HTC Vive owns roughly double market share of Oculus: 59.8% vs 30.22% in Sept Steam survey

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Interesting results in from the September 2016 Steam hardware survey which show the Vive with a heavy lead among the PC crowd. While the early lead can in part be attributed to the Vive becoming more readily available at a quicker pace than the Rift, the Rift has for months been available for local pickup in stores and on traditional websites like Amazon. It appears the PC community heavily prefers the Vive at this point in time. And before anyone asks, YES 99.9% of Rift owners (who are almost by definition hardcore PC gamers with serious rigs) use Steam. It offers more standard games the hardcore want to play, more Rift-enabled VR games than the Oculus store, and usually at better prices. The survey won't be 100% accurate (sample size), but it should be pretty close.

Research firm SuperData seems to expect the gap to close, but also for the PSVR to reach 3x the install base of the Rift and Vive COMBINED. GearVR -- though clearly the inferior VR experience -- is expected to continue to sell well and hold the #2 position among VR-enabled devices.

So...does anyone expect the gap between the Vive and Rift to close over the holidays, or do you all expect the current estimated proportions to hold through 2017? Do you all expect PSVR -- with its far lower price of entry and release date only about 10 days away -- to cut into PC VR sales figures? It is already reviewing well.

 

[Zeeman]

I'm honestly hoping for the best with the Razer VR product, though, will likely buy a Vive or Rift in the next month or two, purely depending on which one I can get a good deal on from someone who decided to take a financial hit for me. I think the next gen is when things will get serious, but I wouldn't mind getting my toes wet.

The article, I think, is right on when it says the Vive and Rift are like advanced prototypes...

Z...

 

[Garagiste]

YES 99.9% of Rift owners (who are almost by definition hardcore PC gamers with serious rigs) use Steam.

Source for that slightly dubious stat? I mean I might be in the 0.1% but I'm not convinced.

 

[Cliché]

I haven't been on Steam since I bought my Rift, so I doubt I'm included in their stats. I bet there are more people who bought a Rift that have never heard of Steam then you may think.

I saw the other day that Amazon had Oculus Touch available on 31 December. So if that's true, the Oculus will shoot themselves in the foot for a Christmas boost. I image Vive will continue to lead, but the Rift will close the gap over the next year. Then another year or so for generation 2, w/o a significant price drop from either during that time.

PSVR is for consoles and doesn't really compare with the others, kind of like the Rift not comparing with the Vive when it comes to room scale. While the Rift may be able catch up to the Vive, I think PSVR will always be cheap lo res by comparison.

 

[shadragon]

Remember, 47.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 

[Aio]

I haven't been on Steam since I bought my Rift, so I doubt I'm included in their stats. I bet there are more people who bought a Rift that have never heard of Steam then you may think.

I saw the other day that Amazon had Oculus Touch available on 31 December. So if that's true, the Oculus will shoot themselves in the foot for a Christmas boost. I image Vive will continue to lead, but the Rift will close the gap over the next year. Then another year or so for generation 2, w/o a significant price drop from either during that time.

PSVR is for consoles and doesn't really compare with the others, kind of like the Rift not comparing with the Vive when it comes to room scale. While the Rift may be able catch up to the Vive, I think PSVR will always be cheap lo res by comparison.

Then again it seems like the Facebook exclusive deals has ended for some games today so that will probably boost the vive sales.. anyway there are more vendors about to release their headsets soon and my guess is that we will see a lot of changes in the technology and the market soon. Let's just hope that there is not to much of exclusivity/API war and instead companies have to compete with technology so we (consumers) will get better products.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

It appears the PC community heavily prefers the Vive at this point in time.

Aside from the inflammatory title... and "we've been here before", and playing the devil's advocate;

You are making a gross assumption based on material provided by a Valve marketing vehicle. Of course a Steam-dependent survey will show the Vive being ahead.
Your assumption may be true, but it cannot be proven without Oculus revealing their actual sales numbers. Which to my knowledge they have not.

Graphs like this are Valve's marketing and PR trying to goad/tease Oculus/FB into releasing their sales figures (which would be possibly damaging to Oculus/FB, who knows?).

And before anyone asks, YES 99.9% of Rift owners (who are almost by definition hardcore PC gamers with serious rigs) use Steam. It offers more standard games the hardcore want to play, more Rift-enabled VR games than the Oculus store, and usually at better prices. The survey won't be 100% accurate (sample size), but it should be pretty close.

You're absolutely right its not 100% accurate, and while it might be close, we don't know. Oculus's sales numbers are a continuing elephant in the room. By saying 99% of gamers use Steam you're making an unfounded generalisation, then pressing it as an argument against anyone who might say otherwise.

I have 2 Steam games but I don't use Steam... and haven't at all since my Rift purchase. Should I count? I'm sure Steam 'knows' about my Rift - it probably sends peripheral info back to Valve. But if I haven't bought a Rift title through steam, or used the Steam store at any point after purchasing my Rift, I should be counted among the uncertainty that is Oculus Home data... which obviously isn't being given to Valve for their graph.

Graph = simple marketing guff.

/devil

In my opinion, the Vive probably has an edge over the Rift, mainly due to shipping with controllers, and the shipping fiasco that was the Rift CV1 launch.

But I don't for a minute think its that wide a disparity as I feel there are far more non-Steam Rift owners out there than the graph would suggest.

It'd be interesting to see what FD's hardware survey suggests.

 

[Mr_sukebe]

I wonder how much of that was influenced by the sourcing model for each.
Whilst both might have been fully available in the US fairly easily. At least in the UK, the CV1 only went on sale within retailers as of the 20th Sept, whilst the Vive was available via OCUK (uk based online seller) for months. No idea if that was also true in other countries in the Eu.

 

[Full_Ninja]

@[HJ]-RedRaven

I'm curious as to why you have not used steam with your Rift. This is not an attack on your reasoning or anything just curious what your situation is that would make it so you would not use your Rift with steam. For example do you only use your Rift with Elite and use frontier's client to launch?

 

[Garagiste]

Well I can't answer on HJ-RR's behalf, but FWIW I got my rift specifically for ED and have used it for little else - had some fun with a few freebies. Never been near Steam, hadn't even heard of it pre this forum.
Other than Elite, the only games that hold any interest for me are racing, so that and the issues that the Vive has with ED from my reading steered me to the Rift - anything I'm likely to use it for I'll be seated so the roomscale thing / controllers isn't a big deal for me.
Nothing to back it up with, but I'd bet that a lot of Rifts have sold to people from a similar demographic who neither Steam nor forum.

 

[Bryan K]

I never bother with Steam to play Elite (which is pretty much all I play now). In fact, of all my friends who play this game, only one uses Steam to do so. With Oculus Home all I have to do is put on my headset, look over at the ED icon, click the remote, and it auto-logs me in and starts up the game from the launcher by itself. I see no need to use Steam to do something that the Oculus software can do already.

 

[Splendour]

That data may be a fair gauge of Vive numbers, but can't be used to accurately measure the use of the Oculus CV1 in the PC market.
Despite having 900+ titles on Steam, it took me 3 months between receiving my CV1 and starting using it with Steam, as all the titles I was initially interested in playing in VR had stand alone support such as Elite, or I picked up in the Oculus store.

 

[Zeeman]

@[HJ]-RedRaven

I'm curious as to why you have not used steam with your Rift. This is not an attack on your reasoning or anything just curious what your situation is that would make it so you would not use your Rift with steam. For example do you only use your Rift with Elite and use frontier's client to launch?

In my case, I've never had Steam, and buy my games direct/launch form their own launchers. Not for any reason other than I did not really know much about Steam before ED, and ED and DCS are all I play, both bought direct.

Z...

 

[Gortron]

I have a bad feeling that Oculus is totally going to change tactics (as a CV1 owner) and aim squarely at trying to get people that couldn't care less about VR into VR (in a way I and everyone here couldn't care less about). They announced today that they are working on a new Standalone VR headset that doesn't need a PC or a phone or a games console. Surprise surprise; the demo was a new and exciting way for people to socially interact without actually being there... It was basically oculus home meets web conferencing.

I am a little surprised that nobody has started a thread about it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37581679

I think PSVR will dominate gaming, HTC will dominate PC gaming and Oculus will annoyingly abandon its roots and effectively win in a Nintendo WII style by appealing to a different market.

 

[Zeeman]

I have a bad feeling that Oculus is totally going to change tactics (as a CV1 owner) and aim squarely at trying to get people that couldn't care less about VR into VR (in a way I and everyone here couldn't care less about). They announced today that they are working on a new Standalone VR headset that doesn't need a PC or a phone or a games console. Surprise surprise; the demo was a new and exciting way for people to socially interact without actually being there... It was basically oculus home meets web conferencing.

I am a little surprised that nobody has started a thread about it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37581679

I think PSVR will dominate gaming, HTC will dominate PC gaming and Oculus will annoyingly abandon its roots and effectively win in a Nintendo WII style by appealing to a different market.

Well, being FB... It's not surprising, really...

Thanks for the link.

Z...

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

@[HJ]-RedRaven

I'm curious as to why you have not used steam with your Rift. This is not an attack on your reasoning or anything just curious what your situation is that would make it so you would not use your Rift with steam. For example do you only use your Rift with Elite and use frontier's client to launch?

You got it - now I have the Rift, the normal monitor just looks... flat. I do just use the normal client launcher.

I get Steam's approach - the all-in-one go-to program for games is a valid idea. But I don't play very many games (most of my mates play many more games than I do, and use Steam frequently/all the time. Steam's interface bugs me a bit; I find it a little cumbersome, and prefer a clean launch from a desktop icon. Steam's organisation just gets in the way for me.

So Steam really doesn't add anything to my game experience. Perhaps it will improve in the future?

Or perhaps I'm just a stick-in-the-mud who remembers cramming mouse drivers into himem/upper memory blocks via convoluted batch files and custom config.sys files just to get the original Wing Commander and Ultima Underworld to work!

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I never bother with Steam to play Elite (which is pretty much all I play now). In fact, of all my friends who play this game, only one uses Steam to do so. With Oculus Home all I have to do is put on my headset, look over at the ED icon, click the remote, and it auto-logs me in and starts up the game from the launcher by itself. I see no need to use Steam to do something that the Oculus software can do already.

I think many of us just launch direct from the desktop simply because we bought the game before FD released the Steam-key version, and obviously before the Oculus Home key/version too.

 

[Globusdiablo]

...Do you all expect PSVR -- with its far lower price of entry and release date only about 10 days away -- to cut into PC VR sales figures? It is already reviewing well.

Glad you added the PSVR. I'm personally very impressed with the reviews so far. It looks like a much more consumer ready product than the Vive and Oculus. The PSVR looks better, apparently fits better, and if they get the optics right, supersampling should be able to even out the playing field (the lower resolution).

Fingers crossed for quick mods.

 

[Raptoyd]

Ah Yes stats, I never put much weight in them. If I had to do it all over again I can honestly say I would still buy the Rift. Things are getting better with it and Touch room scale will close that perceived gap that article is referring to.

 

[jmp470]

Add another one of the .1% that don't use steam for launching games. I don't even bother syncing most games to steam. This includes KSP, ED, xcom2, etc.

 

[Cliché]

Or perhaps I'm just a stick-in-the-mud who remembers cramming mouse drivers into himem/upper memory blocks via convoluted batch files and custom config.sys files just to get the original Wing Commander and Ultima Underworld to work!

Lol, and don't forget spending half the day loading the game from a stack of floppy disks, and the other half digging in the case moving cards around or resolving IRQ conflicts with jumpers or dipswitches. Then deleting the game to make room for another, because you only have a 40MB hard drive, and doing the process all over again.

I got a Steam account about 8 years ago with a free game that came with a motherboard, and I never even played the game because I didn't have a steering wheel. I didn't even look at Steam again until about 6 months ago, after I bought another driver (and a wheel). The account was still there, I played the new game three evenings, and then it was back to Elite! I wasn't a fan of the Steam interface, but I may get interested in their sales for future purchases and VR titles.