Rift Now Ahead Of Vive In Steam Survey

[Anonymous]

Am surprised that nobody has posted this or mentioned it tbh.

More troubles for HTC, and if the Vive Pro is too expensive they won't sell too many of those to consumers either.

Perhaps they should have cut the price of the Vive to match the Rift, delayed launching the Vive Pro until next year and upped the resolution from 1.5K to 2K..?

Details here:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

WVR: 5.38%
Vive: 45.38%
Rift: 47.31%
DK2: 1.95%
DK1: 0% (why include that in the figures? lol)

And things are going to get worse for HTC when Oculus cut the price of the Rift again later this year. My money would be on either another Summer Of Rift permanent cut to $299/£299 or $349/£349 and if they don't cut the price this Summer they'll certainly do that before Christmas.

Personally I'm putting this marketshare drop to several factors:

1) HTC released the damn thing way too early. It was basically a late prototype released as a consumer version, their Crescent Bay equivalent.

2) The licencing of Valve's technology is too expensive which is making it difficult for them to drop their price apart from just ONE price cut from $799 to $599 in two years. The Vive is just too expensive, HTC have done the eact same thing with their phones and look to be doing the same thing with the Vive Pro.

3) Software. They're far behind in the software stakes, and Valve must bear a large part of the responsibility here too. The Lab was great, but it was basically a collection of good tech demos. And since the Vive launched, with the exception of Fallout 4 VR, the bundled software has been pretty poor compared to the ridiculous amount of VERY high quality free software with the Rift.

4) Competition from the WVR headsets at a MUCH cheaper price.

I'm sorry to say that it's looking unlikely, imo, that HTC will be able to keep their doors open and keep their lights on during the next 2 years which is disappointing because a) We don't want to lose a major VR player in the game and b) I've always really liked their phones. 😞

Now play nice everybody and try your best not to get banned or this thread locked, and feel free to go off topic...talk of food origins, nationality and anything else that's off topic that isn't offensive is very welcome here lololol 😄 😄 😄

[Anonymous]

2) I have to say that isn't the case. We see a number of 3rd party HMDs and other objects using light house access no problem and more and more going for that. I would bet Oculus would be way cheaper and that others would go for Oculus technology instead if that was the case. I think the problem here is just the hardware cost just over all. Anything coming out using the lighthouse tech on the other hand comes with a higher price point and that is the split where the cost is coming in from. Otherwise, if you have to pay a high cost to use that tech - then you could just say you split that cost over time - but in this case - because the hardware is high then that is what you seeing and not licensing in general.

The major killer isn't any of that really - it all comes down to cost..

Vive doesn't own a store. I know soo many people at the start really kick Oculus for doing it - but one of the benefits is that you can sell the hardware for cheaper while taking the risk of just having to sell them more software to cover the cost of lowering the unit/point of sell unit instead. This benefits the customer by allowing them access to the thing they want for way cheaper and helps the business by allowing more people to buy more software. It's the chicken in the egg and Oculus had to do it - Vive on the other hand doesn't control crap and as a result (with any HMD going forward here as well) will have to face that they are fuck they don't have any real way to offer a deal unless they work with their software reseller to lower their hardware cost.

The Lab was a steam release and not a Vive thing really. Games made by steam are coming out less and less and they are not really backing real high quality games/software like Oculus is doing. Going back to the whole Vive doesn't own a store comment - Vive really doesn't gain anything really from putting money back into Steam because Steam isn't going to give them any money back or high enough shares of that money back for Vive/HTC in this case to make their money back from the investment over time. Unless Steam is willing to take a hit and or give all the money they made off VR sells... then it was a failing design and something a lot of us said at the start.

Any HMD going forward here will have to live off tight marjen sells per headset so they just simply dont have the money to really put it back into software. We already see this with Pimax and many other hardware makers. Their plan is that they hope the current market has enough software out there to sell enough headsets to make their investments back. Windows has the window store, but no VR software/games that Steam had time to build on, but they too will be focus on their store more than using the Vive store in the future. We can already see this as MS is already promoting devs to make software on their store for their VR headsets - yet no one is screaming about that xD

The real enemy to Vive is it's friend - as they say - you keep friends close - but you keep enemies closer - and unfortunately for the Vive - they were choke out from their own market by their closes enemy: Steam.

[Zenbane]

Atmos73 said:

When you work it out and assume Oculus has sold 1million Rifts it works out at 2% or 20,000 units more than Vive. Rift could of sold 70,000 to Vives 50,000.
Not a lot of difference really considering the Rift is one third less. HTC makes money from the DAS too so the difference is even smaller overall. The conclusion is Vive might sell less units but makes more revenue per unit. 

If the Vive made revenue per unit then why did they suffer pure losses for 27 straight months and then sell to Google?

The Vive had to pay back investors from their Venture Capital Alliance as well as paying Valve for patents just to make the Vive. HTC suffered a loss in revenue from 2016-2017, not a gain.

They are trying again in 2018 with Google's money.

[Zenbane]

Atmos73 said:

Facebook are still making a 3 billion loss on Oculus plus 500 million loss in court cases.

Then there’s losses in all those exclusives. 

Oculus make like zero profit on Rifts and most Rifters buy from the Steamstore you included.

Oculus will stop funding games once the store is a viable business so says Justin Rubin’s. 

You didn't answer the question; which must mean you knew you were wrong.

Facebook and Oculus make profits from multiple sources, such as with each GearVR application purchase, and with all the money Oculus' competitors give Facebook to advertise their VR hardware & software products on... Facebook.

Facebook bought Oculus as a positive investment, Google bought parts of HTC to save a sinking ship. The difference is staggering, but was inevitable and pretty obvious from the moment the Vive was launched.

Most Rifters buy from Oculus Home, me included. Most Vivers use Revive to buy Oculus Home games, you included.

[elboffor]

Normal service has been resumed

[Zenbane]

Atmos73 said:

Zenbane said:

 Most Vivers use VivePort to buy Oculus Home games, you included.

VivePort? How do you buy Oculus games through VivePort?

Typo: Revive.

VivePort is what HTC built to copy the success of Oculus Home and abandon SteamVR.

[Zenbane]

Atmos73 said:

You mean the same way Oculus is using Xiaomi to build GO and break into the China markets? Lol

HTC just can't catch a break, huh? They thought running to China would save them from the Facebook-Oculus monster. Oh well.

Revive = Copy Oculus Home Experience.
VivePort = Copy Oculus Home Experience.

HTC should just change the Vives name to the, Voculus Vift.

[DaftnDirect]

I've always been of the opinion that Oculus, via its store front was seen as a big threat to Valve's software monopoly and that was the driving force for them to deliver VR via an alternative piece of hardware. Valve could have just settled for allowing the Rift to be used with Steam games but without alternative hardware, there was always going to be the risk that the VR market would migrate wholesale to Oculus. VR was being touted as the future so the threat must have been taken very seriously. It still is the future but it's a longer path than some were predicting and I think Valve see the risk as being smaller than they originally thought.

I'm not sure Valve were ever really interested in supporting VR via games software themselves. It was enough for them to make sure that alternative hardware existed and ensure that that hardware and the Rift could be used with Steam games. That way, software devs would continue to sell their VR games via Steam and Oculus would be restricted as much as possible into being a hardware vendor rather than hardware/software vendor.

The question is, is the current speed of VR take-up slow enough for Valve to remain complacent. And at what point Rift adoption combined with VR gaming take-up becomes a problem for them.

I'd say Rift adoption of 60% would be an issue for them but only in combination with VR games revenue achieving say 20%... no idea what it is right now but I'm guessing we're a few years away from that. If they're smart though, they shouldn't hang around for that to happen.

[Anonymous]

I really don't think Steam will have enough time to react with a software push just yet. Keep in mind that if they were going to take action that they might have already be talking about a release for the VR in terms of a new game. I could have miss something - but more or less I dont think they really care. As of now, we won't see anything from them until CV2 comes out as a way to keep Oculus customers buying games from the Steam store. Even if Oculus takes more of the software sells - it doesn't threaten Steam as much when they can offer a killer piece of software that will at least draw Oculus customers back.

It depends a lot on how they are taking the MS threat more than anything. MS is a whole OS and that store will be seen by even none-gamers. When you look at it that way - it's possible that Steam might just simply not care about the VR sells as a whole until more demand comes out where they can really push a harder control for it. As is, VR devs  are really desperate to get their hardware and software in as many markets as they can either it be mobile, pc, or consoles. So it somes ways Steam really doesn't have to work hard for much in terms of what they need to sell on their end to VR users.

Pimax, for example, is using Steam store simply because they wouldn't have the money nor weight to create their own private store and that means no software to really use their headset. MS used the stream store for right now simple because the software is already there until MS Store can grow their VR section. At some point, MS will drop Steam like a rock and just offer their store only instead (well I mean, not be as tightly integrated).

More or less - there will always be hardware that will continue to use Steam as their software bank and that means there will always be a threat to Oculus software bank. MS on the other hand, now that will push any company to try a bit harder:)

[KingBlackpixel]

Can't we all just get along and grow together!  We are only humans with low life expectancy, and will deteriorate without experiencing the full potential of what this technology can be if we are chasing statistics and profit. I just wish they'd play nicely together and stop creating barriers. Share technology and solutions!