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Comment by de6u99er | Hacker News Reader

> So another thing Microsoft abandons just as it starts growing.

I don't see VR/AR growing. Quite the opposite.

E.g.: https://mixed-news.com/en/steamvr-february-2023/

Some contrast to this comment: this is steamVR data which is not only specific to steam (which as pointed out in the article, is not representative of the entire market) but also mostly biased towards gaming. Now I will concede that VR has mostly been “successful” with that demographic (gaming), in fact, oculus (now quest) is mostly making money solely on that sort of content… some people at Meta while I was there would even argue that this product should limit its ambition to be the “Nintendo switch of VR”. Apple on the contrary has been setting expectations much more clearly that gaming is not in the forefront (but not excluded). Whether it will be successful is another story, but we should still welcome new challengers in an industry / product category. What happened to the excitement in tech everyone :-)

oculus always wanted the walled garden approach, but steamvr had so much more content that users were unhappy that their vr display device wouldn't play steamvr games even though it technically was possible (in fact people hacked it in before it was officially enabled).

Now that oculus has made the device cheaper so more non pc gamers are playing I'm sure they're selling more software themselves. Valve also hasn't launched a headset in a while and wasn't targeting low budget headsets at all.

I'm not sure 6 million MAU is really "successful" when game consoles are approaching 400 million MAU and they're still mostly nerd boxes. Let's reserve "successful" for products that break 10 million MAU or perhaps 100 million MAU. A few hundred thousand devices, as Apple will sell this year, or a few million devices, as Meta has deployed successfully over the last decade, that's just not mainstream and not even close to any other Apple release in terms of sales or fashion factor (AVP is actually anti-fashion, a real departure for Apple.)

These statistics are complicated. They're looking at the evolution in percentage relative to a Steam's total numbers.

For instance if Steam had a sudden influx of new comers because of some standard popular franchise's game, the total VR usage could slowly grow yet still be declining in percentage relative to Steam as a whole.

Then users not relying on Steam (someone playing recrooms through Oculus Link for instance) also won't be counted. I have no idea how many people that would be, but VR is not that mainstream, so people doing that kind of stuff feels par for the course

The author speculates that PCVR users are switching to the PSVR2. It seems much more likely that they are switching to the standalone Quest headsets, which have far higher sales numbers and exclusive AAA games like Asgard's Wrath 2. The graphics aren't as good as on PC or PS5, but not everything is about polygons.

PSVR2 is an excellent headset, I’m not buying PCVR until those headsets are on the level of PSVR2. OLED or micro LED is a must, and foveated rendering is good for performance on pixel dense displays. Plus, inside out tracking instead of extra boxes to mount. The main problem is you can’t use it except on PS5.

It's probably subsidized by Sony, otherwise it is hard to explain how they ship it at $550.

Quest 3 (500 USD), from Meta, is definitely subsidized, given that their hardware bill alone is almost as high as the end price of the product [1] without any inclusion of development cost, and considering that the latest losses of Meta's Reality Labs exceed 4 billion USD [2].

So I don't think there will be anything soon in that price range that can compete with the headsets above. The Quest 3 seems the best deal currently, given that it has a lot of games and doesn't require a PS5 or even gaming PC.

[1] https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-quest-3-bill-of-materials-ana...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/01/metas-reality-labs-loses...

Also with a quest you get the best from both worlds. If you're coming from pcvr you already have a suitable pc and can even play wirelessly. With the native games to boot. It's a really nice combo.

Your link is from 2023.. Current numbers:

Steam users with VR Headsets: 2.24% (vs 2.07% last feb)

See https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey (VR section)

Vs 1.84% the prior month. This is an example of noise of a flat trend over the last year, not something just starting to grow.

OP was arguing that it was decreasing. Steam is a bad source of info for a lot of reasons. Meta is the largest platform and they don't release numbers. My personal feeling (Apple Vision Pro hype not withstanding) as a VR developer is that the industry is in the slow growth phase and will continue to grow as real usecases are found and hardware continues to improve year over year.

Sure, the source isn't perfect but May 2021 still being higher than this peak is no more an argument it's actually growing in absence of other actual data nearly 10 years into the current cycle. Particularly since this is for the much more popular overall VR market, not just AR. That could always change in the future, but there is nothing beyond hopes and feelings suggesting it's already changing at the moment (not that those can't ever turn out to be right).

I'm surprised there'd be that much noise in the Steam Hardware Survey.

Typically anything in ${latest-steam-survey} is more unreliable than ${not-latest-steam-survey}. People often get hyped up on a big month change in e.g. Linux that ends up being a detection issue or the like.

occulus headsets are outselling xboxes.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/oculus/quest-2-meta-sales-xbox-seri...

PSVR2 is outselling both.

I wonder if that's still true now that Xbox has more software and the supply crunch is resolved.

Apparently Xbox is just doing horribly bad this console generation. No real major reason I can see for it, however, the Xbox does Xbox things.

Quest is outselling PSVR2 https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-psvr-2-unit-sales-holiday-202...

thnx, there is "aces of thunder" dropping for PSVR2 in a quarter or two which should get that moving again, either way great to see the trend only accelerating.

However, the Xbox is profitable and Metas VR division is still spending $6 billion for every $1 billion they make.

It's relatively easy to move a lot of devices if you don't care about making any money on them.

For what it’s worth, my VR usage is greatly down because I used it for iRacing but grew frustrated with windows and switched to Linux where I can’t use it anymore for the time being. Blame anticheat.

The only thing I want PCVR for is simracing; I don’t particularly enjoy other games. I have a PSVR2 from when I planned to just use a console but now I use an IR head tracker in iRacing, which is like a poor man’s VR.

Too bad they won’t get anti cheat working in Linux, I really hate Windows too.

I use my WMR for sim racing as well as Elite: Dangerous, with a wheel and pedals for one and HOTAS for the other. It definitely was "good enough" for that purpose, and my IPD is within the spec to use it, it I really don't use it often enough to warrant upgrading anything.

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