steamvr-htc-vive-oculus-rift-gear-vr-summer-sale-discount — Image created by Road to VR

Oculus Rift Growth Spurt Halts HTC Vive Market Share Expansion

Jul 18, 2016

There’s been a lot of talk about the latest data from Valve’s latest Steam Hardware & Software survey, most of it drawing erroneous conclusions about overall market share of VR headsets while missing out on a very interesting data point.

See Also: HTC Vive Headset Nearing 100,000 Install Base, Steam Data Suggests — **See Also:** HTC Vive Headset Nearing 100,000 Install Base, Steam Data Suggests

Each month, Valve runs a survey among Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by their population, and to see how things are changing over time.

It hasn’t been long since the company added a ‘VR Headsets’ section to the survey which gives a glimpse into which headsets are being used on Steam. It’s important to point out that while Steam supports the Oculus Rift, it isn’t the official content portal for the headset (that title belongs to Oculus Home). So without knowing what portion of people with an Oculus Rift are also using the headset with Steam, it’s tough to extrapolate conclusion beyond what’s actually being measured: which VR headsets are being used on Steam.

valve-steam-hardware-and-software-survey-vr-headsets-april-june-2016-2 — VR Headsets on Steam, April 2016 – June 2016 | Data courtesy Valve/Steam

But that doesn’t mean there’s no useful data to come from the graph. In the last two data points, that flat line between the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (CV1) tells us something interesting: number of Rift CV1 headsets reportedly in use on Steam has almost completely halted the market share growth of the HTC Vive.

	VR Headsets on Steam, April 2016 – June 2016
Period	1	2	3	4
HTC Vive	16.2%	37.9%	66.6%	66.0%
Oculus Rift CV1	4.7%	18.8%	19.5%	27.8%
Oculus Rift DK2	79.1%	43.4%	13.9%	6.3%

Now what do I mean by ‘market share growth’? Surely more HTC Vive’s are being added to the market every day, but by market share (the percentage of all headsets owned), the latest data shows that the Vive has only barely managed to maintain its standing. Meanwhile, the Rift CV1 has seen a significant growth spurt, jumping from 19.5% to 27.8% of headsets on Steam between the last two data points. This tells us that a greater number of Rift CV1s have come online to Steam than Vives (with losses in the share of Rift DK2 development kits making way for the Rift’s gains) during this period.

htc vive oculus rift search volume 2012-2016 — **See Also:** Searches for “HTC Vive” Have Caught up with “Oculus Rift” and May Be Accelerating

Now there’s several different conclusions you might be tempted to leap to, but that would be premature. The data could be explained with a spike in Rift sales. It could be explained simply by Oculus finally hitting its stride in production capacity and shipping out a bunch of backlogged pre-orders. Hell, maybe somewhere on the internet, a big group of Rift owners just realized they could use their Rift with Steam in the first place. At this point we can’t say.

But there is more we can learn thanks to the data. Using the same method by which we estimated the number of HTC Vive sales, if we know that there was around 93,000 Vive headsets at the end of June, and that the Vive has a 66% market share at that time, then we can estimate that the consumer Oculus Rift’s share amounts to about 39,000 headsets attached to Steam. Now exactly what percent of all Rifts are connected to Steam (and therefore how representative that 39,000 unit figure is as a measure of all Rifts) is unknown.

While the Vive and Rift battle it out on desktop, console VR is soon to get its first headset in the form of PlayStation VR launching this October. Some analysts expect it may see the fastest adoption among the three. Meanwhile on mobile, Oculus announced back in May that Gear VR has seen 1 million monthly active users.

Mane Vr

I am one of those who just use my Oculus for the first time on steam after buying project cars. Wasn’t a fan of steam vr wish I could get project car move over to home
- Tomas Polcic
  
  Same, i vastly prefer Oculus Home to Steam. Wish it was more open overall (so i could add external apps etc.)
  - sirlance
    
    Oculus home is a very lonely place
    - nathan
      
      they should totally come out with a vr party or vr wife and kids addon to oculus home. better yet how about a cheers version when you put on your headset everybody looks at you and says your name. god i’m old to remember that show.
      - Nate
        
        Lol my name is also Nathan and I’m watching cheers on netflix RIGHT NOW! xD
- beestee
  
  Same here as well, until I have Touch controllers I see no reason to try SteamVR again.
- George Vieira IV
  
  I had a bunch of games on Steam already so I mostly play from that. I do wish I could launch games and other apps Oculus Home though, would be a nice experience.
  
  There really needs to be a way to play games without taking the headset off so much to get them to work.
  - Nashoba Darkwolf
    
    I use Virtual Desktop to fix this issue. Never have to take my headset off ever since. Highly recommend it.
- Ybalrid
  
  I agree, I find the Oculus Home interface more convinient for launching VR content. And I also wish Project Cars added Oculus Home keys like Virtual Desktop or Elite:Dangerous did, so you can have them on the Oculus App directly :/
- John Phi Hoang
  
  I wish I would have bought Cars on Steam when it was on sale for $15. I bought it on Oculus home, played it for 5 minutes and I decided I needed to barf. I lost $60. Kind of sucks OH has no return policy.
  - Mane Vr
    
    damn that sucks now that I got my racing wheel I ready to start learning the game and it seem fun so far. shame u one of those who get sick in vr
    - John Phi Hoang
      
      really sucks. I’ve had my racing wheel for years playing 2D games. I should have known better since I’ve had an OR since the DK1 days. I was just hoping the low latency of the CV1 might have helped my barfiness.
      - Mane Vr
        
        I think it’s the performance of project car that is the issue. It has frame rate drops which gives me head aches so far it the only game I notice this in
      - John Phi Hoang
        
        i’ll give it another shot. My rig is almost identical to yours besides that I’m running an older i7 chip with a 1070
  - Mane Vr
    
    I played project cars a bit more and it has performance issues it isn’t running at 90fps most of the time. while it didn’t make me sick it made me uncomfortable. i’m running it on a i7-6700k, gtx 980ti, 32 gb drr4 but i’m thinking of limiting my time in this game and wait to see if NVidia makes a 1080 ti if not i’ll just upgrade to a 1080 and hope it’s a solid 90fps then
- Kenneth Harcourt
  
  You don’t have to launch PCars over SteamVR, even if it is stored there. Just start Pcars the normal way, choose “Launch Project Cars – Oculus Rift in Other VR mode” – then Pcars will launch automatically in the Rift, no SteamVR mode enabled.
  - Mane Vr
    
    wow I didn’t know that thanks
nathan

most the oculus games on steam are trash not worth visiting for thats why. i would say there is about 2x the amount of oculus rift vs htc vive out there.
- dannyhefc69
  
  I would say there is 3x the vive 6x dk2 and 11x my very own vr hmd, Why? Because im boss like that and can make assumptions off the top of my head based on nothing
- Matt R
  
  Ummm…. No…No there isn’t.
  - nathan
    
    read my below post
situbusitgooddog

Why don’t you guys just ask some of the VR devs? The Big Screen devs posted a user share graph to Twitter that exactly matched the hardware distribution shown on the Steam hardware stats before pulling the tweet. You guys are journalists, do some digging.

Everyone was expecting the Rift to outsell the Vive by a huge margin, that the Vive has managed to carve and then maintain a dominant market share is a huge story that everyone seems to ignore in favour of a pro-Oculus apologist stance. Oh maybe they just aren’t using Steam even for flat gaming? Yeah that must be it.
- PrymeFactor
  
  …Because it doesn’t really matter, in the long run?
  
  Also, I don’t think BigScreen is on Oculus Home yet…
  - situbusitgooddog
    
    Matters enough to write the original article and for these comments and discussion though no? Why not attempt to corroborate it?
    - PrymeFactor
      
      So why base your original reply on data from Big Screen when you know that it’s not available on Oculus Home? Isn’t that a bit dishonest?
      - situbusitgooddog
        
        Because it’s data from a non-Valve third-party that backs up the numbers seen on the Steam Hardware stats. Please feel free to point out any other sources of information that better matches your definition of ‘honest’.
      - Aidan Musson
        
        It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that a product only available on Steam corroborates the data from Steam.
      - situbusitgooddog
        
        So… either the missing majority of Rift owners manage to game exclusively on Home and avoid Steam entirely (!) – or, the Steam Hardware survey does in fact paint a reliable picture of the current market hardware proliferation. I guess you choose the most likely option.
      - Aidan Musson
        
        I didn’t claim the data was inaccurate in any way, or that there is some “missing majority.”
        
        If two companies use the same data, it shouldn’t be surprising that it matches. It’s like someone using the data in this article (from Steam) and comparing it to the data from Steam. Of course the data will match. It’s the same source.
      - Tad Springer
        
        The steam hardware survey only picks up the Rift if it’s plugged in and has oculus home/services running at the same time, which Rift users probably won’t do unless they use it for steam. Also Rift users are probably using steam less so are less likely to be prompted to take the survey. Pretty sure this all got heavily covered in the previous coverage of this though if you haven’t seen those articles/comments.
- AtmosContagion
  
  It’s really not surprising that big screen’s user statistics reflect steams; steam is where you download and launch big screen in the first place… It’d be far more interesting to see an app that os popular on both storefronts present some statistics.
  
  As far as other devs? Most seem to shy away from sharing that kind of stuff just due to not wanting to accidently step on someone’s toes or something…
  
  It’s also not that big of a surprise, or a “huge story”, that Vive was able to carve out a piece of the market for itself (pretty much everyone already assumed it would, if not just because of backing from valve, who runs steam and is the go gaming storefront on pc, but also because motion controllers were packed in on launch; motion controllers tend to be flashier to show off and have greater shock value than something most people are already used to aka a console gamepad). They also had a far smoother launch than the Rift and a lot of people ended up getting a Vive purely because it shipped so much sooner. Oculus is only now just getting on top of their orders.
  
  Another thing people fail to really mention is that there really haven’t been that many vr games on steam that would interest rift users; most of steams decent to good vr offerings have required motion controllers and everything else wasn’t really worth it (they at least have a few things now…). I think that once touch is released, we’ll see a lot more rift users on steam more often and opting to participate in the survey (it is optional… I get the pop-up for it like every month, occasionally missing it if I’m busy that week and not playing games…)
- Matt R
  
  Road to VR write a positive article about Vive over Oculus?….you funny
- Mane Vr
  
  I haven’t been using steam even for 2d games I barely buy games on steam to begin with I mostly play on console until vr the only game I open steam for was project car but now I don’t think I going to buy any more vr games on steam I just like home better
  - situbusitgooddog
    
    With Steam you’ve got low prices, game update management, frequent very good sales, a robust refund system, user reviews, useable friends lists – there are very few reasons not to use Steam if you’re a PC gamer, VR or not. With 125 million active user accounts, people like yourself who choose to entirely avoid Steam for PC gaming must surely be in the smallest of minorities, statistically speaking.
    - Mane Vr
      
      the sale is good but normally if I don’t buy a game with-in the first month I never go back to look for it. all my friends r on xbox live so steam friends does nothing for me. i’m a console game I only got into pc gaming for vr and made the full switch when MS announce xbox play anywhere so I can buy my game on my pc then play with my girlfriend on her xbox. I might be in a small minority but so is those who owns HMD so what is your point. for all you know most oculus owners might be just like me.. but they also might not be so this proves nothing
D.L

I have a feeling the user base is going to be split somewhere down the middle. The tech is roughly equivalent afterall, though each have advantages and drawbacks which have been discussed to no end.

It may come down to ideology. Are in you doing VR because you’re an enthusiast and want to go crazy with features and value tinkerability and open ecosystems, or do you want an Apple-like experience which is more limited and rigid, but for the most part a more polished experience.

Another factor is price. The Vive, as a package is relatively cheaper to make than the Rift + Touch thanks to HTC’s more vertically integrated manufacturing pipeline, as well as general cheaper construction. Chances are HTC could undercut Oculus quite a bit at the Touch’s launch.
- PrymeFactor
  
  “The Vive, as a package is relatively cheaper to make than the Rift + Touch thanks to HTC’s more vertically integrated manufacturing pipeline, as well as general cheaper construction”
  
  Unless the Touch comes in at $200 (which is highly doubtful), the Rift still looks the cheaper buy, especially when you factor in the added headset and Xbox One controller.
  
  “Chances are HTC could undercut Oculus quite a bit at the Touch’s launch.”
  
  I think you should pay a bit more attention to what is going on out there in the wider world. Sales of HTC’s flagship phones are collapsing disastrously at the hands of Samsung, Apple and the legion of cheap Asian OEMs. HTC aren’t in any position to significantly cut the price or to win any price war.
  - situbusitgooddog
    
    What’s the added headset you reference? The standard Vive package comes with breakout box, two lighthouses, two motion controllers with li-ion rechargeable batteries.
    
    It looks like Touch is going to ship with an additional camera and standard AA batteries, so the user is going to have to purchase rechargeables + charger and an active USB 3 extension cable if they want to play room-scale or have feature parity. Will be really interesting to see how they end up pricing Touch.
    - AtmosContagion
      
      You don’t need a USB extension to setup room scale with the rift… It’s perfectly possible to set up a nice 10’x10′ space without any extensions. Technically, a rift can do room scale already with just the one sensor and hmd; you just don’t have motion controls yet.
      
      It is disappointing about the batteries though; I was kind of hoping they would do something similar to xbox controllers and allow recharging in the controller (like with xbox play and charge kit), but still have the option to swap out. It would be nice to be able to just drop the controllers onto a charger when you’re done with them, but also not get stuck with built in non-replaceable ones.
  - D.L
    
    I’d be surprised if it’s any cheaper than $150. I vaguely remember the estimated cost of the whole Vive package being about ~$500? The Rift by Oculus’ own admission sells at near cost.
    
    How much longer do you think they’re going to package those controllers? They likely got them cheap because Microsoft were about to launch a new model which obsoleted them, once the Touch comes out do you seriously think they would waste money bundling them?
    
    HTC have given themselves plenty of headroom. They launched pretty damn high because they could, and they allowed themselves the space to be able to cut price and still be profitable. No doubt manufacturing numbers have increased too which would reduce per unit cost further, though the same could be said for Oculus.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      You do know HTC isn’t in a good financial position at the moment, they don’t have a lot of room to cut prices..
      - Kalderan
        
        HTC haven’t been in a ‘good’ position for a few years now. They’re spinning off the VR side of the business into its own seperate entity to protect it from having to deal with any fallout at HTC proper just in case. Excuse me whilst i throw a katana and control its boomerang arc with my hand, as it flies across the room cutting a path through the enemy line. Raw Data makes me damn happy with my Vive, not to mention Battledome or Hoverjunkers as i do enjoy my fps games but these are a whole other level :)
  - sirlance
    
    The rift will also need a second IR tracker for proper rooms scale so add that the price of the controllers…
  - Shawn Blais Skinner
    
    Highly doubtful? Each of the Vive controllers as retailing at $130. Oc Touch is 2 controllers plus a camera. I’d say $200 is on the low end.
    - PrymeFactor
      
      “Highly doubtful? Each of the Vive controllers as retailing at $130”
      
      Says absolutely nothing about the cost to manufacture those. HTC NEEDS to price these at a premium. Facebook does not.
      
      I mean, people are selling foam inserts for Vive and Rift for $30!
      - Shawn Blais Skinner
        
        We’ll see. I think anyone who thinks it will be <$200 is smoking something… these controllers are loaded with IR emitters, and capacitive touch on every single button, multiple triggers, it's a pretty advanced little controller.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        In large bulk IR emitters only cost a few cents, capacitive touch buttons also not even half a buck in large quantities, and the thing only has 2 buttons, 2 triggers, 1 thumbstick (which I presume also acts like a button, just like the dualshocks).. To be honest, I think they won’t even cost much more than a regular dualshock4 to produce (hell I think even much cheaper)…
      - Shawn Blais Skinner
        
        You can’t just add up component costs with these sorts of things, if you could, the RIFT would be $300 not $600. Things that are highly customized, and are not produced in large quanities, are much than the sum of their parts.
        
        In this case, we’re talking about a ton of tech, packed into a very small form factor, and is produced in lesser quantities than any other component. Highly customized, low production runs, rookie hardware vendor… all this adds up to a high cost of production.
      - JustNiz
        
        Dude, What it costs them to produce does not determine the price, what they can sell it for does.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        Dude, what it costs them to produce certainly does determine the price, especially if they want to put it out there, they’ll gonna sell it propably a little bit above cost. They’re selling the Rift itself also for cost..
      - JustNiz
        
        I would take that as an indicator of downward pressure from Vive more than them not wanting to make as much profit as they can.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        no it wasn’t, they said they would try to sell it as cheap as possible (not at a loss like MS and Sony did with previous playstations at introduction)..
    - nathan
      
      i would say about $40 for the controllers with rumble features and $30 for the ir camera at a production cost standpoint. but they will need to recoup design and development cost’s so i would say $100 giving them a $30 profit recoup.
      - situbusitgooddog
        
        https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4szt8x/rift_sensor_rma_price/
        
        Extra camera is 119 Eu or $130. Would be surprised if Touch is anything less than $250
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        As said in the reddit, it’s the RMA price, not a bundle price, as also a lot of RMA stuff for the vive is much more expensive as in the bundle..
      - situbusitgooddog
        
        True, yet still no price announcement. If it’s good news, why not tell everyone?
      - nathan
        
        because they haven’t finalized the design yet.
      - nathan
        
        that’s clearly not a production cost. there making a huge profit off that ir camera. i bet that’s how there trying to recoup the cost of development by charging allot for repairs and replacement parts. a ir camera cost about $13 factory cost with about $15 of cable plastic metal and so on and about $2 assembly cost. a xbox 360 controller cost’s about $11 to produce cut it in half add ir lasers and what nots you got a touch controller max $20 a piece.
      - Aaron Hillaker
        
        40????? Fuck I wish. There’s no way in hell.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      You have no idea how much the touch will sell for, it could easily be as ‘cheap’ as a Sony move controller.. I think a set of controllers with an extra camera will go for about $150 or even much less..
      - Shawn Blais Skinner
        
        Lol, says the guys who pulls $150 out of his butt and throws it on the floor. Neither of us have any idea, that’s why it’s called speculation! “Much Less” than $150? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. You can barely get 1 camera for $150!
        https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4szt8x/rift_sensor_rma_price/
        
        They just charged you $600 for a Headset with IR emitters, and 1 Camera. Yet somehow you think you’re going to get a smoking “bundle” deal on Touch? Give me a break. $200 seems like the sweetspot, $150 would be an absolute steal, there’s no way it’s less than that. Don’t forget that oculus is not a hardware vendor, they are going to struggle to keep up with the pricing from HTC.
      - Hymanator
        
        I agree. If you consider the MSRP for a single controller on a console ($50-60) and the speculated price of purchasing an additional camera ($99), you are easily looking at a $199 price range. If you add the price of the Rift plus Touch, you are looking at a price point that is identical to Vive for a “room scale” experience.
        
        You also have to consider supply and demand. Many people will be desperate enough to pay $300 to finally get their hands on these.
      - nathan
        
        that’s because they used a cellphone’s oled display to save weight. cell phone manufacturers control the market on small displays. oculus probably got charged about $150 per display. then you got polished perfect glass lenses which where probably around $100. i bet microsoft charged them $40 for the controller. then there’s the camera, components and accessory’s say $100 there .also $20 for assembly cost since it’s produced in america. thats 150×2+100+40+100+20=$560= $40 profit for oculus. there cost for controllers and ir camera will be around $70 what they charge above that is recoup and profit.
      - Chris
        
        The Sony Move controller sold for $100 for a single controller when it first came out, didn’t it? Wouldn’t shock me if 2 Touch contollers and another tower beacon camera thing cost at least 2 hundo
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        uhh, no it didn’t… as a pack of 1 move controller, 1 navigational controller, a camera and a demodisc yes it did, but the initial price as always been 39 euro’s for a single controller..
- nathan
  
  the weird thing is if oculus touch is close to or as good as vive’s controllers or even slightly better there will be a role reversal of who is the maker of high end vr. for the longest time vive has been touting there the high end version. but with oculus having the superior headset then touch being as good or better at a lower cost will flip the script on vive .
  - C.P. Garcia
    
    You are forgetting ROOM SCALE.. Its not just the Touch Controllers that make it a premium experience…Having used sit down VR and used the VIVE.. Let me tell you, its a WORLD of a difference as far as experience goes.. . And also .. Not even sure where you think Oculus has the superior headset..It might LOOK better.. But performance wise.. they are about equal. some give Oculus the lead, others say the Vive is better.
    - John Phi Hoang
      
      Touch controllers will require 2 Oculus cameras at least. (Watch the Star Trek Bridge preview =). The latest OH update allows up to four cameras. Oculus is setting up for full room scale. But yeah, I honestly wish I had a vive now just for the controllers… but I got me an OR…. just waiting now.
    - nathan
      
      htc vive has a noticeably screen door affect a issue with ring affect on there lenses the screen is to bright and the head strap doen’t support the headset that well. i can walk a 8ft x 8ft space without oculus loosing track of me when they release the controllers it’s coming with a second camera to do larger room scale. but i will say right now htc vive has the upper hand but once the controllers release oculus wins as the superior vr setup. they have a superior headset and will have equal or better controllers plus legitimate access to steam and home. i know it sounds like i’m picking on htc vive i own both and i think it gives me the right to do so all i’m doing is stating it’s flaws.
      - ZenInsight
        
        Is this screen on Vive distracting because it is lower quality than the Rift?
      - M0rdresh
        
        Provided that the tracking is as spot on as it is on the VIVE. I think camera based processing is no match for the lighthouse laser tracking the HTC VIVE uses. But we’ll know in December.
        
        I also think the form factor of the VIVE controllers are better. When wielding a gun in a virtual world you really feel it. Or an object with the grip buttons, you really have something physical in your hand.
      - nathan
        
        allot of famous youtube channel’s say that the oculus touch controllers are far superior.
      - M0rdresh
        
        A lot of people say so many things. Your statement is very hollow my friend, we’ll talk when there are in-depth reviews and comparison.
        
        What also worries me on the Rift is the split userbase. You’ll have those with the touch controllers, without, with touch controllers but no three camera’s for room scale.
        
        The vive has them included in there box, every user has them. Much more stable ground. And also, how does camera based tracking hold up against lighthouse laser tracking, these are all questions that need to be answered in December.
    - Bart
      
      The rift has roomscale… When will people let go of that myth? It has room scale but it was only delivered with 1 sensor at first so the coverage is not so great, but even with the 1 camera you can do roomscale without jitter, I know because I have one.. And when the touch controllers ship another sensor will be shipped with it, and in the latest rift firmware update they added support of up to 4 sensors even, so that being the scenario vive will have to step up their game because they will have the inferior roomscale even..
      - C.P. Garcia
        
        Nope. Chaperone system. Sorry. Oculus doesn’t have and can’t add that. So there is zero way HTC will have the inferior roomscale. It makes a world of difference.
      - Bart
        
        You can use the rift in steamvr just like the vive, and with the touch you can use the chaperone system in steamvr, also its just a matter of software, should be easy enough to implement in oculus home also or as a 3rd party application. Untill the touch launch you can just set a preconfigured space, the only thing it does not have is object detection because of the lack of a camera, but when you clear the space, and have the boundaries set correctly there is no way in hell you will need object detection
      - Nashoba Darkwolf
        
        You do realize that the oculus sensors are actually IR cameras? In a sense they could actually scan the room for you and give you object detection if Oculus deems it necessary. Another thing to ponder on your part is how Vive sets up its play space: By tracing the boundaries of your area. Adding a front camera works for seeing your keyboard, monitor and mouse, but one should never have obstacles in their space if they are going to do room scale.
      - JustNiz
        
        It may work in a limited way but the Rift DOES NOT have roomscale… no developers are writing Rift games that have roomscale, Oculus only support/request that it tracks to 180 degrees, you can’t even buy Touch yet, and the Rift can’t do chaperone. Also the area rift works in is much smaller than the Vive’s.
      - Pistol Pete
        
        Really which Oculus game supports room-scale? None! Even Oculus stated they will not officially support room-scale.
      - Casey Fowler
        
        Considering Valve has shown themselves to be highly averse to exclusivity I’d imagine any room-scale games on Steam that currently only support Vive will also support the Rift when Touch releases.
      - Shaiya Rox
        
        Every single Oculus game I have played so far worked fine in room scale. The 1 oculus sensor is perfectly sufficient at tracking my movement through the entire room.
      - M0rdresh
        
        If you think VR room scale is about not losing tracking when walking around in the room you have not tried a Vive yet then.
      - M0rdresh
        
        Sure the Oculus Rift has room scale just like Windows has a drawing program, Paint. It will change in December and we’ll have to wait how the room scale tracking goes, but today the Rift is not a room scale experience.
        
        And inferior room scale lol ? You really saying a tracking system that works based on camera footage and image processing equals lighthouse laser tracking? Ignorance is bliss.
- Get Schwifty!
  
  On this point:
  
  “It may come down to ideology. Are in you doing VR because you’re an enthusiast and want to go crazy with features and value tinkerability and open ecosystems, or do you want an Apple-like experience which is more limited and rigid, but for the most part a more polished experience.”
  
  I think were inserting the Apple vs. Android phone dynamic a little too deeply here in relation to VR. The reason being that the “closed” environment of an iPhone cannot utilize the “open” Android store directly, and for that matter Android phones can’t access the Apple store directly (many items in the stores are available on both however).
  
  In the case of Steam vs. Oculus Home, the HMD’s are also effectively the same, and people using either platform can gain access to almost all the same software through some means, so characterizing the choice as one of openness with closed I don’t believe really applies here. There is no indication of the Oculus being truly “closed” anymore than Vive from a software perspective, and with at a minimum 33% of the current market (which is almost meaningless with a few 100 thousand users at most), it will likely surge to 50% or possibly more with the introduction of the Touch which is clearly a better design. From an enthusiast position, I would actually say more folks who bought early models of Oculus and now CV1 are in that category as opposed to the ranks of Steam users who went Vive. Not saying either is bad, in fact I like both, but I think it’s a bit off to characterize Oculus as the “closed” non-enthusiast option, nothing could be further from the truth, Youtube is filled with videos of people doing all kinds of cool things outside of Oculus Home with their CV1’s and earlier.
Michael Davidson

At the end of the day, I want both headsets to be successful; they must be. If either one collapses, everyone is going to become gun shy on entering the industry. Here is to the success of both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift without having to resort to dirty business.
- Dawid Sopata
  
  I actually want Oculus to fail, because of all the anti-customer and lying bullshit Palmer Luckey been pulling.
  
  If the Vive becomes the only VR headset it’s still gonna be great, because valve is behind the headset and valve was and always will be pro-customer.
  - Patrick Wise
    
    Even if I took it as a given that Valve has always been “pro-consumer” (and bs like Steam Trading Cards and Valve’s facilitation of illegal gambling including by minors says otherwise) on what basis do you make the claim that Valve “always will be pro-consumer”? How do you know?
    - M0rdresh
      
      Well I guess Valve being active in the industry for more then 20 years having developed gems of games that received wide fame while having created the most popular digital distribution and community game platform for PC gamers, aka Steam, has something to do with it?
      
      To what end is your doom & gloom vision of failing proprietary appliances effective when such a scenario would mean VR is over and done with. I’ll take effective proprietary over your non-existing open, thank you.
- Patrick Wise
  
  At the end of the day I want both to fail. Right now both are effectively proprietary. What we need are standards such that anyone can create a device that meats that standard. HTC Vive is better wrt its software marketplace but neither system is truly open.
sirlance

I’m completely happy with my vive….but I’m not married to any hardware…if someone makes a better product I’ll go that way
T Sheehan

There’s only two real factors today explaining the numbers NOW, and both are in Oculus’s court: backlog being made up and Oculus Home being a kind of suck fest (good utilities like whirligig and virtual desktop are primarily bought on Steam)
The two factors in the FUTURE however, will be:
A. Touch controllers coming to oculus, which will put all 3 HMD’s on the same playing field, and split Oculus/Vive numbers on steam.
B. Christmas. Once PlayStation VR hits, we will see people arguing enthusiastically over the price vs quality merits of The Big 3. But Holiday sales will determine where game developers decide to butter their bread, and decide the fortunes of each peripheral
- nathan
  
  i cant tell if your putting down or supporting oculus rift. :) i got both and will tell you oculus home is better and rift’s headset is better if the controllers are as good or better i’m selling my vive as there will be no point in owning both as valve “steam” already said they will support both headsets no matter what. playstation vr will mark when AAA titles hit vr so i am rooting for there success as most of there games will come to pc with vr support.
- Tad Springer
  
  I agree with you, except for the part on Oculus Home being a suck fest. I find Home much better than SteamVR. Saying that though they do need to improve the social aspect on Oculus Home but they’ve already acknowledged that already and said they have a monthly upgrade path stretching till the end of the year and more social features is part of that. In typical Oculus style I think they’re just taking their time to fully polish each part before releasing it. Given the years it took Steam to get where it is today I think they’re doing a good job on Home though!
DiGiCT Ltd

This article is pure guessing, but currently there are more vive users compared to cv1 rift as it is more complete product, it will change however and it is more like ati and nvidia or amd and intel, both will have a market share so it does not realy matter.
This is only current data and you should not worry to much about it.
My forecast is that next year there will be more VR users and they will not be vive , rift gear VR or PSVR users, the most user base will be eventually om google daydream.
Why ?
1. its also a mobile phone so more value to users.
2. it is capable to some good VR stuff on it compared to previous phones.
3. It is 100% portable and you can bring it to any place to enjoy.
4. Most game developers are in the mobile industry. so it will have the most content available.

I’ve been going around with VR and AR for a while already, my office is full of equipment used to do extreme tests on to see what it can and what it cant do.
For current i also like the HTC more as it is more full featured as others, lighthouse tracking is just the most accurate and the caperon system + the embedded camera makes it more comfortable, however it still need to be improved as it does not work as good as it could for some parts, but its simply the best atm.
The rift comes in second and its not about the HMD or the controllers but just the total package.
PSVR, well not impressive but i would say moderate product, i would go for an google daydream phone instead.
GearVR works great and it is for sure a nice product, but same thing as their PC the controler that comes with it or using a gamepad is just nonsense, all daydream devices will have a good motion controller with it so it is solved and even the platform is open, gearVR is closed.

Yes oculus has closed platform the gearVR is the proof of it.
Even in China you need to use VPN to get it to work as it is blocked!
Steam and android shops are not, who knows in which other places they are blocked.
At the end the GearVR only works with a very limited Samsung Phones only !!
That makes it a closed one compared to google Daydream.
Google and Valve made both the correct decision on how to deploy VR.
Thats why they both will be leading for a while, its the same thing as a simlocked phone, who still want that today ?
At the end, this is all only the beginning, much more will come in the upcoming 5 years which let the product from today just be something you will laugh about when you look back to it.

Enjoy it as it is now, you want better,or cheaper just wait a little before buying one.

I am a developer, testing all, trying all, and conclusion is that this VR and later AR is going to be part of our future, but what is now is still limited on many parts and not as good as it could be.
It is new and it is just awesome cool, no matter in what way, as it is something new like the 1st tv or 1st phone or computer, but it is all far away from finished or high quality but good enough to let you enjoy it a little to see the potential future.
- sntxrrr
  
  “This article is pure guessing” Well, it’s an informed extrapolation when it deals with users on the Steam platform. What they do guess is clearly stated as such in the article: “premature” “at this point we can’t say” etc. Why repeat this?
  
  “…but currently there are more vive users compared to cv1 rift..” Really? They guess but you know? What arguments do you use, some facts or numbers we are not privy to? “…as it is more complete product” Wow, that might be a very defensible opinion (although maybe most users find it complete enough or are willing to wait) but you show no proof of causation between your argument and statement.
  
  “you should not worry to much about it” Thanks, that’s a relieve!
  
  Then you make a forecast, which I guess means you really thought hard about it but your conclusion probably seems somewhat obvious to most readers here. I think everybody here will agree that Daydream is a big deal and might become dominant in the not so distant future. It will be interesting to see how Oculus will cope with that.
  
  After that I kinda lost interest in the rest of your lengthy post.
  
  Sorry for being this hard on you (ok, I’m a dick). We might actually agree on most things related to VR but I would appreciate a bit more thought in the construction of your arguments.
  Or you could simply state things as just your opinion. There is nothing wrong with opinions.This is the internet after all.
  Maybe a language barrier amplified stuff a bit more or it was just a train of thought you had to let go. But your opening just didn’t hold water so see this as constructive critisism.
  - DiGiCT Ltd
    
    I am not native English, so it might be confusing.
    SO yeah language barrier might be.
  - DiGiCT Ltd
    
    It is more easy to actually play games /apps which support networking to see what most people buy.
    And yes the ones which dont rely on steam networks but have their own implemented.
    One of them for example Altspace you can see what most people like to use and are using.
    Social media platforms in VR will be the best measurement tool in future as nearly everyone uses it.
    Games is harder to do as they come in kind of flavours, which certain genres players don’t like and other like.
    Steam is also a kind of social media platform for gamers, but it never overtook the ones like facebook etc. etc.
    
    To make it clear to you, i use a lot of devices and prototypes to see what people like, dislike, feel good or bad and make reports out of those sessions we give on locations for free to people.
    It was and still is for ons priority number 1 to use those result in any app or game to make it as comfortable as possible.
    VR and AR are way different to develop, there are even things you cant do anymore in VR as it just craps up your end result.
    I assume you at least own 1 device to enjoy VR and figured out that more as 50% current in VR shops are not worth it or either feel bad in VR.
    
    It is all about analyzing, testing with prototypes and try to make it work for most users.
    Valve “The Labs” is a very good example on how to do stuff in VR, if you own a vive you should seen it.
    VR takes new approaches and every dev need to start learning again.
    I’ve been involved with gaming for over 35 years, not sure how long your expierence is, but seen all happen from very near, all those years of expierence makes you also be able to be more accurate in analyzing.
- Harald Heide Gundersen
  
  Completely agree to this one..
  Guessing also the phone hardware for daydream will develop to give a cheap but also adequate enough experience (Mass marked of VR, which probably (and sadly???) will be the the commercial business marketing instrument of VR )
  Lets hope VR experiences as general will develope to be even more cross plattform compatible in the future. Love the fact that unity 3d for instance strategically wants to support all of the major actors (HTC, Oclulus, Daydream, PSVR, Hololens, the mysterious leap motion thingie, and Apple when they finally start their moves)
Brian

the line means they both stopped selling dumbass.. if there was a surge from oculus, the line would go up. The increase in cv1 came from the dk2, meaning people upgraded. Is it that hard to figure out?
- PrymeFactor
  
  “the line means they both stopped selling dumbass.. if there was a surge from oculus, the line would go up. The increase in cv1 came from the dk2, meaning people upgraded. Is it that hard to figure out?”
  
  How did they ‘stop selling’ if people are upgrading from dk2 to cv1 as you say?
  Is there any other way to upgrade than a purchase? Or you imagine one can do a firmware update to convert a dk2 to a cv1?
  
  Ironic you use the ‘dumbass’ word…
Kev

Walking around, using your hands are a big part of the magic for me. I actually have both units but the Vive is more popular for us. This statistic shown doesn’t seem to be scientific at all and purely anecdotal. It doesn’t seem to show anything tangible.
Michael Kreitzer

There’s no extra step needed for Steam to report the presence of a Rift on a machine beyond accepting the prompt asking if you want to participate in the survey. The survey isn’t measuring who is using a Rift on Steam. It’s only detecting the presence of a Rift attached to the system.

So, the results are “users who have Steam installed and a Rift connected to the computer” and not “users who use the Rift on Steam”.
- Mane Vr
  
  but I am sure u have to launch steam right not sure y u guys think everyone use steam. If u have a vive u have to if u have a rift u don’t
JustNiz

Sorry to burst your bubble but this data is based on a 3 month history where Oculus went from 83.8% to 33.4% market share against Vive. Yes it went up in March to 34.1%, (0.7% increase), but by most conventional statistical metrics that would be considered statistically insignificant. If you believe Vive’s 100,000 shipped figure, that 0.7% rise represents about 1060 rift deliveries, of which a significant number were clearly just replacing DK2s, perhaps games developers just now upgrading to CV and/or upgrades that some early kickstarters were still owed. Given the number of units involved and the otherwise rapid downward trend, the blip actually seems most likely to just be showing a single batch of units being shipped. It seems VERY far from a sudden upsurge of popularity in Oculus that your description of a “growth spurt” would imply.
ShiftyInc

Well this was an clickbate article if i ever have seen one. You missed the part of “what happens next you wont believe”
OgreTactics

The market projection prediction was 1 millions Oculus Rift by the end of the year. The Vive barely sold 100.000 (so we can project 150.000) and I doubt the Oculus sold much more (would bet on 150.000, so 200.000 by the end of 2016).

We are far from those projections, which means the VR market adoption will be slower than expected in the coming years, thus VR investment and content production will slow down.

But then what most important is that within the frame of momentum, VR HMD adoption rate reaches the necessary threshold for perennial market installation, other wise VR will fall into oblivion for at least another 10 years like Zuckerberg predicted.
Munchy

until the headset is closer to the size of normal specs this isn’t something I’m interested in. shame cause it looks great.

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