
Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/oculus-rift-and-touch-receive-yet-another-price-cut-now-just-499
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Paul_S
This 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.

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borne0
I think live sports and being able to switch between players/drone/sideline
360 views would be a killer app.

~~~
ghaff
That's a popular opinion. And it's something that people have a demonstrated
willingness to pay for.

It does make it into a solitary experience. And I think there's also the
question of whether people would really want to be _that_ immersed for a 2+
hour game.

~~~
borne0
Yeah, the solitary experience thing seems like the biggest hurdle. maybe a
twitch like experience where one person directs the camera location and
narrates with a bunch of follower who can control their own 360 view.

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43224gg252
Is 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.

~~~
aphextron
Yes. I was a hardcore fanboy, bought the DK2, had both Rift and Vive preorders
on day one. Spent months making my own games and VR experiments in Unity.
However I just sold all of my headsets last month.

Theres been a lot of amazing stuff to come out of this generation of VR. But
as hard as the software devs try, you simply can't get past the fact that the
hardware isn't ready for primetime yet.

The clunky controllers, the wires, the sensors. We need full wireless, full
FOV, and at least double the pixel density/resolution with a control scheme
that uses finger tracking lightweight gloves.

Th current gen of tech is really mindblowing at first, and it certainly has
incredible potential. But until then VR will unfortunately remain a niche toy
like HOTAS controllers.

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simonhughes22
Have you seen the TPCast? That makes the vive wireless, and can already by
shipped from China, coming to the US later this year. Intel is also releasing
something similar for the vive next year. So that is wireless. LG is bringing
out a SteamVR headset later this year with a higher pixel density. And valve
just sent out the Kunckles controller to devs, which has full on finger
tracking. So we are not very far away from solving most of those problems.

~~~
aphextron
TPCast is a huge step forward. No one saw that coming within a year of the
major headsets launching. I've definitely got my eye on that stuff. But it's
still huge and clunky at the end of the day. It won't be until the major
manufacturers integrate this stuff that mainstream adoption hits.

I got into VR development with the mindset that the hardware will be ready in
5 years, and when it is the people who stuck with it through the times of
disillusionment beyond the hype phase will be in prime position to start doing
amazing things at scale. I'm personally waiting for the next gen of headsets
now to do more full scale VR work. The current top level hardware is pushed to
it's bounds in terms of adoption and it just doesn't make financial sense for
developers yet. Until then, mobile is where it's at IMO. The integrated
solutions from Samsung and Oculus on the horizon are really exciting.

The SteamVR Knuckles I think are a terrible idea. I wish Valve would get past
the idea of controllers entirely. Any kind of physical game controller becomes
extremely clunky and restrictive in VR. We need perfect finger tracking in the
form of a lightweight pair of cloth gloves that you simply slip on like
normal. VR allows such a complete paradigm shift in your ability to manipulate
the environment that creating a traditional controller mapping inherently
limits the way people will think about designing interactions. Rather than
moving towards more intuitive actions, developers will be allowed to just fall
back on old gameplay cliches of the console era.

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bryanlarsen
Have you ever tried gloves or hand tracking? Without the haptic feedback that
you get from a controller they're also extremely clunky and unintuitive.

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droopyEyelids
Thats still a lot of money for something you're only going to use for ~6 hours

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MikusR
They 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.

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Talbotson
VR 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.

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dataminded
It 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.

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pavement
I 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.

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avaer
I'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.

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workerIbe
Saw a headline yesterday that Oculus is coming out with a $299 headset next
year.

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bryanlarsen
According 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.

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throwitlong
PS VR effect.

~~~
striking
And the "Vive is winning" effect...

Is there anyone who prefers Oculus' IR over Vive's LIDAR?

~~~
ajsalminen
Neither 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.

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superplussed
The 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.

~~~
ashark
Kids 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.

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ghaff
In 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.

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philipov
It 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??

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logicallee
Ordinarily 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.

