
HTC looks at option to sell or demerge Vive - richardboegli
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/smartphone-maker-htc-is-said-to-explore-strategic-options
======
shostack
I used to be a pretty hardcore gamer. Now I'm a bit older, have other
responsibilities, and considerably less time. Also, home improvement is
expensive.

I desperately wanted to love VR, but could not bring myself to buy a unit. The
demos I tried just could not bring me to pay that amount of money given the
limited games and limited quality of them. Many of the ones with the greatest
potential seem like they require multiple friends to also have VR.

I have a Daydream View headset and have barely touched it since getting it
with my Pixel XL. Discoverability for Daydream apps on the Play store is a
horrible experience right now. There's not even a filter, and no way to sort
by newest, so you end up seeing the same crap over and over mixed in with
generic VR apps that aren't made for Daydream (and thus a lower quality
experience), or random apps that show up when searching for "Daydream" because
that's the best way I've found to filter.

I DESPERATELY want VR to take off, and I've wanted this my entire geeky life.
But it just isn't there yet.

Once the price comes down and quality comes up, and ideally isn't tethered,
then I think we'll see a huge market open up. But I spent $5k on my last
gaming computer (excluding peripherals) a few years ago, and I couldn't bring
myself to purchase this.

~~~
andybak
I own a Vive and I demo it to people constantly. I've never seen a tech that
makes ordinary people (as in "non-tech/non-gamers) gasp with delight with such
regularity.

It's wrong to consider VR as a gaming peripheral - the appeal is much wider.

Music visualization applications are astonishing and photogrammatry is
compelling. I've often just sat in a virtual location enjoying the ambience.
Music making and 3D modelling (both for leisure and for professional use),
social VR, fitness, narrative/story-based, virtual tourism and educational
applications - these are all genres that work much, much better in VR than on
a flat monitor.

> given the limited games and limited quality of them

This is quite simply not true unless you have very specific tastes or
unlimited free time. There is more good content available now than I would
ever have time to play.

There is a lack of big-budget, AAA, 60+ hour gameplay titles mainly due to the
economics of game production (creating a typical AAA title solely for VR would
require it to sell for something like $1000 a unit to coup costs given the
current user base) but there are several VR ports in the works including Doom,
Skyrim and Fallout 4 from Bethesda by the end of the year.

But I can list a dozen incredibly good gaming experiences in VR off the top of
my head. I rarely touch non-VR games now.

Yes - VR has room for improvement (FOV, lens quality and weight would be top
of my list - the resolution is far from being a major problem and most others
agree) and the cost needs to drop further for it to be mainstream.

But the tech is already compelling in a way that no other technology in my
lifetime has shown itself to be. Count me as a true believer. I'd buy another
rig immediately if I had to choose again.

~~~
Rampoina
> But I can list a dozen incredibly good gaming experiences in VR off the top
> of my head. I rarely touch non-VR games now.

Could you actually do it please?

~~~
andybak
OK. I'll focus on games with reasonable length or replayability - there's some
amazing short games and experiences that are still good value for money but
I'll leave them to one side. I'll also avoid non-games - even ones that are
primarily for entertainment.

1\. Rec Room

2\. Sairento

3\. Arizona Sunshine

4\. Doom BFG (with the VR mod)

5\. SuperHot

6\. Elite Dangerous

7\. Climbey

8\. Pavlov (some prefer Onward but I haven't tried it)

9\. Vivecraft

10\. Subnautica

11\. Vanishing Realms

12\. Robo Recall

I can keep going if you like. The bottom of the barrel is a fair way off.

~~~
throwawaybbq1
Space pirate trainer ... I love it!! It is so simple but so perfect with touch
controllers. I used to be a gamer back in my youth but little time these days.
This game is instant action as soon as you start.

Darknet on gear vr. Same deal ... loved it and a very quick fix.

Landfall. I played like a demon the entire open beta. My wife was very annoyed
at me :-p But I think I unlocked all the mechs. This is a controller game
though.

------
SimonPStevens
HTC vive is in trouble. The tech is basically licensed from valve (I say
licensed, valve give it away for free I believe). There are multiple competing
headsets (LG) due for release soon also licensing the valve lighthouse tech.

But no one is interested in the HTC app store, everyone gets their content
from valve via steam.

So HTC can't sell their headset as a loss leader and make the money back on
games, because they don't have any monopoly on the games channel.

The other major competitor Oculus is owned by Facebook who basically have
infinite money. They have undercut the price of the vive significantly
(presumably selling it at a loss) and throw money at all the studios to make
Oculus exclusive content.

I have a vive, I think it's amazing tech. I think the lighthouse technology is
far more promising than the camera tracking used by Oculus. I far prefer the
open philosophy, and the strategy of not making content hardware exclusive. I
want it to succeed (and maybe it will via other partners with valve). But
right now, i think HTC are going to struggle to make it work for them.

~~~
aphextron
> I think the lighthouse technology is far more promising than the camera
> tracking used by Oculus.

This is the real secret sauce for Vive, and it's completely designed and owned
by Valve. Combined with their lackluster new phone, I think the future is
pretty grim for HTC.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Lackluster new phone except for the awesome screen, top notch specs, nice
battery life, comfortable UI close to stock Android, zero lag in the UI (ahem,
Samsung, are you listening?), lightning fast fingerprint reader at a
comfortable position at the front (still there, Samsung?), great camera (best
mobile camera according to dxomark), rather handy "squeezable" option
(customizable, as opposed to e.g. Bixby button), best sound in any smartphone
hands down, impressive noise-cancelling in-ear headphones included (this comes
from an owner of the Bose QC25's), and quick charge 3.

But yeah, it has bezels and now the latest fad is bezelless (making phones
more prone to break on falls and to accidentally touching the screen if you
grab them incorrectly). Plus it's not Samsung and they don't have money to put
all the tremendously biased smartphone press in their favor. So it is
automatically labelled as lackluster, like everything HTC has made for the
last 5 years or so, including fantastic and innovative phones like the M7, M8
and 10. Meanwhile, others make phones that freaking explode and still get
undivided praise by the press.

~~~
andybak
If I wasn't averse to paying flagship prices I'd be a HTC customer. They
deserve credit for the innovation they brought to smartphones pre-iPhone and
they've never released a stinker (I'll give the Dream a free pass for being a
v1)

But mid-range is where it's at, unless you're Samsung or Apple. There's not
room for two premium brands and I don't have a need for an $800 device when
the $400 devices are so good.

------
aaron-lebo
Does this suggest the VR industry is in trouble? Is it jettisoning an
unprofitable money pit or is it the opposite - that VR is doing well and HTC
needs money, so it's selling the crown jewels? Both (VR not doing well, HTC
needs $)? Not familiar with the numbers.

Fuck. If Google ends up with Vive and Facebook has Occulus that'll about kill
my interest in the tech. Both of those companies would rather flail aimlessly
at making money over providing a quality product and the last thing I'd like
to do is invest in their ecosystems further. Though Google is capable of
subsidizing the tech for awhile, which might be nice...

It's finally starting to get reasonably priced for what it is (I have earned
the right to complain; bought a Vive a ~year ago). Haven't touched it for
about 8 of those months because the games weren't fundamentally better than
non-VR and in a lot of ways were worse.

So much potential there, though. Play Quake in VR and realize what 21 year old
(and free) tech is capable of.

~~~
cbhl
Having used Oculus, Daydream, and Vive, I still think Vive provides the best
experience. Vive is "room scale", whereas Oculus and Daydream both are
"pivoting in an office chair scale". (Oculus has experimental tracking cameras
now, but you can't assume the whole install base has them.)

But VR as a whole is still in its infancy. Some experiences don't work for
users who are too tall or short (say, children). The install base is also
still too small to run a profitable business creating just VR content.

~~~
TwoBit
The big room scale situations are the only cases in which Vive is better. The
VR is smoother on Rift, the apps are better, the headset is more comfortable,
the Touch controllers are better, the optics are less blurry to the view
extents, the software is much less buggy, etc.

~~~
andybak
I now have both and it's close enough that I still tend to use the Vive over
the Rift day to day. I was surprised that the Rift controllers weren't so
obviously better that I wanted to switch. Familiarity trumped other factors on
that front.

~~~
ekimekim
I actually greatly prefer the vive controllers. The Rift controllers have
thumbsticks, which I detest with a passion and find painful and
uncontrollable. The Steam Controller touchpad feels completely different and
natural.

Of course, people who have grown up playing on controllers with thumbsticks
will disagree, but I suspect the touchpad comes more intuitively to the non-
gamer market.

------
Stratoscope
A couple of comments mention 1995 and 21 year old technology.

For the curious, here is a PC Magazine article on VR from March 1995:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=79i1lfAqumUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...](https://books.google.com/books?id=79i1lfAqumUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA168#v=onepage&q&f=true)

~~~
icebraining
A few weeks ago I discovered that the CSS 1.0 spec (1996) uses a VR scene as
an example of an environment in which to apply the rules. It was certainly in
the tech zeitgeist back then!

~~~
alnitak
Are you talking about VRML?

~~~
icebraining
No, just a comment in the spec: _" Note that an application may reinterpret an
explicit size, depending on the context. E.g., inside a VR scene a font may
get a different size because of perspective distortion."_

------
Lammy
Maybe Palmer Luckey will buy it?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/6w1x7o/what_do_you_gu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/6w1x7o/what_do_you_guys_think_should_i_buy_vive/)

~~~
Grue3
>EDIT: The company, not the headset. Already have one of those.

Ok, that was funny.

------
DigitalJack
I tried out a VR kit at the mall. It was a novelty experience for me.

I’d have been living the dream if it was 1995. But it was just OK to me now.
Back in 95 I was in college and did a project using an SGI Origin something or
other with an infinite reality engine, VR headset and inductance based flock
of birds tracking system.

They felt about the same to me, although the graphics then were like that
Duran Duran video.

The main reason I’d want a car system today would be to free myself from a
fixed screen. Not for games in particular but for general computing use.

We’re getting there but the resolution isn’t there yet.

~~~
andybak
If your jaw didn't hit the floor, then it was either poorly set up or the
choice of demo content was bad. My immediate reaction to trying to Rift CV1
was to open my wallet.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Wait a a minute, why are those the only two options?

I'm a long time AR developer and have seen nearly every generation of VR since
the early 2000s (NASA, Sensics, Oculus) and have never had my "mind blown" or
"jaw hit the floor."

I think people just have a super low bar for being impressed.

~~~
andybak
> and have seen nearly every generation of VR since the early 2000s (NASA,
> Sensics, Oculus)

You might be an outlier.

------
joshstrange
Honestly they only thing I'm interested in when it comes to VR is virtual
desktops. I've not played any games on VR but I don't game much anymore.
Really I just want to have unlimited virtual desktops for work.

~~~
sirtaj
And that's something that's probably better addressed by AR anyway.

~~~
joshstrange
Agreed, I really want n-1 of my screens to be virtual and 1 to be physical for
sharing with coworkers (until they all get AR/VR headsets of their own which
we can share virtually.

------
avaer
If anyone gets it, I hope it's Valve.

~~~
elefanten
Was about to say this. It's based on their tech after all. Would be nice to
see them take the fight to Oculus.

But somehow I'm guessing they probably don't want to manage manufacturing.

------
axaxs
My opinion? VR is on its last legs. I've tried it, and while it's cool...
blocking my entire vision and attention just isn't realistic.

That said, from what I've seen, I do think AR is going to be the next big
thing.

~~~
sigi45
Last leg? It hasn't started yet. Yes there is a hype, yes we read everywhere
about it for a while but thats it.

Prices are still to high, people need to get more experience in it and
investors need to be convinced.

This takes a while.

Only because tec is so fast, doesn't mean vr is dead.

In the next years i'm guessing things like this will come or are on the way
already: \- VR Cafes \- VR lighter, cheaper and with higher resolution \- VR
for industrie (especially training people in VR will be huge) \- VR experience
centers where you have VR / AR by having a VR Headset and interact with the
Environment \- VR for building houses, renovating flats

~~~
glenndebacker
It doesn't help if a lot of people get nauseous trying it... That seems a
bigger hurdle then the price or investors. It's even worse then with the
3D-movie fad where people only complained about headaches.

I've had the Oculus Rift for some time but in the end I sold it. At the
current stage with the problems the platforms still have I honestly don't see
it as worth investing my time in it. If I would place a bet short-term it
wouldn't be on VR but rather AR.

Then again there are certainly niche's where it has his place but as a general
usage device? Nah.

------
methodin
VR won't be a huge knockout until wearable contacts get developed. I would
imagine that would be followed by implants. Until then VR is a cool novelty
and it will be spread by actual interesting apps/games being developed for it
that aren't just ports.

