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Remember when FB bought oculus and evangelists insisted that people were overreacting? Can we officially admit that the naysayers were right and that fb not o
by only_as_i_fall 5y ago
Remember when FB bought oculus and evangelists insisted that people were overreacting?
Can we officially admit that the naysayers were right and that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nickthegreek 5y agoIm not a FB fan, But they didn't really kill the oculus brand... its now the most popular VR headset on SteamVR. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/78089/oculus-quest-2-is-now-the-most-popular-vr-headset-on-steam/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/78089/oculus-quest-2-is-now-t... "According to Valve's data, Quest 2 owners comprise 22.91% of all SteamVR users, while another 21.58% use a Rift S headset. Oculus also owns another 13.49%, with the original Rift, and Quest headsets added. All told, Oculus is responsible for 57.98% of all VR headsets used on Valve's platform."
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- ThatPlayer 5y agoYou can check Steam's hardware survey for more up to date stats. Quest 2 is now up to 29.33% https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- AuryGlenz 5y agoThat’s just for people that have it plugged it when they take the stats, too. Considering you can use it wirelessly and standalone it has a commanding lead of the market.
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- cwkoss 5y agoDoes facebook make profit on each quest sold? I was under the impression it was a loss leader subsidized by their advertising income and justified by projected future monetization. Another commenter mentioned that the corporate no-account-required model costs $699, so that may be a more fair comparison. Is facebook subsidizing each Quest 2 by $400 (and assuming they'll be able to extract roughly that amount from each user)?
- rock_hard 5y agoYep, that’s correct! They heavily subsidize their VR devices…nothing unusual though, all game consoles are subsidized
- jedberg 5y ago> all game consoles are subsidized I think that's only true for Playstation and Xbox. Pretty sure Nintendo makes a profit on every console.
- babypuncher 5y agoIt's not even really true for PlayStation or Xbox. They often launch consoles at a loss (or even just a break even price), but manufacturing costs quickly come down while MSRP stays the same. The PS5 has already hit this threshold if Sony is to be believed.
- MikeUt 5y agoI don't think it's safe to assume the $699 price tag is the same as the unit cost to Facebook. They'll charge whatever they can get people to pay for it, plus they have a vested interest in portraying ad-free prices as unreasonably high.
- judge2020 5y agoFB probably sells near-cost and makes all their money on the backend from taking 30% or so of sales of apps, much like consoles (and iOS minus making money on the front end as well).
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- type0 5y agoThey are selling us the Brave New World
- nitrogen 5y agoThis doesn't tell you how big VR might have been if Oculus remained independent, or tied to a less controversial parent company and profit model.
- milkytron 5y agoThey would have had at least one more sale (I still want it but not the Facebook part).
- artifact_44 5y agoAlso, Palmer Luckey is a weird libertarian/asshole, so who knows.. FB acquisition might have been a net benefit.
- spaceprison 5y agoI would have one if it weren't for the fb requirement and this outcome is exactly why I don't. Are people actually shocked that a company with such a pristine reputation for carrying about their produ..um..Users now wants to jam ads directly into their eyes?
- chaostheory 5y agoimo the FB requirement wouldn't be there if they didn't subsidize the system by about $300. The subsidy is just as important as the Quest being stand alone and self contained as opposed to requiring a PC.
- austhrow743 5y agoFacebook is tied to Facebook and is possibly the most viewed website/app in the world.
- httpsterio 5y agoI actively discourage anyone in my social circles to remain clear from Oculus. I wouldn't say that VR has taken off yet and Oculus could've been the needed impetus had Facebook kept their fingers out of it. I mean, if Facebook just owned the brand and didn't try to force Facebook down the throats of its' users, it would've been quite a viable option.
- BizarroLand 5y agoIts the most affordable one, so that must have something to do with its popularity. I think the term is captive audience?
- chrischen 5y agoMost popular doesn't necessarily mean best, since Android is arguably more "popular" but Apple is clearly making the bulk of the money (and thus delivering the bulk of the value). But Oculus also right now is also probably one of the easier to use headsets. Keep in mind some of those Rift/Quest numbers might be overlapping users who've upgraded.
- jader201 5y agoI don’t think the argument was about which is more popular. Simply whether FB has “killed the Oculus brand”, and it seems these numbers suggest that it at least hasn’t been “killed” (though personally, I’m against most of the choices FB has made).
- sangnoir 5y ago> Apple is clearly making the bulk of the money (and thus delivering the bulk of the value) I have to disagree with your implicit assertion that making more money = delivering more value. curl/libcurl earns $0, but delivers more value than a 2-year old *aaS that makes $2,000 in annual revenue.
- chrischen 5y agoYou're valuing curl incorrectly. For example, an engineer isn't valued based on what he enables at the company. S/he's valued based on what they can deliver that others can't. Maybe I manage the database at my company and the database is arguably one of the most important pieces of infrastructure but that doesn't mean I have unlimited salary. I can only negotiate as high as someone else is willing to undercut me to perform the same duties. If you apply that to curl, how much of it is irreplaceable? Google didn't just openly license Android out of the goodness of their hearts. It was a business decision and the Android business does deliver them value, but not as much as Apple's business.
- chaostheory 5y agoYes, but Facebook didn't kill Oculus either. imo it's stronger because Facebook is much more aggressive in the VR space than anyone else. Their approximate $300 subsidy is a pretty generous one by console standards.
- whoisjuan 5y agoHow? Facebook invests billions of dollars into advancing the tech behind Oculus, reducing the form factor and making it economically viable, and the conclusion is that FB killed the Oculus brand and tarnished VR? I don’t understand why people are not capable of separating the good from the bad. Of course you can shit on FB regarding many things but this is objectively not one of those things.
- jabbany 5y agoI think people are not happy about _how_ FB made it "economically viable" (by locking the system to tie in with an FB account and now by running ads). Most people probably want to see a VR platform that can stand on its own profit mechanisms. Not something that is parasitically dependent on another platform's ad revenue (either directly with internal ads or indirectly via FB accounts). Instead of taking time to explore that (which is what many believed would happen after the acquisition), FB took the easy way out by bolting existing revenue systems on, which then in turn kills any motivation to explore options. Similar kinds of worries always play out for technologies/platforms that are good but aren't profitable yet which then get acquired. Will the new owners help the technology stand on its own, or will they take the easy way out and treat it as a mechanism to bring new users onto their existing revenue stream.
- shadowgovt 5y agoI've been following VR technology's development for over two decades now, and the concern that those profit mechanisms don't exist at the margins necessary to sustain the business is real. I think people underestimate how fragile this technology space is; we're talking a system that only a percentage of the population can use without experiencing motion sickness, requiring a dedicated usage space that is hard to share with other uses in a family setting, which (up until the most recent iterations) sold at a price point that was uncomfortable to most people for a luxury product. More revenue streams to support it is better than fewer, at least at this stage of its development.
- jabbany 5y ago
- RandallBrown 5y agoI thought VR was a goofy gimmick until I bought an Oculus Quest and played with it. From my point of view they drastically improved both the Oculus brand and the overall opinion of VR as a usable technology. Oculus may have done that without Facebook or it may have stayed tethered to a PC and continued to be awkward to use. I don't really know.
- chaostheory 5y agoI don't feel that Oculus could have done it alone with the Quest 2. Facebook's big contribution is the $300 price discount that they're eating with every Quest 2 unit sold.
- esyir 5y agoAnd their ml competencies. They were the first to market with high quality inside out tracking. That was the game changer for low friction vr. Even now they're a distant first place there.
- chaostheory 5y agoSeriously asking, is there any other inside out system that works well? From my experience, WMR is terrible at that.
- xarope 5y agoI really like the Quest 2 as a standalone (non-tethered) device, I hope FB doesn't end up killing it...!
- ddingus 5y agoTotally. I won't go near it.
- grammarnazzzi 5y agoI feel mostly for John Carmack. It's a tragedy his genious is leveraged by Facebook
- m-p-3 5y agoTo be honest as soon as the Occulus brand fell under the Facebook umbrella I stopped caring about it. For now I'd only consider the HTC Vive or go towards a PS5 for VR.
- outime 5y agoSuch strong statements on this website with no facts presented whatsoever never ceases to amaze me. “I hate FB therefore you gotta agree everyone else does as well”. Outside of our little bubble most of the people really don’t care even if we’re talking about VR. As another commenter said it’s actually the most popular VR and that could’ve been found through a quick search but then the feeling to impose our own reality to others seem to be sometimes stronger. And this is the top comment at the time of writing...
- only_as_i_fall 5y agoAre you arguing with a particular part of my post or was your goal merely to be insulting? The set of early VR adopters naturally intersects heavily with the set of facebook skeptics. This website is composed mostly of relatively young, high earning men with interests in technology, which is to say almost the exact target demographic of VR. Do you see the general sentiment here about Facebook and this move in particular? BTW if you're going to complain about people not doing adequate research to back their points you shouldn't follow it with misinformation you copied from another comment. Sony has by far the largest market share in VR, not oculus.
- outime 5y agoI didn't feel it'd be necessary to specify to what I'm referring to from your short comment but to answer your question yes, I'm arguing with this particular part of your post: >Can we officially admit that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR? This is just simply not true. There's absolutely no proof whatsoever that the Oculus brand is dead. In fact, it's one of the most popular if not the most in some platforms. And I also don't see how FB has "tarnished public opinion" of this generation of VR since again it's one of the most popular which is rather incompatible with that. Perhaps you have data that I don't have, in such case please share it so I can learn. What you wanted to say, perhaps, is: "can we agree that in our small bubble, the Oculus brand is dead" which would argueably be not true either as I anecdotically now many HN readers who own them and are very happy but it'd perhaps be a bit closer to the current situation. My whole point is, here there's a lot of hate towards certain companies. I share it to some extent as well but I'm definitely going to point out when nonsense is being spread in comments like yours. Your comment was simply not true and got upvotes of people who dislike FB which is a very respectable position but I thought we could do better and not promote fake facts just because it harms some company we (in general) dislike. And no, not meant to be insulting. I don't see how can I be insulting by pointing out your comment isn't correct or to be precise, in fact, I'm answering your stated question: "Can we officially admit that ..." - no, we can't. The data shows otherwise. And a finishing disclaimer: I don't have hidden interests towards FB or work for them in some indirect way. The only thing I have is WhatsApp, the rest I stopped using very long time ago. I won't buy Oculus for the reasons you and others state. But I'm not blind and I know that most of the people don't care at all and will buy. In other words, the majority of the people won't stop buying it because FB owns it or it requires FB login or they do data harvesting or all of those things combined.
- pokot0 5y agoA lot of the comments are focused on the headset subsidizing but it seems most people overlook the drawback of this: it kills competition. Now you are either a FAANG company capable of monetizing your users to the extent FB can, or you can't even start thinking of entering the standalone headset market with a price tag twice of FB. This is very bad for VR in my opinion.