
HTC Vive Headset Nearing 100,000 Sales - prostoalex
http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-figures-data-100000-steamspy-data/
======
carlosdp
I said this in another thread, but if you haven't tried the Vive (or maybe
Oculus with the Touch controllers, which are not generally available yet),
then you haven't really tried VR.

Wearing a stereoscopic headset is one thing, but the presence that room-scale
brings is just another thing altogether. I had tried Oculus demos at
conferences and such, and I kinda started to think maybe VR was over-hyped.

Then I got my Vive on pre-order, put it on and went into the tutorial. There
was a part where you can inflate balloons coming out of your perfectly-tracked
controllers. I instinctively bonked one with a controller, and I FELT it
(thanks to haptic feedback from the controller and diagetic sound). I
basically forgot I was wearing a headset for the rest of the tutorial, I was
present.

That's when it really clicked for me that this is happening this time. This is
something new. I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward.

~~~
megablast
So you kinda thought VR was hyped, but it didn't stop you from ordering a
Vive?

I think VR is incredibly hyped, just as it was 15 years ago.

What do you imagine this new medium replacing? Games? Movies? Monitors?

~~~
wuliwong
VR definitely hits games and porn pretty naturally, right now. Games like
Hover Junkers are an example of great early execution in this medium.

I think VR movies are a still a bit off, though I could be totally wrong. The
reason I say that is because some of the fundamental theories used in making a
movie are different in VR. Namely, you can't be certain you know where the
"camera" is. :) Also, VR movies require a lot of new and developing camera
hardware and editing software to come along. There are some cool things out
now but my understanding is it is all very new and developing. Ultimately, I
still buy in on VR movies, though. I am a believer in VR movies mainly because
of my own experience watching short films in VR was super cool but also from
watching videos of people curled up in the fetal position as they were being
shown some scary movie in VR. It's visceral in a way that has not been
achievable up until now.

I also think AR well be a widely adopted medium and there might become a
pretty gray distinction after a while. I could imagine headsets or glasses
that you can increase or decrease how much external light comes through. I can
see doing things like checking email, facebook, etc. being done in AR but
still allowing you to go about your normal routine like making coffee and
breakfast or walking the dog. Seems far more compelling than looking at
notifications on my watch.

Eventually, I also suspect that we will be "mainlining" these experiences and
not be wearing headsets at all. Implanting some device that directly
stimulates the necessary parts of the brain (or other parts of the body
needed).

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
_Namely, you can 't be certain you know where the "camera" is._

Aren't you assuming that they would allow the wearer to change the camera
position?

You could film a movie or design a game such that the camera location is fixed
or on rails. You're more like an observer than a participant.

Eg. Chronos and Edge of Nowhere

~~~
wuliwong
I would agree that my language was a bit loose but what I'm talking about
still applies as long as the viewer can turn their head.

The main issue I was thinking about was that you cannot say for sure where
your audience is looking at any moment in time.

------
cm2187
I must say that having purchased both the Vive and the Oculus, my vote is for
the Oculus:

\- easier to set up, the Vive requires these little captors placed at odd
angles, that need to be powered and that make noise when powered

\- the oculus is lighter. I find the weight of the headset to be a major
factor for not playing long periods, more than motion sickness, particularly
given that some games require some weird viewing angles

\- the headset has less cables. I have the feeling of wearing an octopus with
the vive

\- I regularly lose tracking on the vive for short moments (grey screens) even
though the captors are in direct line of sight and less than 3m away

\- I have the feeling the vive is a lot blurier when looking at the sides of
the screen. Not something one does when a zombie is trying to kill you, but
certainly something one does when navigating menus

The only downsides of the oculus are:

\- vertical green line between the two eyes, very visible in a dark
environment

\- the oculus pauses the game when I take off the headset. Except that I do
that when a game is holding me hostage with some interminable, unskippable
story telling instead of letting me play VR (too frequent!)

~~~
tfinniga
I've heard a lot of good things about the Oculus, especially the touch
controllers.

My main experience demoing the dk2 around was that the first thing everyone
did was try raising their hands in front of their face, and that motion
sickness hit about 30% of people. The Vive fixes both of those problems, and
they're first to market.

Still, facebook has deep pockets, and from everything I've heard their headset
is better and their controllers are better. I can't wait to give them a try.

The next big thing that I want in VR is multiplayer.

~~~
carlosdp
There are actually already a bunch of pretty decent VR multiplayer games (at
least for the Vive). Some of my favorites, on Steam:

Battledome, Rec Room, Hover Junkers

There's a bunch more, but these are the most polished, in my opinion.
Battledome/Rec Room really shine because you can get right next to a person,
wave at them, talk to them (built in mic on the Vive headset). It's super
immersive and cool to be literally right next to a person that is maybe in
another country.

~~~
tfinniga
I've tried Rec Room and I really like it. It's amazing how much fun it is to
play with someone else.

It still seems like early days for multiplayer. There's no way to see other
people's facial expressions, and the avatars are pretty basic. There's also no
support for having a local multiplayer experience. Hololens is doing some
interesting things, allowing multiple headsets to see the same holograms, but
their hardware is still super limited. The void is also doing interesting
things.

I guess I should have said that I want better multiplayer.

~~~
carlosdp
Oh for sure, these aren't even large studios, most of these are single
developers working part-time after hours on them.

The Void's Ghostbusters game looks amazing. They are using custom hardware and
a more expensive tracking technique, but it is an awesome example of a "VR-
Arcade" sort of business.

------
taspeotis
If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey [1] you will see that HTC Vive is
"winning" two-to-one [2].

But sobering reminder of how far consumer-grade VR has to go: users with VR
headsets are 0.15% of Steam's installed base.

[1]
[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)
Caveat: Participation is optional.

[2] Caveat: this assumes that all HTC Vive and Oculus Rift users are Steam
users. Oculus has its own store.

~~~
onewaystreet
Being backed by Valve, if the Vive wasn't winning on Steam something would be
seriously wrong.

~~~
haydenlee
For more context, the default store on Oculus is Oculus Home, not Steam. Even
so much as when you put a Rift on your head you are by default in Oculus Home.

~~~
lostmsu
That does not cancel the fact, that only a minority of desktop gamers do not
have Steam constantly running on their PCs.

------
ngokevin
Given the audience here, I think it's worth a plug that web developers looking
to develop VR experiences such as for the Vive should look into A-Frame
([https://aframe.io](https://aframe.io)), a WebVR framework.

~~~
fredliu
I really like aframe, but I just has the feeling that for things like aframe,
it would be similar to what the Web Apps has been experiencing: the
performance will always a few steps behind the native alternative. Even for
Vive/Rift, there's still vast space for improvement on the
hardware/performance side, so I'd assume a long way before efforts like
aframe.io to really take off.

~~~
dmarcos
Not all the VR experiences will be AAA games. There are plenty of mobile and
desktop indie games that are engaging and don't require state of the art
performance (see GearVR). Also WebVR content doesn't rely on traditional DOM
rendering that it's the main bottle neck for web applications to feel smooth.

~~~
fredliu
Yes, WebVR is more performant (many webpages struggle to achieve even 60fps).
But minimum 90fps, at a much higher resolution is a challenge even running on
bare metal right now. And that is needed for even the simplest VR experience
(unless you don't move your head that much, but then what's the point of VR).

~~~
ngokevin
True, the 2D web may have had its performance issues, but the 3D web can
actually be surprisingly performant. Browsers with the new WebVR API
implementations can maintain high framerates starting with 90.

~~~
comex
Even with a JIT and garbage collector? Because there's a difference between 90
FPS and "90 FPS, except when it stutters"...

I think the future of VR has a place for the web, but I'm skeptical there's a
place for JavaScript. Good thing we'll have WebAssembly... eventually.

~~~
zamalek
I'm running a DK2 on a GTX 660Ti and, now that there are more games that
support VR, I'm starting to get those stutters. It breaks the experience
_entirely._

------
greenspot
Somewhat related: Nintendo sold 770,000 units if their Virtual Boy in less
than one year.

The Virtual Boy was nothing against the current VR products and for a Nintendo
product a pretty mediocre one then, maybe their biggest product failure but
they still did 770k units.

Source:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy)

~~~
a13n
$179 in 1995 is about $280 today.
[http://www.carinsurancedata.org/calculators/inflation/179/19...](http://www.carinsurancedata.org/calculators/inflation/179/1995)

Vive/Rift + desktop able to play it is close to $2k.

~~~
greenspot
Good point and I agree that the Virtual Boy comparison is not perfect but two
underlying questions remain:

1\. Will VR achieve mass adoption in the next 5 years considering the high
costs for GPUs and screens with high pixel density?

2\. And if we get to a mass compatible price point, will VR be the killer
medium the mass is looking for?

So, I still find the adoption rate of the Vive/Rift underwhelming and I do not
see the high costs as the main reason. Millions of gamers invest in 3-4k rigs,
why not in VR then? Those weak adoption rates might give a glance on the
future--or if there will be any future--for VR.

~~~
Alphasite_
1\. GPUs certainly have halted in price.

2\. Mobile VR will probably be the vehicle for mass adoption. From what I
remember GearVR has hit over a million units.

~~~
DominikR
> 1\. GPUs certainly have halted in price.

I don't know about that one. The Nvidia 1080 GTX costs here in Europe around
750-800 Euros, that's what previously high end multi GPU cards have cost.

It's still a good price for the performance though.

~~~
Alphasite_
Yes, but he entry level has halved in cost, rather than the upper levels.

~~~
DominikR
But VR is more GPU intensive than playing on a 1080p monitor. From what I
remember a Nvidia 970 GTX was recommended by Valve before the 1080 GTX was
released which was pretty near highest end back then.

And many VR early adopters are now buying 1080 GTX to improve the often
lacking frame rates.

------
fredliu
It's great that Vive has gained such traction (I personally contributed to
that number), but I don't think VR has "hit it" yet. I think what Vive offers
today is a good indicator of what would become the norm in VR in the next few
years (assuming big companies keep pouring money in), when mass production of
low cost equipment that provides experience similar to what Vive can do today.
Low cost device + pretty good (but may not be the top notch) experience is
what's needed for VR to really take off. Cardboard is trying to do that right
now, but honestly it lacks a lot on the "pretty good experience" part.

~~~
carlosdp
Agreed, this is the iPhone 1 right now (like when it was $500), only early
adopters / fans / developers will grab the higher end systems for now
(although, the PSVR coming out later this year might change that a bit). But
those people will show their friends and they'll start watching and then Gen 2
comes out, cheaper and better, and it takes off.

Cardboard/Gear (to some extent) is like a flip-phone for VR. Without
positional tracking, it barely qualifies as VR imo, and honestly one of my
fears is that people will try Cardboard/GearVR and assume that is all that VR
is and will be turned off.

I think these large companies will continue to throw money into this for a
while, hell look at all the news last week from HTC.

~~~
dclowd9901
The problem with this comparison is that the iPhone 1 was supplanting phones
that could do little more than call or text. It could do _at least_ those
things so there was no loss (except for monetary) to buying an iPhone over
maintaining the status quo. Eventually the tech got better and better and the
value of the phone shot way up against its price.

But a VR system needs software and is useless without it. If there aren't many
users, they're not going to get software. If there's no software, no one's
going to buy more units. If people don't buy the units, the manufacturers
won't eat the cost to continue making them. Then we're back to square one.

If manufacturers really want this to work, they either need to pour tons of
money into first party development or developers need to charge a lot more
money for the games. I don't see either of these things happening, so I'm not
holding out much hope for this generation of VR either.

~~~
Alphasite_
You could argue the poor battery life and lack of third party apps as a
significant detractor.

------
bitmapbrother
I don't see why anyone would buy an Oculus over a Vive. The software support
for the Vive is just so much better on Steam. Additionally, the majority of PC
gamers prefer Steam and it only makes sense they would want all of their VR
games and traditional games to be under one service.

I really don't see how Oculus will even be relevant in VR games in about 2-3
years especially once the VR headset is commoditized.

~~~
arielweisberg
Because the Oculus headset works on Steam games, but the Vive doesn't out of
the box work with Oculus Home. You can make it work, but it's not quite
official. The Rift is also a little bit more comfortable and people seem to
the think the display is generally better.

The real reason not to buy the Oculus is because there aren't motion tracked
controllers for it yet. There also isn't a lot of room scale experience out
there with Oculus so it's not totally clear how it's going to compare when the
touch controllers are available.

Early reports sound positive, but early reports are early. The potential for
the Rift seems a little greater. Oculus Touch controllers look like they are
going to be a real nice piece of kit.

Disclaimer. I went with the Rift because it was more comfortable and I had no
problem waiting for motion tracked controllers.

~~~
justjimmy
“Because the Oculus headset works on Steam games, but the Vive doesn't out of
the box work with Oculus Home. You can make it work, but it's not quite
official. The Rift is also a little bit more comfortable and people seem to
the think the display is generally better."

What? Why would you want Vive to make it work with Oculus Home? Isn't that
like saying you want your Android phone to visit Apple's App Store?

Vive works with Steam and I think that's more than adequate. And Vive works
with Steam games too, so not sure why you said your first sentence.

~~~
lazerwalker
This metaphor is dangerous. One potential future for VR is one where Oculus
(or Rift) and Vive are two separate platforms, like smartphones. Some overlap
in releases, but in general, no compatibility.

The other future is one where your VR device is a replacable peripheral, like
a screen or a keyboard. It's absurd to think you'd have to double-check
whether the game you want to play supports Dell monitors.

One of these futures is better for consumers, and I'd wager it's the second.

------
sandworm101
I've held off on the VR sets because, imho, the games are just not there yet.
My decision turns on one thing: I want a proper flightsim. Not mariocart in
the sky. I'm talking JanesF15 with a fully interactive cockpit. I want to be
able to look over my own shoulder and see a wing. I want to look left and see
the runway I'm about to turn onto. The day that happens, then the VR headset
will be the least of my purchases. Pedals, a throttle suite ... perhaps a
special chair. Until then, inflating balloons and riding roller coasters just
won't win me over.

I don't see why this hasn't happened yet. Flightsims, which lock the player
into a chair anyway, would seem the perfect vehicle for VR.

~~~
Tepix
There are a couple of flight sims available for VR now: DCS world, MS Flight
Sim X (with a 3rd party add-on) and War Thunder.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Last I checked War Thunder didn't work for Vive, or possibly it was that
making it work took hours of messing with stuff. Same story for FSX I believe.

------
alexmingoia
VR is great but making any decent 3D model or environment requires enormous
amount of labor. Without better tools I don't see VR being used for anything
but games since you'll need to throw huge teams and many hours at making
anything decent. Most (all?) VR apps and games I've used look like shit.

~~~
Vespasian
Well, in our group we just started (academic) research testing out
possibilities to bring data analysis, visualization and remote collaboration
to VR (Vive).

I'm quite curious whether this will work out and what the future will hold for
us.

~~~
bloaf
I, for one, am waiting for GitS style chat rooms:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poKi7YyuamI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poKi7YyuamI)

~~~
moron4hire
Isn't AltspaceVR or Oculus Social or vTime or JanusVR this? I mean, I'm pretty
sure I saw an exact replica of this scene in JanusVR.

------
kriro
I recently watched the Arizona Cardinals documentation that is on Amazon Prime
video (iirc it's called "All or Nothing" but searching for "Cardinals" finds
it). It's excellent. The most interesting thing for me was that 5 NFL teams
seem to be using VR to learn the playbook/go through scenarios. The Cardinals
are one of them and it was a Rift. Unfortunately that sequence lasted about 5
minutes (don't remember which episode it was but probably across the
midpoint).

Technically the Vive would have been a better choice as the room feeling is
exactly what you want but I guess FB are pretty good at customer
acquisition/signing big name contracts.

------
swiley
I'll buy one when I can have a room full of xterm windows.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Check out Virtual Desktop

~~~
swiley
That just draws a desktop onto a big texture. Plus it only runs on Windows.

~~~
corysama
[http://fuscus.li](http://fuscus.li) Does free-floating windows. But, it's
quite pre-alpha.

------
Fej
I've tried the Rift DK2 and the Vive Developer Edition. What I've found is
that VR just isn't there yet; it's too much of a hassle for there to be a
critical mass of consumers willing to purchase a headset. The HMDs are very
much alpha tests - if you're into VR, wait for the Vive 2nd generation to come
out that hopefully works out the kinks (unless you have a ton of spending
money).

Haven't seen the Rift CV1 but I know that the Vive, for me, still has the
"screen door" effect. Until that goes away I'll always be reminded that I'm in
a digital world - after all, I can see the pixels.

------
mxfh
Ever since I accidentally fell asleep in an Alcatraz prison cell[1] while
being Vive's room-scale VR, I started to appreciate my carpet on a whole new
level.

[1]realities.io
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/452710/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/452710/)

------
Tepix
I had both the Rift (got it because I was an original Kickstarter backer) and
the Vive. The roomscale of the Vive together with the tracked controllers adds
a lot to the immersion and that was the reason why the Vive is the one I kept.

In general the differences between the systems are overblown, you'll have a
good experience with both.

------
kevindong
Before VR makes any real headway in the regular Joe Consumer market, it must
come down in price dramatically.

The actual VR hardware itself isn't entirely unreasonably priced. But, when
combined with some beefy backend hardware, it's approaching "unreasonable"
territory.

------
yread
Is 100,000 a big number or a small one? Kinect sold 10 million units in the
first three months (that's 133,000 a DAY). But it was half the price and
didn't need such a strong PC - then again there is more PCs then xBoxes.

~~~
Tepix
It's a good start for a $800 device, nothing more, nothing less.

Mass adoption on an iPhone scale will require a couple of iterations with
improvements in performance, quality, software and price.

------
joeevans1000
Vive is so much better an experience than Oculus. I've tried the Vive version
they were demoing to the public last year, and the current consumer Oculus.
Presumably, the new Vive is better, but the version I tried was better then
the actual consumer Oculus. That comes as a tremendous relief to me, as I'd
never, ever buy into the Facebook VR walled garden. It's too bad Carmack had
to join Oculus, but whatever, just glad there's a better alternative.

------
saluk
Steamspy is highly inaccurate, but I do think Vive sales are generally
healthy, and it seems like they are making them about as fast as they can be
sold now. It has enough of an install base for quality content to make it onto
the top 10 list when they launch, as Pool Nation VR did a few weeks ago. The
general public still has not tried VR (barring maybe cardboard) and a very
vocal group is against the very idea of it. Still a pretty steep mountain to
teleport up.

~~~
benzor
Game developer here: SteamSpy's data is actually very accurate. We have a game
on Steam and the actual sales figures are well within the error margins
specified on the site. And other local devs has said the same about their
games as well.

------
intrasight
Vive and Oculus are both first-generation, early-adopter versions of VR. As
such, arguing about which is "better" is unwarranted or at least premature.
They are both capable learning and demoing tools. Neither one, as v1
offerings, will reach the mainstream. In fact, it is possible that neither
will become the dominant consumer VR platform.

------
Joof
I demoed the vive in-store and attempted to pop the balloon I was given (which
resulted in a loud clap of the two controllers -- thsnkfully they designed for
bumps like this). Now I keep thinking of ways to play with the tiny area of
space (apart from just teleporting). I want to dev for one so bad.

------
PureSin
Searched for places to try Vive without spending $800 + PC cost:
[http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/where-to-try-
ht...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/where-to-try-htc-vive/)

select MS Stores and GameStop

~~~
Scene_Cast2
That link is missing Waterloo, Ontario's Ctrl-V VR arcade [1]. I went with a
friend, it's affordable and fun.

[1] [http://www.ctrlv.ca/](http://www.ctrlv.ca/)

------
zouhair
The more I look at these numbers in the tech world the more I see the huge
divide in humanity. Even if they have sold 10 million units it's still a
fraction of a water drop of the sea of humanity, more than frigging 7 billion.

100k is just 0.0014 % of humanity who got a Vive.

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere.

~~~
radiorental
I'm not sure I follow your point. Your statement could be applied to when the
internal combustion engine was first used in transportation.

------
werid
I don't see a near future where the Vive is something I'll invest in, purely
because I don't have the physical space to dedicate to it (not even
temporarily).

~~~
jvvw
I've tried the Vive and it is very cool, but I do wonder how much physical
space will be an issue for its take-up in the UK. We've got a decent size
house by UK standards (4 double bedrooms and 3 reception rooms), but, with two
kids, I really can't think of anywhere that we could sensibly put one.

------
ycosynot
I'll just leave this here

[https://youtu.be/KrcMvjAOTFE?t=33](https://youtu.be/KrcMvjAOTFE?t=33)

------
nabaraz
I own a Firefly VR headset which I bought for $60. It works great for 360
videos on youtube and some games. The best part is it uses my phone and has a
small wireless remote for navigating and making selections.

I don't understand the whole hype with Vive/Oculus. I know they are a beast
compared to cheap VRs but requirement of gaming pc, strangling wires etc sets
me off.

~~~
sgarman
There are a lot of psychological factors that go into tricking the brain into
"being present" in the VR space. When you use that $60 VR headset your seeing
neat VR technology but your brain is never tricked. There is tons of research
on this going back to the 70's. The Vive / Oculus is basically the first time
we are getting close at this price point. There is still a ton of hardware and
software work needed. For example seeing a fake body in VR takes you out but
seeing your hands 100% tracked makes takes you back in.

------
serg_chernata
I know that this is completely superficial, but I really wish I could have a
Vive in Rift's industrial design. Part of me can't even get past the look of
Vive. I know, when I'm using it I'm not seeing the outside. However, knowing
what's strapped to my face just seems a little gaudy.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Good hand tracking is a total game-changer though. I suppose you could wait
for Oculus Touch.

