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Oculus / Vive / PSVR are all "consoles" in a way, and that as competition becomes more and more fierce, profitability on hardware will go down over time. By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform.

What's different about consoles though is that, at least in Oculus and Vive's case, the software looks to be fairly compatible with one another (hack-blocking aside by Oculus). What I don't understand is, if it's trivial to run Oculus software on other hardware platforms with hacks, why wouldn't they want people to buy their software if it can run on other platforms as well? Is it brand protection? They can't make large margins on their headset forever.

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I have both. I greatly prefer my HTC Vive for the room-scale + wand experience. I also really like Steam VR over Oculus Home.

The HTC Vive works like a peripheral. I launch Steam, start Steam VR mode, and put the headset on. It feels like PC gaming.

The Oculus Rift feels like a console. I put the headset on, and it launches Oculus Home. It's a very polished presentation and the HW-SW integration is deep and satisfying.

They're more peripherals than consoles. This is what makes it so frustrating to see what's happened to Oculus. Their recent moves are very anti-developer.

That's what I mean -- they're trying to be consoles artificially. Vive has the Steam platform, Oculus has theirs.

I think it's worth pointing out that Steam might technically be a walled garden, but it's a very open one, and it has full support for both the Vive and the Rift. I don't get the impression at all that the Vive is trying to be a console artificially. There is no content that is exclusive to the Vive only because of business contracts; the Vive is just enjoying temporary and coincidental exclusivity which is a result of Touch not being available and not even having a release date.

I think Valve is trying to create an open platform for VR, so at least you could use Vive or some other device (probably not Oculus, though) that works with Steam VR games. It also makes no sense for Valve to allow anyone else that doesn't abide by those standards to use the Steam store (including Oculus).

Yes, all the stuff the SteamVR overlay is built with are public APIs that competing stores can use to make their own overlay (including notification popups during games, etc.). You can make a competing store in a tab alongside steam, or replace the Steam VR overlay entirely:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/wiki/IVROverlay_Over...

Valve is in a very comfortable position. Steam will still be steam if VR implodes tomorrow, and for the opposite case, all they need to do is not getting left behind. There is no way something other than an open platform (well, as open or closed as conventional steam) could help them keep that position.

> They can't make large margins on their headset forever.

They don't. Oculus is selling the Rift at cost.

> Why wouldn't they want people to buy their software if it can run on other platforms as well?

Their goal is to build a user base through exclusives. Exclusives aren't exclusive if you can play them on other hardware.

> By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform.

Hopefully they will just go out of business instead. No more walled garden bullshit, this is a VR peripheral. It doesn't need an app store attached.

They're owned by facebook so going out of business is not going to happen. What is going to happen is a realignment of their core mission statement once facebook deems what they're doing is non value added.

Why does it need DRM? Can you imagine if you bought a monitor and it turned out you could only run specific programs and could only use approved peripherals?

"Oh, you can't run Google Chome, but we have an amazing equivalent: Oculus Explorer! We're also gonna monitor your mouse movements for the purpose of improving your customer experience. In addition, to ensure a consistent UX, you can only use Oculus approved mice and keyboards!"

Oculus DRM doesn't work like that at all. Anyone can program against the oculus API and release software for it. It's not like there is a standard VR api (OpenVR is anything but, it's controlled by a single company with their own intentions).

Correct, it's more like buying Microsoft Flight Simulator and not being able to run it because your monitor is not a genuine Microsoft monitor.

Oculus DRM works by locking the "Oculus exclusive" software to the Oculus hardware. Hackers, of course, have cracked that nut, so the usual arms race against offensive DRM has begun.

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