been even bigger. I've read many persons saying they bought a hmd just to play Alyx. Interesting how sales go when the lock-down stops... the Alyx effect may be here for a long time... 


EDIT: Just read that Valve now ships to Italy again - hopefully we'll see more normal hmd availability before Summmer...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/ghk0zb/valve_ships_to_italy_again/



Yes @RuneSR2, I would say that the reopening of stock of the key headsets will hopefully see a second spike in VR adoption via HL:A - I expect that the April/May numbers will reflect this. 

Interested that the VR community is writing this off as trivial in some Reddit posts - seems to be a hardcore that will never forgive Valve - even though this is clearly an important game release. 

I look forward to seeing the HP / Valve partnership on the new headset - and wonder if Oculus and Valve could bury the hatchet and work on a bundle supporting the game?
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


Regardless of the actual numbers, a gain is a gain and that's all right in my book.


Very true, but this thread presented the gain as being the direct result of a single piece of software which, as has been pointed out, seems a big stretch considering everything else that is overselling due to the pandemic and global state of quarantine.

The current gains in all form of home entertainment aren't because people just randomly decided to stay home more. This is clearly all happening because people are trying to avoid death by exposure to the Coronavirus. Not to mention that many businesses are literally closed around the world.

Considering how much slack Facebook received for their "1-billion users in VR" prediction, I can't help but wonder why on earth anyone would consider this "nearly 1 million" as anything more than a blip in the radar.

Luciferous
Consultant
Shame Oculus are still not supporting other headsets with their system directly. I appreciate Revive works with their approval but a lot of average consumers wont want to mess about with third party apps. I don't think everything works with it as well.

I think we would have seen a bigger contribution to VR adoption from some of the excellent Oculus titles if this was the case.

I don't think Oculus needs exclusives now, they have a very solid offering in the Quest and Rift S for the entry level market. Allowing other headsets to access the store I think would give people more confidence they wouldn't just be pouring their money down a drain if they changed headset in future. 

Depending on the Quest 2 specs, New HP or a mystery entrant, I am going to update my headset once a worthy CV1 replacement presents itself.  Would be nice if my Oculus library was compatible with whatever headset I chose.


I think that may be because Oculus' origins are VR and the headsets that got us there, the software ecosystem followed to support that. So that the 2 together can build the combined business.

Changing to an open hardware scenario would be a change in strategy that means they effectively promote other people's hardware as much as their own... great for us, but it's difficult to predict how great that would be for them.

If Oculus headset are sold at or near cost, that possibly would have to change as it would be competing directly with all headsets on it's own platform, so there would be no benefit that I can think of from keeping hardware profit margins low compared to other manufacturers. The software becomes the business.

Valve are in that very business of selling software, they want to maintain the dominant vending platform so naturally they want to support as many different headsets as possible and they want to mitigate the risk or another hardware manufacturer setting up a challenging ecosystem by having a popular headset that attracts people to that platform. So they have their own headset, either via a chosen manufacturer or if that proves difficult for the manufacturer to maintain... build it themselves.

The same will be true for stand-alone, Quest will be seen as a potential long-term challenge by attracting people to a competitor's storefront... so Valve must have their own stand-alone storefront to mitigate that and their own standalone headset to support the store. They will no doubt open the platform to as many headsets as possible because selling software is their business.

If Oculus open up to all hardware they would be effectively saying, software is now our business and that business model is much more problematic because of Steam's dominance. Steam isn't confined to VR so derives a huge income from pancake gaming, and will do for a long time to come. For a VR-only company to compete on those terms is not really feasible in my opinion.

Luciferous
Consultant
Yes very good points, especially the standalone Quest, I absolutely agree with it needing to be closed in. Users who buy the quest I presume want the simplicity and hassle free gaming that a closed system can provide. 

Your point re Oculus being a more of a hardware company than software is also valid as thinking about it, I am pretty sure Oculus would struggle supporting other headsets in their ecosystem. I have had no end of issues downloading games with the native hardware. 

Still this does not change the fact that average consumers are not going to want to mess around with third party apps to get Oculus software working and so Oculus games will have a lower impact on the general adoption of VR.  It simply reaches less of an audience (by design) no matter how brilliant the games are. 

For example I am sure Rift S sales were bolstered by Alyx as it works with steam. A lot people must have looked at the index and said no way am I paying a 1000 pounds. Are people specifically buying non Oculus headsets to play Oculus games? So the policy works well for Oculus I guess. Their hardware helps serve the VR demand regardless but the software not as much as it could.

Either way adoption seems to be coming along nicely. Can't wait for the next two Valve games.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary


.....
If Oculus open up to all hardware they would be effectively saying, software is now our business and that business model is much more problematic because of Steam's dominance. Steam isn't confined to VR so derives a huge income from pancake gaming, and will do for a long time to come. For a VR-only company to compete on those terms is not really feasible in my opinion.



Thanks for a thought provoking comment. It had me pondering the real direction for the operation going forward. I interpret what you say, and remembered the previous attempt by the company to try and create a eco-system to promote "exclusive" VR titles it had acquired. I wonder now if that is the only feasible way to achieve the internal goals. I wonder at what point Steam is acquired, or a version is created from Facebook?
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959