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Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost
- throwitlong 9y agoPS VR effect.
- striking 9y agoAnd the "Vive is winning" effect... Is there anyone who prefers Oculus' IR over Vive's LIDAR?
- ajsalminen 9y agoNeither Vive nor Rift have been selling very well recently if the Steam Survey is any indication. PSVR numbers are better but I don't think they're that impressive either.
- superplussed 9y agoThe amazing thing to me is that my 10 and 8 year old nephews have a PSVR, and Xbox, and an iPad, and all they want to do is play the iPad. They use the Xbox sometimes, and the PSVR collects dust. It seems nowadays low friction is the killer feature.
- ghaff 9y agoYou're basically describing casual gaming (etc.) vs. hardcore/immersive gaming. With tablets and smartphones, casual gaming is clearly winning as a percentage of users.
- ashark 9y agoKids aren't the only ones. Most of us in the wealthy West now have so many entertainment options that we ignore even many of the ones we've already paid for, or are continuing to pay for. Half the time I forget I have Prime Video at all, and I've temporarily got Showtime for Twin Peaks but despite knowing there are probably tons of other shows and movies on it (and not on Netflix/Prime) that I'd enjoy I've not even looked at the rest of their catalog aside from ~5min scanning through it when I first signed up. I have a total of probably 60+ entirely unplayed games for the PS2, PS3, Xbox360, Gamecube, and Wii, picked up cheap used or in digital PS+ freebies or sales but not touched since. Hundreds of hours of entertainment which I'd probably enjoy and many of which have at least some artistic merit but they sit unused. We recently picked up a PS4, so now games are accumulating for that too. Don't get me started on Steam/GoG. My to-read list of just books I own is solidly in the 3 digits. We've still got a couple DVDs kicking around that we bought over a decade ago for next to nothing used, never watched. I've never found time to catch up on all the music I pirated 10+ years ago, sometimes in large dumps of material from friends who were more into tracking down The Good Stuff than I was (keeping up with all that meta-reading to learn what's worth your time itself takes tons of time) let alone listen to much new music aside from a handful of CDs purchased and listened-to after live shows over the years. Spotify and such can go to hell, I don't got time and the last thing I need is another way to find things I like but won't have time to pursue. I end up seeing a more-or-less random 25-50% of the movies that are probably excellent and I'd likely really enjoy that come out every year. There are hundreds of culturally and artistically important movies from the last 100+ years still on my to-watch list, but the ones I miss each year keep making the list longer rather than shorter. Most are easily available. Some of them I could go watch right now (Netflix, et c.) I'm still meaning to read Sandman and a dozen other acclaimed, important comics, to say nothing of all the ones I'd probably enjoy as pure bubble-gum entertainment. I've barely scratched the surface on that entire format. Plus I've got all that stuff in life that's not just "consuming" media. I've truly got more excellent art/entertainment readily available than I have time for, by a large margin. We live in strange times. [EDIT] Oh, and let's not forget the ~a billion hours of free entertainment on Youtube, podcasts, archive.org, and so on, much of it good. I'm not much into that stuff because wow do I ever not have time to sort wheat from chaff let alone enjoy said wheat, but it's all right there and I could seek it out any time I please.
- ghaff 9y agoIn that vein, I read a piece recently. The gist was that, if you launch a TV show today that takes a season or so to get its footing and figure out how to tell its story, you're increasingly not going to make it. Of course, lots of shows have always been canceled early on. But, at least speaking for myself, today there are so many good to great shows that I don't have time to watch that if you don't grab me in an episode or two I'm tuning out.
- tgb 9y agoHow can you tell that from the Steam Survey? [1] All I see is market share among people who own VR headsets without mention of how many own headsets at all. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
- eregorn 9y agoseems about right from an article I found (1). I guess the rift might actually be in specific trouble though if it has a market share similar to a no-name cardboard rip off. (1) http://www.businessinsider.com/vr-headsets-comparison-popularity-price-features-details-2017-6/#samsung-gear-vr-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/vr-headsets-comparison-popula...
- droopyEyelids 9y agoThats still a lot of money for something you're only going to use for ~6 hours
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dataminded 9y agoIt is still way too expensive. I like VR and enjoy gaming but not enough to replace a PC that comfortably plays everything else I want to play.
- workerIbe 9y agoSaw a headline yesterday that Oculus is coming out with a $299 headset next year.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoAccording to that rumour that headset is a competitor to Daydream or Gear VR, not the Rift or Vive. (IOW it doesn't have 6DOF positioning). So it'd be good for passive consumption but not so great for games or content creation.
- cillian64 9y agoI assume this is the Santa Cruz headset? The big thing with that one is it's standalone -- my guess is that it includes electronics similar to a smartphone. My question is whether I'll be able to connect this new, cheaper (better?) headset to my PC for gaming or whether it can only be used standalone. Given the PC specs required for current VR games, I can't see how a system builtin to the headset could provide a comparable experience.
- 43224gg252 9y agoIs it safe to say that VR still has another decade (at least) before it gets any kind of wide spread adoption? I was hyped a couple years ago for VR but it feels like its fizzled out.
- mrfusion 9y agoWe're in the trough of disillusionment.
- hacker_9 9y agoIndeed, the hype train is always miles ahead of reality.
- Strom 9y agoHow do you define widespread adoption? When adding all the current gen VR systems together we're already over 10M units sold.
- aphextron 9y agoThose are really optimistic numbers which must include GearVR and its competitors, which are toys that most people do not consider true VR. Total sales for Rift, PSVR, and Vive are ~1.5 million units combined. All the others (OSVR, chinese clones, et. al.) might add up to 2 million total.
- Strom 9y agoThe 10M figure does include Gear VR yes. It's less capable than a Vive but ignoring its success while prophecising VR's doom seems weird to me.
- sergiosgc 9y agoI don't know where you are getting the 2 million total, but it is wildly off: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42707617 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42707617 These are numbers for Q1,2017, placing a total of Rift, PSVR and Vive at ~750k units. This is for the worse quarter of the year, post launch hype and off Christmas sales. I'd wager there are 5 million units of "serious" VR units out there. Also of note, something I didn't know: The Vive is outselling Oculus Rift at almost a 2:1 ratio.
- Paul_S 9y agoThis is pointless, people are not buying VR because there is nothing there they really want to use it for, not because it costs too much. A gaming rig to run it will cost you more.
- Ajedi32 9y agoAnecdotally, cost was a significant factor for me. I've been looking to purchase a headset ever since I had an opportunity to demo one a year ago, but $600 was a bit too steep for something that I likely wouldn't use for anything other than playing games (unlike a PC, which I use for much more than that). $400 though (the current price thanks to the summer sale) was enough to make me pull the trigger. I also noticed a huge surge in the level of activity from new Rift owners on the /r/oculus subreddit after the sale started, and many there are reporting that the headset is sold out in a lot of stores, so I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here.
- Strom 9y agoThe $399 sale was what put me over the edge to finally buy one. Based on comments around the internet that I've read on this sale announcement, there are plenty of people similar to me.
- Retric 9y agoMuch of this is just how computer parts get cheaper over time. VR may end up like trackballs which never replaced mice, but still sold millions of devices. PS: I flat out will not buy a Facebook product which may be contributing to HTC’s $799 Vive is continuing to sell better than the Rift.
- evan_ 9y agoBut people are more likely to pay $200 for something that they might not get a huge amount of use from than $500+.
- borne0 9y agoI think live sports and being able to switch between players/drone/sideline 360 views would be a killer app.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Talbotson 9y agoVR is not going to happen for general productivity purposes, but it will be handy for some specialties. Then they can invest in better, more expensive equipment. VR is such a closed off experience right now, I would schedule it under Dreaming. Sweaty too, with today's gear. It asks a lot for what it can deliver for now.
- philipov 9y agoIt is not Facebook's right to decide how much VR should cost. That's what a free market is for. They do believe in the free market, right? Right??
- logicallee 9y agoOrdinarily technical companies are well-differentiated which means they are not commodities that you can interchange precisely - unlike rice or wheat. So while it is not sensible to state "(biggest wheat importer) can't decide how much wheat should cost" since their options are probably within a very narrow limit where asking for just 15% more would cause their sales to drop to 0 and asking for 15% less would let them capture 50%+ of the market - but at a loss for them - the same is rarely true in the technical industry, which has high margins and high differentiation. So for these reasons, Facebook's pricing choices are complicated and the free market does not clearly prescribe their pricing strategy in the way you suggest.
- pavement 9y agoI don't think anyone can really gauge VR's day-to-day casual consumer value. It's genuine applications are rare, and it's primary value is in deflecting hazardous situations onto remote operated robotic vehicles with telepresence. But humans prefer actual experiences above all, every single time, unless real dangers are presented, so VR always feels like an undesirable compromise.
- beisner 9y agoI'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of domains where actual experiences are impossible. Think re-living an important moment in history, exploring the world with a hawks-eye view, or interacting in 3 dimensions with someone half-way across the globe. You can't exactly say that VR is a compromise in these situations, because there is no alternative.
- rocky1138 9y ago> humans prefer actual experiences above all, every single time I love the idea of living in my virtual forest in Potioneer but I wouldn't want to do it for real.
- avaer 9y agoI'm not sure humans prefer "actual experiences" every single time; the business models of Facebook, Amazon, and Google depend on that not being the case. Back when the internet was still low-res and slow people said the same thing about it: chatting, buying, and researching with a computer is an undesirable compromise. That's where we are with VR. Anecdote: I fondly remember the days spent hacking AOL with people online, being ostracized and punished by people around me for not having "actual" experiences like going out and playing sports. These people now spend countless hours on Facebook and Instagram. Now apparently I need to be more social with actual people (on Facebook) instead of hacking with fake people in fake virtual reality.
- MikusR 9y agoThey ran out of the old bundle that had two boxes (one with headset, sensor ,Xbox controller and remote. other one with touch controllers and sensor). And announced earlier than expected the new cheaper bundle: one smaller box with headset, touch controllers and two sensors. The new box has no Xbox controller and no touch remote.