Valve: Only 30 SteamVR Apps Have Made $250,000+ (and other truths of the young VR market)

Well prospective is only scenarios. And if we simplify there is ultimately two: either it picks-up soon enough to justify sustained interest, therefor investment, then imperatively ROI and subsequently content creation, thus growing adoption…but it’s not all a won scenario.

I don’t understand why people think, and are never capable of describing precisely why the VR market somehow has a magical limitless time-frame for ROI to justify investment contrary to every other single markets, and will somehow magically pick-up at “some point” for random reasons.

But my point is, I actually believe VR will pick-up, or rather the elements for it are there, but these elements are nowhere to see in real-world products, and it is in fact the reason why “high-end” VR headset have sold miserable number (by any account, compared to any other product or new device launch), so my criticism is more of a reality-check on whether VR will be a thing for this cycle which I hope for, or if actually there is a huge lack in conception, rationality and incentive in the way VR headset are made and sold.

“The West in particular is so locked into exceedingly short return cycles” that’s all the fucking problem there. I don’t think Oculus or Vive pricing problem has anything to do with cost of the product therefor it’s specs limitation, but rather the sales ROI margin profit they wanted to juice out of these, as it costs no more than about 150$ per unit (even including marginal production costs) to yield.

The problem, in line with my argument that current VR headset are crap by design or rather lack thereof, is that from Luckey’s initial idea of directing two lenses on a smartphone screen with an IMU sensors, it should have evolved towards the natural idea that VR immediately brought-up, hence why they bought Nimble-bit for hand-tracking (because when the first thing that even a chimpanzee tries to do in VR is grab things with it’s hands, it tells you that basic even if inaccurate hand-tracking is not an additional feature or enhancement but a compulsory part of what makes VR, like tactile screen for smartphones) and 13th Lab who had figured out stable environment tracking for AR.

And yet 3 years after, these existing softwares and tech starting-points were scraped for the same initial unevolved prototype VR headset to be released as consumer versions, and people wonder why it didn’t sell: not the pricing, the proof being hundreds of millions people willing to rack-in 700-1000$ for a smartphone. In fact in today’s marketing paradigm, price is rarely an argument, simply if Oculus and Vive presented way better incentives and had way more practical meanings in the way they were conceived, people would see the point in paying even a 1000$ for VR headset; but the HMDs offered at this point, wether at that price or way lower, are simply nowhere near value proposition that makes sense for consumers to invest in.

And this is the same for console: it was obvious that the PSVR would sell way more but again not for the price, rather for the fact that if VR HMDs are going to be this limited in their first consumer iteration, the value proposition works way better in the context of a big screen, family/friendly living-room with a standardised/optimised console than in the case of desktop PC on which you expect more. And this is a completely whole other debate but the difference between how PCs and consoles are conceived, is the reason why you actually have more notable or high-quality VR content on PSVR than the meagre Oculus catalogue or Steam loads of crapwares. But that’s another discussion.

“As a kid who grew up watching Lawn Mower Man” I stopped there, I that bullshit. I’m sorry I spent too much time around think-thank reps and ambassadors to take your “emotional/experiential argument” bullshit seriously.

I don’t mean to be rude, you are involuntarily using a fallacious pernicious rationalising argument to justify denying economic and market science to say that somehow, “because goggles cost 25k “which is lie as far as my uncle bought me a 250$ Virtual Boy, VR is now successful because firm with billions of ad budget are intrigued into investing 500k budget in one market experience…

This doesn’t mean shit. Did 3D TV take-off? Did Vivo take-off? Did Palm take-off? And yet they sold way more in their consumer adoption period than VR did 3 years after the original product. Note that’s I’m not saying it’s dead, but I’m saying there are risk VR fails for another cycle if we’re not pushing by being critical and expecting of what VR should actually be to be a practical device.

We have a similar job, but I analyse it differently: the reason why companies (mostly consumer, luxury and media brands) invest in VR is because they simply follow the noise of the momentum interest. Like everybody they’re impressed by their first experience, but then when I ask what they think of it, I realise they don’t really care and that’s not surprising: companies always and have always invested in new technologies that suscited interest, even failing ones.

Rather I think it adds to the same pressure, as somewhat big edge investment in VR: the more there is attention and investment, the more and sooner people expect ROIs of sorts. And doubt is that if VR fails to deliver in a correct time-window given it has already passed the initial buzz, there will be an assessment and statement of wether VR will satisfyingly continue to grow to be soon adopted or that it is going nowhere for now. And the only way to ponder about these two scenarios is by actually looking at the very, and again there is no twisting rationalisation about it, miserable sales of “consumer headset” that barely sold more than the original prototypes, but most importantly why is that.

And the reasons for me are that we are simply too far yet from an actual real product given how badly they were conceived by tricks of profit margin and therefor not implementing basic engineering design like a wireless beamer, external depth sensor or 3second put-n-look design. And if it doesn’t happen soon, knowing that once we have an actual true Virtual Headset it’ll then take some time for it to be adopted, iterated and more importantly used and developed for, then there will not be enough traction to justify sustaining a lagging new device market that people simply do not see the incentive of.