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This seems like a smart play and necessary if they're going to take Steam/Vive head on in VR. That said they really need to catch up with the Rift - maybe thei

This seems like a smart play and necessary if they're going to take Steam/Vive head on in VR. That said they really need to catch up with the Rift - maybe their focus on the lower end of the market with Gear VR will save them, but outside of this the Rift is pretty disappointing. Steam game support for games that run on both the Rift and Vive make it stupid to buy games on the Oculus store, but worse than that once you've played with the touch controls and room scale that the Vive offers it's clear the Rift just does not compare. The Vive is heavier, it's hardware is not as aesthetically pleasing and it's clunkier (more wires, bigger pain to set up). Other than that though it's categorically better - if Oculus doesn't ship some touch controllers and room scale sensors soon I think they'll lose the high end market (unless they're able to power through on brand alone). The Vive also has an interesting front facing camera and doesn't let light in through the nose. I've been seeing people on Craigslist selling their Rift and keeping their Vive - not a good sign for Oculus. My Rift is unplugged and in the closet.

TrevorJ 10y ago
The thing that killed my interest in the rift was Facebook's transparent desire to make it a walled garden.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- NovaS1X 10y ago
  I think most people knew something along these lines would happen when Facebook bought Oculus. This doesn't at all surprise me and I fully expect it to get worse. What's frustrating is when people would say anything negative about the aquisition on HN you'd get the usual downvotes for saying something negative and speculative. Facebook is a terrible company.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Well, they're doing a very poor job with the Oculus store, why would this one be any different? I'm not saying they don't have the money or technical talent, but clearly the politics of Facebook are morally onerous to gamers. Everything about the Rift should have been a slam dunk. It had the mindshare, pr, capital, early adopter advantage, etc. Hell they even have John Carmack. Now its the red headed stepchild of the VR wars. Oculus went from a gamer friendly company to what seems to be something run by a bunch of milquetoast MBA's with zero interest or experience in gaming. Cut-throat deals like exclusives, contradictory and anti-consumer policies, confusing PR (why is Luckey yelling at people on reddit?), inability to catch up (no motion controls yet?), etc have hurt the brand and the Vive seems like the go-to for VR right now. In a couple months the PSVR will be out, with motion controls. Where exactly does that leave Oculus? As the has-been of the industry? I can't see Facebook winning over the PC gamer crowd. Casuals have mobile, they're not installing this thing. Beating Steam means beating Steams street cred which its been carefully building for over a decade. I just don't think companies like Facebook have the culture to win here. The types of people who can work a monopoly well in the social media space are pretty much the worst kinds of people you want in the gaming industry, and Oculus's failures are proof of that.
- onewaystreet 10y ago
  > Oculus went from a gamer friendly company to what seems to be something run by a bunch of milquetoast MBA's with zero interest or experience in gaming Oculus isn't a gaming company and Facebook didn't buy it for it to be one. Facebook sees VR as the next big social platform. > Oculus's failures are proof of that The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. And the Gear has sold over a million units.
  - FeepingCreature 10y ago
    > The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. Cite? That'd require a million Rift CV1s sold, which seems excessive.
  - aphextron 10y ago
    >The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. And the Gear has sold over a million units. Completely false. Vive has outsold CV1 2:1 so far. Best approximate numbers right now are 50,000 Rifts to 100,000 Vives.
    - onewaystreet 10y ago
      Where are you getting that 50k Rifts number from? Every estimate on Rift sales has it at around 500k.
      - c0nfused 10y ago
        The last numbers I saw were here: http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-figures-data-100000-steamspy-data/ http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-figures-data-100000-s...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Unlikely. All the numbers I can find suggest Rift and Vive within 50% of each other - either way, depending who you ask. Is anyone really interested in social VR? Converge crashed and burned, and competitors like vTime are more or less just Second Life without the building. FB thinks having immediate access to the social graph will change that. I'm not convinced - because it's hard to make Avatars that don't look comically uncool, and to be compelling, the interaction needs to offer a lot more than Facetime/Skype++ in some fake locations.
djloche 10y ago
Facebook should bite the bullet and settle the lawsuits involving Carmack so they can take full advantage of having him on board.
- spearo77 10y ago
  Any references for those lawsuits? I haven't heard of them before now.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    http://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-ceo-zuckerberg-to-testify-in-oculus-vs-zenimax-lawsuit/ http://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-ceo-zuckerberg-to-testify-i... Carmack worked on the Rift while an employee of ZeniMax. A ZeniMax, Facebook, Rift share split then blew up, leaving ZeniMax with nothing, despite the fact that Carmack and ZeniMax were instrumental in the development of the Rift. Carmack then left ZeniMax for Facebook.
    - spearo77 10y ago
      Thank you for the summary too.
FussyZeus 10y ago
The best recent point of comparison I know of is EA's Origin app which is...just the worst thing I have currently installed. It's just God-awful. Steam was that way for a very long time, and the bodies of it's various issues are what it's currently built upon. Companies should just get on the Steam train, take advantage of that platform and stop trying to invent a new Steam.
- iamwil 10y ago
  Everyone wants to own distribution.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    And as things are, there is no way they can get it. One day Valve will stumble, but I don't think that the spoils will go to one of those who made fools of themselves while Valve didn't. Ambition is a hindrance to trust, that's why from the current crop, the only plausible candidate for a Steam successor is GoG. They give a believable impression of keeping up their business as long as they at least keep a certain niche of the market, while everything else looks like projects of the "displace Steam within x years or be shelved" kind.
    - FussyZeus 10y ago
      Plus, having more than one of these clients is exactly the kind of problem Steam came on the scene to solve in the first place (i.e. inconvenient distribution). Steam has won this for the time being, and shows no signs of slowing down. It's foolish to fight it over NIH syndrome. Steam has been a godsend to indie developers. It can be a great partner for AAA ones as well.
- JimmyM 10y ago
  Have you tried uPlay? It's genuinely worse than Origin in just about every way.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
miketuritzin 10y ago
It seems pretty clear Oculus is going to announce the ship date on the touch controllers at Oculus Connect (in October) and there are games launching that use them in November/December, so it seems safe to assume it is happening in the next few months.
- fossuser 10y ago
  True, but that's only half the deal. Valve opened up access and the research to their lighthouse tech, but it requires sensors on the device for orientation. I don't think the existing Rifts have these sensors so room scale VR may be something they're just not able to do. This is a pretty big disadvantage.
onewaystreet 10y ago
> Steam game support for games that run on both the Rift and Vive make it stupid to buy games on the Oculus store, but worse than that once you've played with the touch controls and room scale that the Vive offers it's clear the Rift just does not compare. Except that there are barely any VR games worth playing. When Oculus ships Touch later this year it will ship with 30+ games that support it. People have been complaining about Oculus exclusives, but without incentives it makes no financial sense for developers to invest in AAA VR games when the install base is so small.

TrevorJ 10y ago

The thing that killed my interest in the rift was Facebook's transparent desire to make it a walled garden.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
NovaS1X 10y ago
I think most people knew something along these lines would happen when Facebook bought Oculus. This doesn't at all surprise me and I fully expect it to get worse. What's frustrating is when people would say anything negative about the aquisition on HN you'd get the usual downvotes for saying something negative and speculative. Facebook is a terrible company.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Well, they're doing a very poor job with the Oculus store, why would this one be any different? I'm not saying they don't have the money or technical talent, but clearly the politics of Facebook are morally onerous to gamers. Everything about the Rift should have been a slam dunk. It had the mindshare, pr, capital, early adopter advantage, etc. Hell they even have John Carmack. Now its the red headed stepchild of the VR wars. Oculus went from a gamer friendly company to what seems to be something run by a bunch of milquetoast MBA's with zero interest or experience in gaming. Cut-throat deals like exclusives, contradictory and anti-consumer policies, confusing PR (why is Luckey yelling at people on reddit?), inability to catch up (no motion controls yet?), etc have hurt the brand and the Vive seems like the go-to for VR right now. In a couple months the PSVR will be out, with motion controls. Where exactly does that leave Oculus? As the has-been of the industry? I can't see Facebook winning over the PC gamer crowd. Casuals have mobile, they're not installing this thing. Beating Steam means beating Steams street cred which its been carefully building for over a decade. I just don't think companies like Facebook have the culture to win here. The types of people who can work a monopoly well in the social media space are pretty much the worst kinds of people you want in the gaming industry, and Oculus's failures are proof of that.

onewaystreet 10y ago
> Oculus went from a gamer friendly company to what seems to be something run by a bunch of milquetoast MBA's with zero interest or experience in gaming Oculus isn't a gaming company and Facebook didn't buy it for it to be one. Facebook sees VR as the next big social platform. > Oculus's failures are proof of that The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. And the Gear has sold over a million units.
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  > The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. Cite? That'd require a million Rift CV1s sold, which seems excessive.
- aphextron 10y ago
  >The Rift has outsold the Vive 10 to 1. And the Gear has sold over a million units. Completely false. Vive has outsold CV1 2:1 so far. Best approximate numbers right now are 50,000 Rifts to 100,000 Vives.
  - onewaystreet 10y ago
    Where are you getting that 50k Rifts number from? Every estimate on Rift sales has it at around 500k.
    - c0nfused 10y ago
      The last numbers I saw were here: http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-figures-data-100000-steamspy-data/ http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-figures-data-100000-s...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Unlikely. All the numbers I can find suggest Rift and Vive within 50% of each other - either way, depending who you ask. Is anyone really interested in social VR? Converge crashed and burned, and competitors like vTime are more or less just Second Life without the building. FB thinks having immediate access to the social graph will change that. I'm not convinced - because it's hard to make Avatars that don't look comically uncool, and to be compelling, the interaction needs to offer a lot more than Facetime/Skype++ in some fake locations.

djloche 10y ago

Facebook should bite the bullet and settle the lawsuits involving Carmack so they can take full advantage of having him on board.

spearo77 10y ago
Any references for those lawsuits? I haven't heard of them before now.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  http://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-ceo-zuckerberg-to-testify-in-oculus-vs-zenimax-lawsuit/ http://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-ceo-zuckerberg-to-testify-i... Carmack worked on the Rift while an employee of ZeniMax. A ZeniMax, Facebook, Rift share split then blew up, leaving ZeniMax with nothing, despite the fact that Carmack and ZeniMax were instrumental in the development of the Rift. Carmack then left ZeniMax for Facebook.
  - spearo77 10y ago
    Thank you for the summary too.

FussyZeus 10y ago

The best recent point of comparison I know of is EA's Origin app which is...just the worst thing I have currently installed. It's just God-awful. Steam was that way for a very long time, and the bodies of it's various issues are what it's currently built upon. Companies should just get on the Steam train, take advantage of that platform and stop trying to invent a new Steam.

iamwil 10y ago
Everyone wants to own distribution.
- usrusr 10y ago
  And as things are, there is no way they can get it. One day Valve will stumble, but I don't think that the spoils will go to one of those who made fools of themselves while Valve didn't. Ambition is a hindrance to trust, that's why from the current crop, the only plausible candidate for a Steam successor is GoG. They give a believable impression of keeping up their business as long as they at least keep a certain niche of the market, while everything else looks like projects of the "displace Steam within x years or be shelved" kind.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    Plus, having more than one of these clients is exactly the kind of problem Steam came on the scene to solve in the first place (i.e. inconvenient distribution). Steam has won this for the time being, and shows no signs of slowing down. It's foolish to fight it over NIH syndrome. Steam has been a godsend to indie developers. It can be a great partner for AAA ones as well.
JimmyM 10y ago
Have you tried uPlay? It's genuinely worse than Origin in just about every way.
- FussyZeus 10y ago

miketuritzin 10y ago

It seems pretty clear Oculus is going to announce the ship date on the touch controllers at Oculus Connect (in October) and there are games launching that use them in November/December, so it seems safe to assume it is happening in the next few months.

fossuser 10y ago
True, but that's only half the deal. Valve opened up access and the research to their lighthouse tech, but it requires sensors on the device for orientation. I don't think the existing Rifts have these sensors so room scale VR may be something they're just not able to do. This is a pretty big disadvantage.

onewaystreet 10y ago

> Steam game support for games that run on both the Rift and Vive make it stupid to buy games on the Oculus store, but worse than that once you've played with the touch controls and room scale that the Vive offers it's clear the Rift just does not compare. Except that there are barely any VR games worth playing. When Oculus ships Touch later this year it will ship with 30+ games that support it. People have been complaining about Oculus exclusives, but without incentives it makes no financial sense for developers to invest in AAA VR games when the install base is so small.