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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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(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:32PM
What is required is some method of playing all games in VR in a manner that actually works. 3D movies come and go as a fad, but there's no doubt that any movie, to a greater or lesser degree can be shown in 3D. The fact that VR games rarely overlap with non-VR games (exceptions include The Forest, PAYDAY 2). If my friends who don't have VR want to play Civ or Stellaris, then I have to leave my headset on the shel and play with them using a regular monitor. Virtual Desktop doesn't really cut it yet. Greater amount of crossover is what the ecosystem needs.