Friday, January 4th 2019
2018 Was the Year of VR Headsets - Except it Wasn't, According to Steam Hardware Survey
Steam, being the most widely used games platform for the PC ecosystem, has proven weight on current hardware employed by gamers. While not wholly representative, let's just say it caters to enough of the PC gaming population that we can infer some broad strokes of the current state of the market. And for all the hailing for a newcoming of VR in 2018, it would seem that happened, with a doubling of the attachment rate for VR headsets on Steam's hardware surveys. If we're only speaking relatively, that is.
More interesting and important than the "doubling" in VR headset attachment rate to Steam's user's is the fact that this only increased said attachment rate to around 0.8% of Steam's user base. Of these 0.8%, 0.37% of Steam users who took part in the December survey carry an Oculus Rift, with HTC Vive close behind at 0.33%. The overall increase in usage for each of these headsets was 85% and 65% throughout 2018, respectively - still definitely a far cry from the kind of market penetration that was expected of this latest generation of VR. As for Windows Mixed Reality products? They make-up 0.07% of the Steam survey's results.
Sources:
Games Industry, Steam HW Survey
More interesting and important than the "doubling" in VR headset attachment rate to Steam's user's is the fact that this only increased said attachment rate to around 0.8% of Steam's user base. Of these 0.8%, 0.37% of Steam users who took part in the December survey carry an Oculus Rift, with HTC Vive close behind at 0.33%. The overall increase in usage for each of these headsets was 85% and 65% throughout 2018, respectively - still definitely a far cry from the kind of market penetration that was expected of this latest generation of VR. As for Windows Mixed Reality products? They make-up 0.07% of the Steam survey's results.
82 Comments on 2018 Was the Year of VR Headsets - Except it Wasn't, According to Steam Hardware Survey
If there was such thing like Left For Dead VR then hell yeah there would definitely be a global shortage of VR headsets.
At least investing in an RT ready RTX 2080ti (terrible value nonetheless) still give you the blistering fast graphical power for all games. VR headsets don't do much more.
Your current option is just gonna attract doves of haters
VR Will Boom when the likes of Walmart sell it at Wallmart prices.
Then the Software Developers will kick in with Software . Untill then they probably see it as a Niche (small) Market.
Seriously TPU news staff is pretty much VR haters. I am surprised
Just to put it in perspective, it's more than a percentage of users rocking RX480 or RX580(0.62% and 0.64% respectively), which is a lot of people.
The state of software and content is still very sad, to put it mildly, but the hardware is already mature and even becomes cheaper year after year.
There are few very good games, and some cool old games with VR support tacked on, but we need a lot more than that.
I'm just waiting for Atomic Heart. If it releases with VR support out of the box, then I'll even buy a new headset (sold my DK1, only have a semi-assembled homebrew rig for experiments)
BTW, if you haven't tried it yet the tech is amazing. Unfortunately there are 2 catches with it. #1 it's still pretty early so the tech has a ways to go in terms of getting the size and cables/accessories down smaller to be less of a hassle to use (and higher res). #2 it does for me and many others cause nausea after an hour or so of playing. It's great while you do it. I just don't find me using mine as often as I would have thought, even though it's amazing and very awesome fun, for those 2 reasons. So even though it's very close to getting there I think the tech has a little ways to go.
Your right that a killer app would help.
They (Glasses) have to be a problem as regard to comfortable wearing and focal adjustment ??
-no vr Aaa title.
-no clear vr standard
-mining craze and nvidia greed made proper vr gpus, unaccessible to 99% of gamers
Still enjoying VR quite a bit since DK2 regardless of popular opinion.
Cheers!
Not all that is new is better. People use their brains and the survey shows just that.
Haters gonna hate