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Vive: Hanging onto Steam Market Share By a Thread

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Competitive update time,

Based on the purely optional Steam Survey (which I always Opt Out of myself), the HTC Vive is roughly 1% ahead of the Oculus Rift in terms of Steams VR shares. If we count the Oculus DK2... then HTC just fell behind Oculus on their own native platform. I believe the phrase for that is: omglolwtfpwned

If this survey included my Rift and that of anyone else who also opts out... then yeah, Oculus is officially more than 50% of Steams VR Market Share.


Each month, Valve runs a survey among Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the user population, and to see how things are changing over time; that includes which VR headsets are connected to users’ computers. Participation in the survey is optional.

The latest results show a small gain of 0.71% in the Rift’s share of VR headsets on Steam, bringing the device’s overall share to a new record high, reaching 47.61% of all headsets in use on the platform.





Article: https://www.roadtovr.com/vive-hanging-onto-steam-majority-market-share-thread/
114 REPLIES 114

bigmike20vt
Visionary
The bigger problem is, walled garden or not both MS and Sony have a proven history of dropping hardware like a stone. Hypothetically if I bought a Windows hmd and ms dropped support any apps I bought on windows store I am boned on 
Now........ This could be true of oculus as well but 1) oculus have said they will not block revive and they have no issue with it

And 2) right now as a user oculus have treated me ok. MS on the other hand I have had a mixed bag with so I am more trusting of them staying committed to vr than I am MS. . Hell MS have already done the "announce amazing vr console to presumably take the shine of Sony psvr and the pro .... Only to renague on it 18 months later.

Arguably steamvr users are in the safest of all spots as valve opens her vr legs for anyone...... But imo steamvr just isn't quite as good an experience (on the rift at least) as oculus... As I found out when I did direct comparison with pinball FX vr. Steam version only user steam vr, and same when I compare elite on oculus or using steam vr 
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


snowdog said:

SteamVR doesn't support WVR headsets yet and won't do until next month some time. And as @Zenbane has said the Microsoft Store IS a walled garden, you can only use WVR headsets with software bought from the Microsoft Store unless I'm mistaken?



Only from the MS Store and any other App's made by MS specifically for WMR. So far I have seen one demo/preview App made by MS for WMR that was released on Steam.

Oculus supports the Vive through Revive... WMR is currently 100% restricted to Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

This means that Windows Mixed Reality is more of a walled garden than Oculus ever was! But snowdog, I think we finally have an answer to your question(s) regarding Microsoft's choice to call this "Mixed Reality." And the answer is...

"If we call it Mixed Reality instead of Virtual Reality, everyone will not only allow us to have a Walled Garden, but they won't even see the damn wall right in front of them!"
-Microsoft


The Executive MS meeting probably went something like this:

"We are almost ready to release our Virtual Reality headsets, can we lock it down to the Microsoft Store and MS Published applications only?"

"I dunno... remember how everyone tried to crucify Oculus for being a walled garden with their Virtual Reality headset?"

"True. So let's call it Mixed Reality instead."

"Done!"


kojack
MVP
MVP
Win MR apps need to be UWP, because the Mixed Reality api is UWP only. Other than that, they actually don't need to be on the Windows Store. As of Windows 10 you can side load UWP apps from anywhere, same as Oculus lets you do.

Well, that's standard UWP apps, I haven't heard of anybody actually side loading an MR app yet. 🙂

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

Roming22
Adventurer
On topic
If this survey included my Rift and that of anyone else who also opts out... then yeah, Oculus is officially more than 50% of Steams VR Market Share.

Then it would be only fair to include the people that have an HTC headset and opted-out. Then the number would be back to what Steam advertised, as the proportion of additional HTC and Oculus owners would even out, This is because there is no relation between wanting to keep that information private and owning an Oculus over an HTC.

I'm glad to see that the market is evenly split. It means both company have strong products and will be supported in the future.

Off-topic
I don't care whether a platform is open or closed, no matter how you want to define those terms, as I see it as a positive that companies are willing to invest resources to explore this space. That increases the chances that at least one of them might stick in the long term, instead of VR being a fad that dies until the late 2020's.

I'm tired of people trying to find the winner, or trying to validate their bias. I bought the Oculus because I believed at the time that it was the best headset for me. I'm currently very happy with it, but would still compare what's out there and not blindly buy a CV2. I don't understand why I should feel threatened by people who buy another brand.

Roming22
Adventurer

Zenbane said:


MowTin said:
I see the fact that you can use different HMD's with Steam VR as a plus.



And how many different HMDs do you own? How many different HMDs do you put on your head at the same time?
😉

Steam supports anything, which is good in theory. But no one is wearing them all at once, so this openness only sounds good in theory. This openness is also the reason Steam is more like a Flea Market than a quality piece of VR Software.

I believe you are missing the point. It simply means that when buying a game on Steam one has a higher chance (but no guarantee) that it will work with their next HMD.

At the moment, every title I bought on Oculus will be useless if my next HMD is not an Oculus.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Roming22 said:


Zenbane said:


MowTin said:
I see the fact that you can use different HMD's with Steam VR as a plus.



And how many different HMDs do you own? How many different HMDs do you put on your head at the same time?
😉

Steam supports anything, which is good in theory. But no one is wearing them all at once, so this openness only sounds good in theory. This openness is also the reason Steam is more like a Flea Market than a quality piece of VR Software.

I believe you are missing the point. It simply means that when buying a game on Steam one has a higher chance (but no guarantee) that it will work with their next HMD.

At the moment, every title I bought on Oculus will be useless if my next HMD is not an Oculus.


I am guessing you wasn't around during the early days... That was the very problem people had with Oculus. They couldn't buy their games from the Oculus store and therefore created hacks to make their headset look like a Oculus headset. When Oculus bock that - all hell broke open and they created a hack that destroy all DMZ resulting in games that had a price tag to be free to anyone that downloaded the hack. Even the creator felt sorry afterwards about making the hack and took it down after a while.

The wall garden is real - and Oculus was making the best games at the time - even now - that is why it's a big deal but no one is saying anything about that to MS xD Yet, people at the time was saying a closed system was a bad idea.

Granted, I feel like it was a fair system really. I am glad they had open up more, but that was kind of the perk going Oculus - that you had access to much much cooler stuff that just work vs steam that was full of crappy tittles (not all, but 90% of their titles at the time were pretty rotten).

kzintzi
Trustee
I don't have any issue with Walled Gardens at all.. I recognise and agree that for technical people they can be a PITA, but they do serve a purpose (if done right) - they stop crap from appearing in the garden.. I work in the Corporate Windows space, and I try and keep my garden as walled as possible - if you want to use an application here it needs to be approved; that way you don't bring your "infected-coz-i-downloaded-it-from-an-interwebs-hakerz-site" crap into my environment. fixing stupid mistakes when people get cryptolockered or infected with crap is a waste of time and resources for me, and I can 100% see that having un-validated shit into the Oculus Home environment would make it worse not better..

if you want to have 100's of tech demo's, and "barely-out-of-greenlight" stuff as your VR playground, go for it.. personally I prefer my stuff curated.


Though you are more than slightly incoherent, I agree with you Madam,
a plum is a terrible thing to do to a nostril.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Roming22 said:

On topic
If this survey included my Rift and that of
anyone else who also opts out... then yeah, Oculus is officially more
than 50% of Steams VR Market Share.

Then it would be only fair to include the people that have
an HTC headset and opted-out. Then the number would be back to what
Steam advertised, as the proportion of additional HTC and Oculus owners
would even out, This is because there is no relation between wanting to
keep that information private and owning an Oculus over an HTC.




Steam is the #1 Go To platform for the HTC Vive, whereas Oculus Home
is the #1 Go To Platform for the Rift. The number of Rift users who
would even be presented with the "Steam Survey Prompt" is smaller than
the number of Vive users.

Regardless, we can push the guesswork aside and just go with the current numbers:
47.61 (Oculus Rift) + 3.28 (Oculus DK2)

That's more than 50% in Oculus' favor.


Roming22 said:
I'm tired of people trying to find the winner, or trying to validate their bias.



It's debate with a competitive edge, if you don't like it then don't read it. And if you read it... try not to fuel it. Or you can just read it and fuel it and then whine about it lol - whatever floats your boat.



Roming22 said:
I don't understand why I should feel threatened by people who buy another brand.



I don't think anyone here feels threatened, people just feel competitive. Competitive debate can be fun. It's not for everyone though clearly.



Roming22 said:
I believe you are missing the point. It simply means that when buying a game on Steam one has a higher chance (but no guarantee) that it will work with their next HMD.

At the moment, every title I bought on Oculus will be useless if my next HMD is not an Oculus.



That's completely false, many (if not all) Oculus titles can be played with another HMD using Revive. Plus, many Oculus titles are available on Steam. Lastly, some of the best Oculus exclusives were free anyway (e.g. RoboRecall) so no money is lost.

I think you are the one missing several points.

MowTin
Expert Trustee

Zenbane said:


MowTin said:
I see the fact that you can use different HMD's with Steam VR as a plus.



And how many different HMDs do you own? How many different HMDs do you put on your head at the same time?
😉

Steam supports anything, which is good in theory. But no one is wearing them all at once, so this openness only sounds good in theory. This openness is also the reason Steam is more like a Flea Market than a quality piece of VR Software.

This is an old debate anyway. Go try to put a PlayStation game in to an XBox. Try to install a MAC application on a Windows machine. Having a native closed system isn't a bad thing, and having an open system isn't a good thing. These are just different stuff and different thangs: different options to account for different preferences so that people have different choices.

I'm seriously considering buying the Samsung Odyssey or even the PiMax 8k depending on reviews. So, I would prefer a system that supports multiple HMD's. 

I'm not sure Oculus is committed to high-end VR. They seem to be trying to get 1 Billion people into VR which means stuff that can run and cheap hardware. I don't want an Oculus Go. I want more pixels and better clarity. So, I like the option of shopping around and possibly buying a higher res HMD. 

The games I play most, I bought on Steam. And Steam Home is now much better than Oculus Home. And it's possible that PiMax and Samsung Odyssey may be better HMDs than Rift or Vive for certain games. 

I chose Rift over Vive because Rift had better image quality. If something with better image quality that the Rift comes along I'll jump on that.  
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
@MowTin which games do you play most? Other than Onward.