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HTC has hit back against claims of declining VR sales figures:
The blog post in particular references a report from Digital Trends which talks about VR sales figures from Amazon, and proceeds to point out a number of ways which the data presented could be misleading.
Several points made by HTC Vive are ones that have also been addressed by VRFocus, as seen in an article about the modern VR cycle, and some comments in the weekly VR vs. article. HTC Vive were not pulling punches right from the very start, evening saying in the introduction: "Analyst reports are in and apparently, it's curtains for Virtual Reality (VR). Pardon us if we're not heeding the alarms. News of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated."
From there, the blog post proceeds in a point-by-point fashion, discussing how early consumer VR was largely driven by smartphone-based devices such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Not only have these devices been superseded by standalone units like the Oculus Go, which offer a better visual experience, but the promotional offers which were available for phone launches have now long since passed. HTC Vive also point out that PC-based VR companies are yet to release any solid sales figures, and that much of the growth of premium VR has been centered around location-based VR centres, something which the Digital Trends report did not address.
Related: HTC's Vive Pro to Launch on April 5
Facebook Launches Oculus Go, a $200 Standalone VR Headset
VirtualLink Consortium Announces USB Type-C Specification for VR Headsets
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday July 27 2018, @07:13PM (9 children)
Were people actually buying these things to begin with?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @07:15PM (2 children)
Virtual reality headset unit sales are slowly improving [techcrunch.com]
IDC: VR and AR headset sales expected to jump over 50% annually, hit 68.9 million in 2022 [venturebeat.com]
Nvidia Predicts 50 Million VR Headsets Sold By 2021 [uploadvr.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday July 27 2018, @08:19PM (1 child)
The next question is, how many people who bought these things are still using them a year later.
I dunno, I personally just don't get what the point of VR is. Or 3D movies. I'm just fine with the perfectly-serviceable traditional "last-gen" stuff.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Friday July 27 2018, @09:50PM
I only stopped using my Vive because a car accident left me unable to stand or hold the controllers without lots of pain.
Things like Fruit Ninja VR worked as an awesome cardio workout for me. I hate the gym so games with exercise built in are perfect.
It needs more improvement for general adoption. Lack of Wireless, weight, low resolution and cost are all barriers and they will all improve. Motion tracking and the controllers are good enough already. When you can do augmented reality and play VR party games it'll be everywhere, though it's hard to say how far off that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @07:52PM
Looking at the live feeds, the best usage VR headsets are demonstrating right now is for competitive games where reaction times and full immersion to maintain focus are required. That is, if you play a lot of shooters, fighters or racers, getting a VR headset and ignoring all the VR features only to play it conventionally with a keyboard+mouse/xbox controller can reliably improve your performance / let you play longer.
You can even go the other route and prop a bed tray over your lap for the keyboard + mouse while reclining in super-lazy mode. The latter is a good method to get the tablet-gen kids to learn touch typing as well.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 27 2018, @08:28PM (4 children)
Yes, some, obviously.
Some people also bought Apple Newtons (guilty), Virtual Boys, and Pebbles.
Some also bought iPads, PCs, and ordered from Amazon.
Time will still tell about VR. It's still largely technology waiting for a niche use case and waiting for prices to fall enough to make it mainstream.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 27 2018, @10:32PM (3 children)
Apple Newtons were great!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday July 28 2018, @06:35AM
I prefer the fig Newtons.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday July 28 2018, @10:13AM
I hate Crapple and even I thought the Newton was pretty cool!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday July 30 2018, @02:54PM
They were great. They were far better than anything Palm offered until they went color, and were much better than the offerings of Windows PDAs even after color. But they were also a failed technology. It lasted 5 years of production, just long enough for the cheaper Palm to eat their lunch. A lot of people bought into them during those five years, including me. My MessagePad 2k is still around somewhere and still booted the last time I tried it, like 3-4 years ago.
Time will tell if VR will find a solid spot to be a permanent player, or just a niche that lasts awhile then goes away. (I'm sure that some form of VR will survive, and I think it has a good shot at becoming consumer-normal. But not now or today. Not dead yet, still not thriving.)
This sig for rent.