Facebook will start putting ads in Oculus Quest apps
theverge.com
theverge.com
Can we officially admit that the naysayers were right and that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/78089/oculus-quest-2-is-now-t...
"According to Valve's data, Quest 2 owners comprise 22.91% of all SteamVR users, while another 21.58% use a Rift S headset. Oculus also owns another 13.49%, with the original Rift, and Quest headsets added. All told, Oculus is responsible for 57.98% of all VR headsets used on Valve's platform."
Are people actually shocked that a company with such a pristine reputation for carrying about their produ..um..Users now wants to jam ads directly into their eyes?
Another commenter mentioned that the corporate no-account-required model costs $699, so that may be a more fair comparison. Is facebook subsidizing each Quest 2 by $400 (and assuming they'll be able to extract roughly that amount from each user)?
They heavily subsidize their VR devices…nothing unusual though, all game consoles are subsidized
I think that's only true for Playstation and Xbox. Pretty sure Nintendo makes a profit on every console.
I have to disagree with your implicit assertion that making more money = delivering more value. curl/libcurl earns $0, but delivers more value than a 2-year old *aaS that makes $2,000 in annual revenue.
Google didn't just openly license Android out of the goodness of their hearts. It was a business decision and the Android business does deliver them value, but not as much as Apple's business.
I don’t understand why people are not capable of separating the good from the bad. Of course you can shit on FB regarding many things but this is objectively not one of those things.
Most people probably want to see a VR platform that can stand on its own profit mechanisms. Not something that is parasitically dependent on another platform's ad revenue (either directly with internal ads or indirectly via FB accounts). Instead of taking time to explore that (which is what many believed would happen after the acquisition), FB took the easy way out by bolting existing revenue systems on, which then in turn kills any motivation to explore options.
Similar kinds of worries always play out for technologies/platforms that are good but aren't profitable yet which then get acquired. Will the new owners help the technology stand on its own, or will they take the easy way out and treat it as a mechanism to bring new users onto their existing revenue stream.
More revenue streams to support it is better than fewer, at least at this stage of its development.
It's why many people wished to see that rather than an acquisition (where the new owners can do what they want) for Oculus. Back in the day, FB tried to placate these worries by suggesting that even with an acquisition they would try to behave like a VC and keep Oculus more-or-less independent. At this point it is clear that that dream is over.
People aren't angry, just disappointed. Eventually we will all lose hope on these things. Heck, many already have.
FWIW the Quest and Index have largely solved this problem. There are still certain experiences in VR which require more motion-sickness acclimation, such as roller coasters or fast-moving shooters. However, 1:1 motion experiences no longer cause problems for even the most sensitive players, in my experience.
I've demoed current VR hardware to highly sensitive friends and family members without issue. The same friends and family couldn't tolerate earlier generations of VR for more than a few minutes.
I'm referring to the fact that 3D will always inherently have a floor of non-acclimatable users that TV doesn't. People experience motion sickness from TV also, but it can be mitigated by sitting further back. There's fundamentally no similar option in VR if the immersion alone is disorienting; the immersion is the point.
I'd love to see actual data on the issue. Until then, I'm optimistic that VR's floor of non-acclimatable users is similar to or smaller than the same for regular video game consoles.
Here's a worst-case hypothetical reason why: people will watch porn on VR. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. Even people who wouldn't want to watch it regularly are likely to get curious and check it out at least once to see what it's like. Now, raise your hand: who wants Facebook having access to their porn habits?
Oculus-the-tech is cool. Oculus-the-Facebook-client is completely dead to me. No way, no thanks.
The worst part about VR is that it's so intoxicating with its immersion that once you take it off you feel sad that this is where you really live, not a nice place. It gave me joy and took me away, but it also made me sad about my real life. It gives you a fantasy and more people should realize that multimillionaires and billionaires don't need virtual reality, they're living what you're putting on your face. I'm sure that includes the porn too.
Personally, I absolutely love the Quest's price point, form factor, and overall software quality. At the same time, I despise Oculus as a brand and Facebook as a company for all of the above. I'm prepared to jump ship the split second an alternative is available.
Considering HTC was able to launch what is arguably a better product within the same year as oculus I fail to see what facebook brought to the table besides dark patterns and forced privacy violations.
The Quest 2 is an incredibly attractive device, and I basically can't imagine ever getting a wired VR headset at this point. From my perspective, Facebook made both the most attractive device and the best software ecosystem. I suspect Oculus as a standalone company could not have managed that.
That said, introducing ads to paid apps is a really bad idea. It's going to totally undermine consumer trust, and kneecap the ecosystem they built.
(And yes, I also had a visceral distaste when having to finally make a Facebook account to be able to use the Quest 2. But I can recognize that unifying the account infrastructure is the correct engineering choice, there's no need to assume malice).
But where they're looking to make the money is from getting a cut from software sales, again just like consoles. Advertising is a garbage business compared to owning a popular software platform like that.
Let's do some back of the envelope calculations. Let's say you can show 10 ads per hour, the average VR user uses 30 minutes of VR per day, a CPM of $10, a 50% platform vs. app cut of ad revenue, and a device lifetime of 5 years. I think these are all generous estimates.
10 ads / hour * 0.5 hours / day * 365 days / year * $10 / 1000 ads * 50% * 5 years = $45.60 total ad revenue for the lifetime of the device.
They cannot be subsidizing this for $400 and expecting to make it up on ads. The numbers just don't add up. (But I don't think they're selling it for a multi-hundred dollar loss at all.)
On the other hand, in 9 months of using the device I've bought about $150 in software, with Facebook's cut probably being about $45. Except that is over 9 months, not 5 years. This is where the money is.
This isn’t 4 year olds mindlessly watching YouTube, these are the ideal demographic to sell stuff. At even 3.5x your ultra low estimate FB is at 1/2 the retail price of the device. Massive subsides are an easy choice for FB assuming VR doesn’t die off quickly.
Still even using your numbers a drop from 350$ to 300$ is a big deal before considering other revenue from app sales etc.
Isn't the vast majority of FB usage on mobile, where ad blockers aren't even close to being as popular as on desktop ( and they still are probably used by a minority of people)
... so they can show ads on it.
From my point of view they drastically improved both the Oculus brand and the overall opinion of VR as a usable technology.
Oculus may have done that without Facebook or it may have stayed tethered to a PC and continued to be awkward to use. I don't really know.
Outside of our little bubble most of the people really don’t care even if we’re talking about VR. As another commenter said it’s actually the most popular VR and that could’ve been found through a quick search but then the feeling to impose our own reality to others seem to be sometimes stronger. And this is the top comment at the time of writing...
The set of early VR adopters naturally intersects heavily with the set of facebook skeptics. This website is composed mostly of relatively young, high earning men with interests in technology, which is to say almost the exact target demographic of VR. Do you see the general sentiment here about Facebook and this move in particular?
BTW if you're going to complain about people not doing adequate research to back their points you shouldn't follow it with misinformation you copied from another comment. Sony has by far the largest market share in VR, not oculus.
>Can we officially admit that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?
This is just simply not true. There's absolutely no proof whatsoever that the Oculus brand is dead. In fact, it's one of the most popular if not the most in some platforms. And I also don't see how FB has "tarnished public opinion" of this generation of VR since again it's one of the most popular which is rather incompatible with that. Perhaps you have data that I don't have, in such case please share it so I can learn.
What you wanted to say, perhaps, is: "can we agree that in our small bubble, the Oculus brand is dead" which would argueably be not true either as I anecdotically now many HN readers who own them and are very happy but it'd perhaps be a bit closer to the current situation.
My whole point is, here there's a lot of hate towards certain companies. I share it to some extent as well but I'm definitely going to point out when nonsense is being spread in comments like yours. Your comment was simply not true and got upvotes of people who dislike FB which is a very respectable position but I thought we could do better and not promote fake facts just because it harms some company we (in general) dislike.
And no, not meant to be insulting. I don't see how can I be insulting by pointing out your comment isn't correct or to be precise, in fact, I'm answering your stated question: "Can we officially admit that ..." - no, we can't. The data shows otherwise.
And a finishing disclaimer: I don't have hidden interests towards FB or work for them in some indirect way. The only thing I have is WhatsApp, the rest I stopped using very long time ago. I won't buy Oculus for the reasons you and others state. But I'm not blind and I know that most of the people don't care at all and will buy. In other words, the majority of the people won't stop buying it because FB owns it or it requires FB login or they do data harvesting or all of those things combined.
Now you are either a FAANG company capable of monetizing your users to the extent FB can, or you can't even start thinking of entering the standalone headset market with a price tag twice of FB. This is very bad for VR in my opinion.
- All advertisements to children
- Advertisements for prescription drugs
- Advertisements that intend to evoke emotional responses rather than inform:
--- Many ads are designed to make the viewer feel inferior so they want to buy the product to remedy the negative emotions the ads caused
--- Many ads seek to irrationally associate a brand with a positive feeling, which overrides consumers ability to make rational purchasing decisions
--- Many ads seek vague 'brand awareness' without any informational content
I think there is a narrow case around informative advertisements "Hey this product or service exists, it might be something you want" that can be societally useful, but the vast majority of video and print ads are not doing that.
Why is it that the default response of so many adults today is to demand that an authority figure impose their own will on someone else?
I think rich people have always thought this way, but nowadays there’s more people who live a rich life thanks to technological developments.
Huxley was right, we have come to love the world we live in
That is why advertising should be regulated far more heavily than it is right now.
As for why 'default response of so many adults today is to demand that an authority figure blah blah blah', as you have asked -- it's not, stop building strawmen.
Of course it is. What does regulation do if not prevent an undesirable class of actions?
A: A square is not simply "a quadrilateral whose every angle is 90 degrees."
B: Of course it is. What is a square if not a four-sided figure with all right angles?
We know there are a huge number of undesirable actions which we don't think should be regulated. Some of them are minor things, like petty insults or inconsequential dishonesty. Others are major, but are protected by other ideals. For example, choosing to spend a million dollars on gold to bury in a private crypt. Those are some examples that come to mind when I hear that the purpose of regulation is not simply to prevent undesirable actions. It's not that regulation does things other than that. It's that it must have some other attributes in addition to that. Determining those attributes is what makes it not simple.
Because between digital and print its a 3/4 Trillion dollar market and growing.
I personally think all advertising should be illegal, but it's basically one of the most important pieces of how the modern economy works unfortunately.
The starting off point for ads was signs in shop windows and billboards or bundled with important information like nespapers, these are the most invasive of all because you can't avoid them. Everything since is at least something you can opt out of.
The worst thing about ads is that not only are they convincing you to spend money on something you otherwise wouldn't have, but you indirectly pay for the advertising that convinces you was well. Companies that spend less to assault your senses have cheaper products, so to combat it spend less on cheaper alternatives that don't advertise.
Why can't they: 1. Be less greedy 2. Raise the price so I can be guaranteed to see no ads
This whole thing is shady IMO from top to bottom and just another aspect of 2021 tech which makes me think we really collectively failed to prevent the wonder of computing from just being another instrument to extract capital from the people and give it to the powerful
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34017056-the-history-...
That developer can probably hardly care less that I don't support them. Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one) or the app is not good enough in which case people will stay away on their own.
The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
Developers who do the thing you don't like.
> Every single app developer?
No, just the ones who do the thing you don't like.
> The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
Google and Apple pays devs show ads. Therefore all games have ads, right? No.
I don't buy games with ads. I have plenty of options.
> Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one)
Again you're arguing that all games that can have ads, do have ads. This is proven wrong by the world. We have two gigantic app stores with 5 million apps between them. None of the apps on my phone have ads.
You pay for a TV, and it shows you ads. You pay for a train ticket, and the walls and platforms are plastered with ads. You buy the fancy surround sound option in your car, and it plays ads. You buy a magazine, and it's mostly ads. And so on and so on. Our entire world has been taken over by ads.
I think it's important to recognize this not so we let FB / Oculus off the hook, but so we can see it's an enormous problem overall that needs to be addressed.
Also, not sure, but isn't there eye-tracking built-in? If yes, the headset could actually detect that you're closing your eyes and keep the ad there until you open them again.
Based on previous behavior, this isn't an unfounded line of thinking. Many of the statements made by FB in regards to Occulus, while true at the time of the statement, have been completely reversed.
It is completely fair to expect that, at some point in the future, FB will inject ads into any VR app on Occulus at will.
"Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures [...]"
Then also - there is little future in it. Immersive VR is almost entirely where the future starts and stops. Everything else is mined from pop culture.
Edit: fixing typos
Meaning I am Nintendo's customer, Epic Games (I... think(?) they make PS5 games) is Sony's customer, and assorted advertisers are FaceBook's.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/sony-is-selling-th...
FB does not deserve the benefit of the doubt, at all.
This piece (along with others I've read) attributes the action only to Facebook and not to game developers, so readers are likely to miss that part.
Oculus showing ads for monetization is fine. I suspect they’ll somehow try to tap into Facebook data to target these ads though.
The only reason you don't see it more already is that advertisers haven't figured out how to value what exactly they'd be buying; There's so many more factors regarding visibility/readability/placement in a 3D virtual environment, and there's a big difference between a real-life billboard that moves slowly past every driver on the interstate vs a canvas in a VR game where players might teleport right by in a hurry. Even with Facebook solving the technical aspects of measuring impressions/"engagement" in virtual worlds, I don't think the platform will attract many advertisers outside of the gaming/VR industry itself.
Step 2 - announce advertising is necessary because the "ecosystem" is unsustainable.
I don't know how this is not attracting the attention of competition regulators. Coming in 10 years from now after the damage is done will be way too late.
1) growth at any cost, even if you're burning money left and right
2) find clever ways to "monetize" your product and strip everything that made your product attractive in the process.
For me, this is a reason to hold off on VR despite being eager to use it - for others, it may not be.
edit: huh, this disucssion prompted me to look at HTC's website again and it seems they do have a wireless headset: Vive Focus for Business. Even though it's aimed at business, I wonder if you could get it to work with SteamVR?
Someone else in this thread said that Facebook will sell businesses an accountless Quest for $699 - I wonder if you could buy that one as a consumer (I'm guessing not).
I pay for the VR apps, that is not self-sustaining? This is like ads in the movie Minority Report - yuck.
They will most certainly try to put it in immersive games if they can get away with it...
Edit- I don’t know how I missed this:
> Developers will get a share of the revenue from ads in their apps, but Facebook isn’t publicly revealing the percentage.
It feels like Facebook is taking a deliberately hostile stance to modding because they can't get their cut.
I have one not hooked up to Facebook, but I’ve had it for a while. There are a few “social features” that don’t work, but it still browses the web and plays oculus store content. With the link cable you can play steam games too. It won’t stay that way forever - 2022 I think.
You’re better off looking for something else if you don’t want Facebook. I am hoping Valve has something by then.
I had a CV1, but sold it some years ago, I found the usb-attached lighthouses too messy for my setup. Ideally I would like to get rid of the headset cable as well. I pretty much only played Beat Saber so Quest 2 would have been perfect!
I guess it's time to order a Valve Index?
You may need to download a "pirated" copy of an older beatsaber version, because afaik, the most recent update broke it again.
I've had Good experience with the latency on this setup, but I do have my PC connected to a 5 GHz router via ethernet and play in an area next to my router.
Resolution comparison between Index, Quest 2, and Reverb G2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny_OPsxHQmU
Resolution comparison between CV1, Vive, and Quest 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTaYQNghAxI
I have a Quest 1. The game selection is alright but expensive for what it is, but never found an unmodded game that kept my attention for more than ~5 hours - they are mostly VR demos without staying power. Modding is a huge pain in the ass, and every update breaks it again.
I used to use it regularly for BeatSaber + Custom Songs (though its underpowered so can't play all custom songs). For a while I was able to limp along by avoiding updates, but it eventually was broken by one of them, so I could no longer change custom songs. Finally I tried to fix it, failed, and tried to uninstall and just get unmodded BeatSaber working again. Quest decided to update, and now it doesn't even load the home screen - just a loading icon and then infinite black. I guess I'll try a factory reset, but I'm so frustrated with it I'm not sure it's worth trying to salvage.
It feels like Facebook is deliberately hostile to modding because they want to fortify their walled garden.
I will never buy oculus again. Steam's VR is higher quality, has much better game selection, and is much easier to mod as you want. My friend has an Index and I prefer it in every respect - the only downside is that it's wired and more expensive.
Add me to the list of people who will never buy an Oculus.
Quest2 will also use ASW for helping overcome lag as well. https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-asw-2-point-0-better...
But Virtual Desktop just released a new version that uses SSW, and it might even be better. https://uploadvr.com/virtual-desktop-synchronous-spacewarp/
But if it allows developers to build a free ecosystem that's ad-supported, that'll lower the activation cost to new VR ideas, increase iteration, and generally could increase the health of the whole ecosystem in terms of experience diversity.
When will we ever learn?
VR ads have a lot of invasive potential which I don't think people trust Facebook to stay away from. Ads on the dashboard, ads that stick to your vision, ads that pause when you take the headset off, ads you have to look at to proceed, etc. There's not much of a limit when it's Facebook's hardware on your head.
Personally, I respect that fear but I think it's going to be alright. If we're talking about an ecosystem with hundreds / thousands of games and 90% have ads as opposed to one with fifty games with no ads that cost $10+ each, I'm in favor of the more diverse experience space.