Venture Beat look at VR Adoption Rates and it's really not looking good

[Master Disaster]

Basically they've used Steams hardware survey to look at VR Adoption Rates on Steam over July and August. 

 

Let's start with the rift, raw adoption increased by 0.3% in July & 0.1% in August. Vive did even worse with 0.3% in July & 0% in August. Yep the Vive had ZERO new adopters on Steam in August. 

 

Total number of Steam users who have VR is 0.10%

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The hot days of summer have not led to gamers looking for an escape in virtual reality.

 

The number of new HTC Vive owners on Steam grew only 0.3 percent in July and was flat in August, according to a survey (via Reddit) of customers that use Valve’s distribution network. The Oculus Rift headset from the Facebook subsidiary saw similar stagnation of 0.3 percent in July and 0.1 percent in August. At this point, only 0.18 percent of Steam users own the Vive and only 0.10 percent own the Rift. And with lethargic sales, both of these high-end head-mounted displays are going to need a lot of help to catch on with audiences.

 

July and August are important because they were the first months where both HTC and Oculus no longer had supply constraints. Through most of that two-month period, consumers could go online or even drive to a store to pick up one of these units instantly. The problem, however, is that no one is doing that.

They theorise that the early adoption period is finished and everyone who jumped in early already has one which means no one else seems remotely interested in the tech which costs a fairly significant price (plus you need a powerful PC too). 

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Of course, the likely explanation for why consumer spending on VR headsets has slowed is that all of the early adopters have taken the plunge. Now, HTC and Oculus are in an awkward transitional period from serving the most hardcore to attempting to woo more budget-conscious, mainstream customers. And the price is still too big of a concern.

 

Oculus Rift is $600 and HTC Vive sells for $800. On top of that, they both require $1,000 PCs or $1,500 laptops to run. It’s likely that we’ve reached a ceiling on who will spend that kind of cash. Going forward, the VR headsets will likely need one or some combination of the following: a price cut, heavy marketing, or a killer app that gets word-

Of course we'll see if the price is the reason when the cheaper PSVR launches

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So most people are probably going to continue to wait, and if they don’t go with less expensive second-generation iterations of the Rift and the Vive, then they might pick up the PlayStation VR (which costs $800 all in with the headset, a PS4 console, and the required peripherals) or a mobile VR option like Samsung’s Gear VR or Google’s upcoming Daydream-powered VR smartphones.

The Know noted that you can use Rift without ever running Steam so using Steam as a metric of Rift can never be totally accurate

 

http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/02/vr-adoption-among-steam-users-has-crashed-to-a-halt/

 

Called it, VR will probably end up like 3D. A gimmick that is cool but not mainstream and I think that because imo were just not ready for it yet. Units are big and cumbersome, your tethered to a machine, Vive requires loads of space and games are mediocre at best, more like tech demos tbh. 

 

It's worth noting that various market analysts claimed VR would be a billion dollar industry by 2020. That's not looking too good of a prediction. 

[Daniel644]

price is definitely a factor, but some folks are also waiting for the OTHER headsets to show up, Like StarVR and a commercial version of OSVR (not development kit) to see how they compare. Some folks are waiting to see how PSVR turns out on the Neo, while others are waiting for benchmarks before buying a graphics to see how well what cards run VR and some are simply saving up still, but yeah the "early adopter phase is over.

[AresKrieger]

Reasons Why I don't like VR currently and thus don't buy in

1) I don't have 600 bucks to waste an a peripheral

2) They make me sick

3) The games for them suck

4) I don't like Valve or Facebook and would rather avoid supporting either of them on products I don't really like

5) Early adoption is wasteful as first gen products are poor qulaity in most cases

[porina]

7 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Total number of Steam users who have VR is 0.10%

That's one in a thousand. I'm actually surprised if it was that high, recognising that not everyone uses Steam. Question then is how many are on Steam, and that in itself is a tricky question. Concurrent users peaks over 10M recently, but there's people like me who don't stay logged in so the number of active users (logged in at least one in last month?) would probably be a lot higher. Still, at 10M level, that's 10000 VR users... but it only goes up from there.

 

I also looked at PSVR. To get all the hardware, including a PS4, camera, Move controllers, would be around £700. I see today the Vive is selling £759 so the brexit rise has kicked in. A VR capable PC would be similar again, so PSVR would be roughly halving the cost.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, porina said:

That's one in a thousand. I'm actually surprised if it was that high, recognising that not everyone uses Steam. Question then is how many are on Steam, and that in itself is a tricky question. Concurrent users peaks over 10M recently, but there's people like me who don't stay logged in so the number of active users (logged in at least one in last month?) would probably be a lot higher. Still, at 10M level, that's 10000 VR users... but it only goes up from there.

 

I also looked at PSVR. To get all the hardware, including a PS4, camera, Move controllers, would be around £700. I see today the Vive is selling £759 so the brexit rise has kicked in. A VR capable PC would be similar again, so PSVR would be roughly halving the cost.

Well out of fairness The Know noted that you can use Rift without ever running Steam so using Steam as a metric of Rift can never be totally accurate. 

[Bouzoo]

Considering that Steam had 125,000,000 users a year and a half ago, and they are gaining 25,000,000 per year, that should still be ~150,000 users that have VR gear, and I don't think that's disappointing for a start. To me it sounds like saying "Oh, only 3% of people bought an iPhone in 2015", when in reality, that number is ~230,000,000 phones.

[captain cactus]

Price is a factor, not just for the headset but also the PC required. Then there are the play-once-then-never-return-to games that are more tech demo than game. No game that are played by the masses are currently going to VR and/or don't/won't work in VR.

 

It's another one of those overhyped things. I mean, it brought the RX480 which is good and all, but VR itself is not the revolution to games people wanted it to be. Just like the 3D TVs.

[Cyracus]

Pretty much every tech that we take for granted today started out very similarly, they start prohibitively expensive, and have low adoption rates as a result, then the cost drops and they work out other user experience issues, and they end up dropping to an affordable level, then before you know it they're everywhere and it's hard to imagine them not there. Imagine if Apple gave up on the ipod or iphone after a few months, or if TVs were considered a flop because they weren't sold hand over fist right after they launched

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Bouzoo said:

Considering that Steam had 125,000,000 users a year and a half ago, and they are gaining 25,000,000 per year, that should still be ~15,000,000 users that have VR gear, and I don't think that's disappointing. To me it sounds like saying "Oh, only 3% of people bought an iPhone in 2015", when in reality, that number is ~230,000,000 phones.

Yes but adoption has stalled entirely and it's the first time people have been able to walk into a shop and buy one. 

 

Those numbers are the early adopters who pre ordered, no one else seems interested. 

[AresKrieger]

1 minute ago, Bouzoo said:

Considering that Steam had 125,000,000 users a year and a half ago, and they are gaining 25,000,000 per year, that should still be ~15,000,000 users that have VR gear, and I don't think that's disappointing. To me it sounds like saying "Oh, only 3% of people bought an iPhone in 2015", when in reality, that number is ~230,000,000 phones.

I don't think the vive and oculus have sold that many units combined, but I'll look further into the info for confirmation

[AresKrieger]

HTC Vive Headset Nearing 100,000 Install Base, Steam Data Suggests [Update]
-  Jul 4, 2016 (self explanatory aticle title and date)

 

As for occulus they have sold ~175,000 DK1 and DK2 development kits (can't find any info on actual released product but it would appear to be doing significantly worse than the vive due to bad press and the vive taking center stage)

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Cyracus said:

Pretty much every tech that we take for granted today started out very similarly, they start prohibitively expensive, and have low adoption rates as a result, then the cost drops and they work out other user experience issues, and they end up dropping to an affordable level, then before you know it they're everywhere and it's hard to imagine them not there. Imagine if Apple gave up on the ipod or iphone after a few months, or if TVs were considered a flop because they weren't sold hand over fist right after they launched

I wouldn't disagree with this at all and I do agree it's to early to call it a failure but you can't deny those numbers paint a fairly bad picture. Zero percent for Vive in August? 

[KrumpetPirate]

I think it's important to note that these numbers are from the Steam Hardware Survey. That thing almost never shows up for me. Many speculate that this also hurts Linux share percentages because it VERY rarely pops up on Linux hardware likely due to strange triggering mechanics.

 

It is likely that the actual numbers might be higher or lower. I myself really don't want to buy into the early adopter packages. I will wait till a game that I really really want has VR support before going in. I'm sure my 390x would light my room on fire if I were to play VR anyways (stupid Gigabyte Windforce cooler...)

[porina]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I wouldn't disagree with this at all and I do agree it's to early to call it a failure but you can't deny those numbers paint a fairly bad picture. Zero percent for Vive in August? 

Summer is typically slow for big spending, especially August which is peak holiday season. Also the source for the growth rate is rather ambiguous. Assuming the 100k existing base, then 0.1% growth is 100 units... also would it be too early for the Christmas effect to kick in?

 

Maybe the market as it currently stands has saturated, and it will take something to get another significant round of sales. If the existing units don't shift, then maybe there'll be some price movement to clear them for 2nd gen.

[Gullerback]

the only headset im interested in is 1400$ so... Yeah.  Thats why

[zMeul]

I don't get it, did anyone expected differently?

I said from the get go, when the HMDs went retail - their prices is way to high for mass adoption
and then you look at the difference of the Rift from bill of materials to retail price ..

people kept telling me "wait for gen2" .. what gen2? at this rate there won't be a gen2

[xboxonthego3]

Well they gained a customer in September! It's quite fun in my opinion. But definitely generation 1. There are improvements that could be made such as resolution and Field of View. We bought the HTC VIVE. My brother and I split it 50/50 to make the cost more manageable though.

[Misanthrope]

Must agree with  @zMeul here (for a change) why was anybody expecting different? VR was always destined to be an impractical gimmick. 

[Derangel]

7 hours ago, huilun02 said:

If you look at past products that sell like hotcakes, there's always one factor present. 

 

Its called accessibility. Is VR accessible? No, not anytime soon. There is the high price, prerequisite hardware to run it, and limited use case for consumers (with some VR companies already starting their exclusivity bullshit)

Basically, that. I'd say current VR is probably akin to early smartphones. Not iPhones or Android phones, but those early Blackberry phones. Good phones but expensive (for their time, they seem cheap now) and with very limited appeal. For the people they were targeted at they did great, but they were never going to be a device for the masses. No one thought about or cared about smartphones until Apple came along with the iPhone. VR has no iPhone. It has no Apple. Not yet, at least. Even outside of the price of the headset itself there is nothing really there to compel the mass market and for those that are compelled by it, most can't justify the cost of the pc for it.

 

It will be interesting to watch how PSVR does after it launches. I doubt it will be VR's iPhone and Sony sure as hell isn't as smart as Apple, but it will still be interesting to see how the mass console market reacts.

[Sakkura]

11 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Basically they've used Steams hardware survey to look at VR Adoption Rates on Steam over July and August. 

 

Let's start with the rift, usage grew by 0.3% in July & 0.1% in August. Vive did even worse with 0.3% in July & 0% in August. Yep the Vive had ZERO new adopters on Steam in August. 

 

Total number of Steam users who have VR is 0.10%

Due to rounding issues, that can still hide a growth rate of up to 5-10%. Just getting the dial to move from 0.18% to 0.19% takes a few thousand headsets. Then you add the fact that the Steam hardware survey is a survey, so it only actually measures a small sample of users. Meaning the number gets inaccurate for small minorities like this (just like opinion polls have difficulty telling whether a political party will land 1.5% or 2.5% of the vote).

 

Also, your numbers are wrong. The survey currently says the Vive is at 0.18%, the Rift CV1 is at 0.1%, and the Rift DK2 is at 0.02%. The DK1 is too low to reach 0.01% (another example of the rounding and sampling issues, there are more than zero DK1s out there). Adding those numbers, the total VR adoption currently stands at 0.3% - three times as much as you claim.

11 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

Considering that Steam had 125,000,000 users a year and a half ago, and they are gaining 25,000,000 per year, that should still be ~15,000 users that have VR gear, and I don't think that's disappointing for a start. To me it sounds like saying "Oh, only 3% of people bought an iPhone in 2015", when in reality, that number is ~230,000,000 phones.

0.1% of 150 million is 150K, not 15K.

 

And that's actually just the number with a Rift CV1. The total number of PC VR headsets registered by the Steam survey is about 450K, plus or minus quite a lot of uncertainty. So half a million-ish, before you even think about any Rifts that might be in use without Steam.

11 hours ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Price is a factor, not just for the headset but also the PC required. Then there are the play-once-then-never-return-to games that are more tech demo than game. No game that are played by the masses are currently going to VR and/or don't/won't work in VR.

 

It's another one of those overhyped things. I mean, it brought the RX480 which is good and all, but VR itself is not the revolution to games people wanted it to be. Just like the 3D TVs.

You can play a lot of mainstream games in VR using programs like VorpX.

 

It is perhaps a bit overhyped right now, but it's a completely different thing from 3D TVs. VR is here to stay, it's just early days. The hardware is expensive and the software is a work in progress. PS VR will give the market a big kick, Oculus releasing its motion controllers should be another helping hand, and then there's the gradual arrival of more and ever-better games.

[Sakkura]

11 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I wouldn't disagree with this at all and I do agree it's to early to call it a failure but you can't deny those numbers paint a fairly bad picture. Zero percent for Vive in August? 

That zero percent can cover a growth of several thousand units. It takes about 15K extra units just to tick over from 0.18% to 0.19%. So maybe they sold 12K units, or 8K, or 4K. Or whatever - there's no way of knowing.

10 hours ago, zMeul said:

I don't get it, did anyone expected differently?

I said from the get go, when the HMDs went retail - their prices is way to high for mass adoption
and then you look at the difference of the Rift from bill of materials to retail price ..

people kept telling me "wait for gen2" .. what gen2? at this rate there won't be a gen2

That bill of materials claim was proven false though.

 

But I agree, the price is too high for mass adoption at the moment. The PS VR should help with that.

 

Gen 2 is unavoidable at this point, and VR will go mainstream. It's way too compelling to just fade away.

9 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Must agree with  @zMeul here (for a change) why was anybody expecting different? VR was always destined to be an impractical gimmick. 

That's luddite nonsense. People said the same kind of dumb shit about TVs when they were invented, and then personal computers, and then tablets and smartphones...

[Master Disaster]

44 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Due to rounding issues, that can still hide a growth rate of up to 5-10%. Just getting the dial to move from 0.18% to 0.19% takes a few thousand headsets. Then you add the fact that the Steam hardware survey is a survey, so it only actually measures a small sample of users. Meaning the number gets inaccurate for small minorities like this (just like opinion polls have difficulty telling whether a political party will land 1.5% or 2.5% of the vote).

 

Also, your numbers are wrong. The survey currently says the Vive is at 0.18%, the Rift CV1 is at 0.1%, and the Rift DK2 is at 0.02%. The DK1 is too low to reach 0.01% (another example of the rounding and sampling issues, there are more than zero DK1s out there). Adding those numbers, the total VR adoption currently stands at 0.3% - three times as much as you claim.

Pretty sure I didn't claim anything though. They're not my numbers, they're Valves.

 

I consider myself to be pretty good at maths (not amazing by any means but competent) and I'm struggling to work out how to came to the conclusion that jumping from 0.18% to 0.19% adoption rate equals a 5 to 10% growth rate?

[Sakkura]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Pretty sure I didn't claim anything though. They're not my numbers, they're Valves.

 

I consider myself to be pretty good at maths (not amazing by any means but competent) and I'm struggling to work out how to came to the conclusion that jumping from 0.18% to 0.19% adoption rate equals a 5 to 10% growth rate?

They're not Valve's numbers, as you or your source did the math wrong.

 

0.18% of let's say 150 million is 270K. 0.19% of 150 million is 285K. 285K divided by 270K is 1.0555... meaning it's an increase of just over 5.5%.

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

They're not Valve's numbers, as you or your source did the math wrong.

 

0.18% of let's say 150 million is 270K. 0.19% of 150 million is 285K. 285K divided by 270K is 1.0555... meaning it's an increase of just over 5.5%.

Well as I said, I didn't claim anything (other than VR will end up like 3D which is a claim I stand by) and I certainly didn't do the math either.

[Sakkura]

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Let's start with the rift, usage grew by 0.3% in July & 0.1% in August. Vive did even worse with 0.3% in July & 0% in August. Yep the Vive had ZERO new adopters on Steam in August. 

 

Total number of Steam users who have VR is 0.10%

 

Rift usage did not increase by 0.3% in July and 0.1% in August.

 

According to the survey, it actually increased by 0.03 percentage points in July, and 0.01 percentage points in August. This corresponds to a growth of 50% in July and 11% in August. So your numbers there were ten times too high if you meant percentage points, or waaay too low if you meant percent.

 

The same problem applies for the July figures for the Vive, but in August, zero is zero. However, as I explained, there's still some room for actual growth that is just too small to make the figures tick over. The survey truncates the percentages at the 2nd decimal. So 0.18% can actually mean anything from 0.175% to 0.184999...%. That difference of 0.00999...% is around 15K units.

 

And as I pointed out, the total number of Steam users who have VR is 0.30% according to the survey, not 0.10%. Meaning there are at least around half a million VR headsets out there already, if not considerably more (since some may not be hooked up to the PC when the survey pops up, and a few people might be relying on Oculus Home instead of Steam).

Edited September 9, 2016 by wkdpaul
useless arguing