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from the predicted-sales-of-6-or-7-mainframes-by-IBM dept.
Facebook will never break through with Oculus, says one of the VR company's co-founders
Five years after its $2 billion purchase of Oculus, Facebook is still pushing forward in its efforts to bring virtual reality to a mainstream audience. But one of the company's six co-founders now doubts Oculus will ever break through.
Jack McCauley told CNBC he doesn't think there's a real market for VR gaming. With Facebook positioning its Oculus devices primarily as gaming machines, McCauley doesn't believe there's much of a market for the device. "If we were gonna sell, we would've sold," McCauley said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
[...] The $199 Oculus Go has sold a little more than 2 million units since its release in May 2018, according to estimates provided by market research firm SuperData, a Nielsen company. The Oculus Quest, which was released this May, has sold nearly 1.1 million units while the Oculus Rift has sold 547,000 units since the start of 2018, according to SuperData.
[...] Since leaving in November 2015, McCauley has enjoyed a semi-retired life. He's an innovator in residence at Berkeley's Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation and he continues to build all sorts of devices, such as a gun capable of shooting down drones, at his own research and development facility.
The cheaper, standalone headsets are selling more units. Add foveated rendering and other enhancements at the lower price points (rather than $1,599 like the Vive Pro Eye), and the experience could become much better.
Related: Oculus Rift: Dead in the Water?
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Virtual Reality Feels Like a Dream Gathering Dust
VR Gets Reality Check with Significant Decline in Investment
Creepy Messages Will be Found in Facebook's Oculus Touch VR Controllers
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mer on Monday July 15 2019, @06:48PM (3 children)
A market is where offer meets demand. And nobody seems to be offering anything serious.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 15 2019, @07:26PM (1 child)
Fallout 4 VR is a full fledged game, with good enough VR. You're probably a couple years out, from any serious Fallout like games being produced for VR. Simply, if nothing besides dev time. Then, there's the whole, they would have needed to jump on it when it first came out to be releasing it so soon. Likely, for "serious" I.E. mainstream Studios to get in on the act, you're going to need cheaper headsets that are at least as good as they are now, if not better. Maybe, what's needed is a new Valve game or 3.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:56AM
But is Fallout 4 VR a more compelling game than its non-vr counterpart? That is the main sticking point for me right now, the VR is still a novelty like the motion controls from Wii were at first. The Zelda game for Wii was actually less fun to play than the Gamecube version, after the fun of motion-bow wore off. Right now, your are going to be much more competitive without VR. Just based on control inputs being more precise. Eventually, someone will innovate a play style that is abosuletly superior in VR but I don't think long form games are there yet. There is an interesting video on youtube with a NES Tetris champion playing the PSVR Tetris game, his experience my be predictive of how things will evolve.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 15 2019, @08:55PM
Or is the demand not really there? I am not sure either way to be honest.
From my own point of view I bought a VR goggle thing for my phone because I could buy it for $11 second hand on an auction site.
It actually works really well, and everything my phone can do I can now do in VR.
The only thing I wound up actually enjoying was watching a movie in a virtual movie theatre with a bluetooth headset on, and even that was not really better than just watching a movie on my big screen TV.
I might not be the target market though, as I have no interest in VR games and that seems to be the holy grail for the VR makers.