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posted by cmn32480 on Friday July 27 2018, @07:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the virtually-assured dept.

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 Not only have these devices been superseded by standalone units like the Oculus Go, which offer a better visual experience, but the promotional offers which were available for phone launches have now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.

Vive blog post.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @07:15PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday July 27 2018, @07:15PM (#713806) Journal

    Virtual reality headset unit sales are slowly improving [techcrunch.com]

    According to a report from Canalys, in Q3 of 2017, Sony shipped 490,000 PlayStation VR headsets, Oculus shipped 210,000 Rift headsets and HTC shipped 160,000 Vive units. The research agency has not released data publicly for previous quarters, but says this is the first time that high-end headset sales have moved past one million units in a single quarter.

    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]

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday July 27 2018, @08:19PM (1 child)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday July 27 2018, @08:19PM (#713821)

    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.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Friday July 27 2018, @09:50PM

      by Spamalope (5233) on Friday July 27 2018, @09:50PM (#713850) Homepage

      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.