VR Sales Analysis: Rift and Vive to Sell Under 500K in 2016, PS VR to Top 2M | Hacker News Reader

VR Sales Analysis: Rift and Vive to Sell Under 500K in 2016, PS VR to Top 2M

uploadvr.com

49 pointsSkarredGhost21 comments

    The organization found that, by the end of 2016,
    the Oculus Rift is projected to sell 355,088 units;
    the HTC Vive will sell 420,108 units;

Steam's Hardware and Software Survey [1] has Vive:Rift at approximately 2:1. It seems to me that Rift and Vive owners would be very likely to have Steam installed. More accurate than:

    SuperData’s approach to the market for consumer-
    centered virtual reality includes retail checks, executive
    interviews with decision-makers from all of relevant
    firms in the marketplace, pricing data, our survey-based
    consumer tracking panel, and digital content purchases
    collected from our data providers

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

I would expect the ratio of console HMDs to PC HMDs to rapidly approach the ratio of console gamers to PC gamers. I'm hoping the VR edition of Fallout 4 pushes VR into the mainstream.

Also the VR version of Doom (2016) could definitely help. But getting lost in the world of Fallout 4 does sound amazing.

I don't believe Doom has been confirmed as a full port. It may end up as a short experience or a totally different game. I can't find any confirmation, but that was the rumor after E3.

Won't a game like Doom cause motion sickness in the current state of VR technology?

The demo they did supposedly had kind of a mix of warping and very fast movement that apparently got around that.

Traditional run-and-gun FPS games are not well suited to VR, despite how badly many seem to wish they were. There are workarounds and I've read about some truly silly ones (blow a fan in your face to simulate motion, take a preventative dose of Dramamine first, run on an omni-treadmill so there's no mismatch between motor and visual stimuli, etc.)

And it sort of bums me out because it feels a bit...lazy? short-sighted? FPS in the way we think of them now were uniquely suited to a flat screen in front of us. They offer a sense of freedom of movement that is great in games. But trying to shoehorn that old approach into VR seems like missing the point.

I think the real trick (at least as demonstrated to me by the 100 or so games, applications, and demos I've tried on Rift over the past couple of years) is to find formats and conventions that are uniquely suited to the platform rather than trying to rehash and cram what's already a big seller into something that doesn't make you puke after an hour.

Burgeoning products must often ape the establishment to gain traction, even if they are best suited for slightly different applications.

TL;DR: The organization found that, by the end of 2016, the Oculus Rift is projected to sell 355,088 units; the HTC Vive will sell 420,108 units; Google Daydream will sell 450,083 units; and the PS VR will sell 2,602,307 units. In addition, the analysis also purports that the Samsung Gear VR — built in collaboration with Oculus — will sell 2,316,632 units.

PS VR is not for me, I'll always be a PC enthusiast. However, I am incredibly excited about PS getting into this space. I hope they will increase competition on price and the technology itself.

It's not the hardware. VR needs a killer game to make a market.

But for now, Sony has a more comfortable headset, lower price, easier setup, and better games. Maybe by the time the next generation of PC VR hardware is ready, game designers will have figured out something compelling to play on them.

Are you implying my gardening simulator is not the killer app guaranteed to push units?

I agree there isn't a killer game yet, and half the titles are actually demos being sold as games. However there are already several very good games: Eagle Flight, Bound, Robinson, Job Simulator. I'm not even slightly disappointed with the current, very early library.

I think that's what they were hoping to do with Lucky's Tale - the Super Mario Bros of the VR world. Only problem is, kids aren't playing VR games.

Kids are playing PokemonGo - which is AR.

[1]http://newatlas.com/luckys-tale-oculus-rift/41343/

Also, the full depth of the Oculus as a spyware service was revealed right before Lucky's Tale was released.

If it's vr with hand tracking, I think an Avatar (the series) game would be amazing.

Well, that can depend on the individual. I personally would buy the Vive just for the archery game in Valve's The Lab.

If I could justify the expense, that is.

Great. They are different markets. It's console vs PC gaming. They can co exist. One is a different experience and fuller experience but cost a bit more and requires some set up.

It costs a fair bit more and, thus far, has very few games worth playing in the catalog. They're definitely not two completely separate markets, there's a lot of crossover. I could run either and, if I were to buy one today, I'd go with the PS version.

Any VR sales are good for all of VR. We are still solving problems with making VR comfortable for people and locomotion etc. What encourages me about it, is some of best and brightest are working on the problems. Sure we have a lot of Demos right now and no killer app that will make it take off, but all it takes is something like Valve releasing an updated Vive bundled with Half-Life 3, and the PC market will catch up in a hurry.

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