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."
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
... 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.