Some interesting stats on current VR state

http://www.develop-online.net/news/vr-momentum-slows-dramatically-on-steam/0223756

 

Kinda obvious news innit? Like the article said, there ain't that many people out there that can dish out 700 odd dollars for a silly headset and the people that can have already gotten it by now. Rest of the masses that didn't buy it till now aren't gonna magically grow money out of their armpits because a product got released on the market. VR will stay a niche item as long as it's cost of entry stays that high, does not change that fact no matter how much the people that own it cry about how everyone and their mum has one and how "VR is gonna be mainstream so fast you guys" bollocks. Don't get me wrong, I sold my triples rig recently because I'm going to upgrade to a VR rig myself but not gonna deny that it is a damn expensive prospect... I'm also gonna have to ditch my current PC which has an fairly upper mid range specs (2500K+980) as well in the process since it is not good for a proper VR experience as it is a tad old at this point. And my stupid rig is well beyond what an overwhelming majority or people got according to steam surveys, you can't expect them to dish out a huge amount of cash to upgrade their perfectly working mid range builds so that they can support a toy that they have to spend even more monies to get.

 

VR will see mass adoption when the headset hardware sells for $100-150 and a rig capable of running it well can be had for $600-800. Until then it will remain a niche market used mainly by hardcore gamers and for some reseach applications in the sciences and engineering.

 

I don't think it is the price of the entry, people shell out much more for for GPUs every year, rather the quality of content and headsets themselves.

 

When you say "people" which people are you referring to? The people that can shell out money for a new GPU each new cycle probably have a headset by now. There are probably way more dudes that upgraded from say 660/670 to a 970 than there are ones that upgraded from a 980ti to a 1080. For the former guy a 970 is an infinitely more useful upgrade, for the latter a VR headset is simply a matter of how much disposable income they got left.

 

Just saying that not everyone skipping VR for monetary reasons, myself included.

 

Not even 0.2%?!?! Wow... 2 out of every 1000 players. Is there a way to find out the number of Assetto Corsa players using VR?

 

Fair enough, but that bottom line is that if it were available at a lower price point then VR could have avoided this whole vicious circle of sales stagnation. Where devs have little incentive to spend vast amount of resources to support a niche peripheral that is not so beneficial to them monetarily and thus leading to new people to avoid VR for the time being because most VR "experiences" (God, I hate that word) are utter garbage so spending a mountain of cash on it feels a bit senseless when there is so little to do on them. You can literally see that all over the net by how much begging and pleading goes on from VR owners for devs to implement VR support so that the fancy expensive investment of a toy doesn't collect dust straight out of the box. If the headsets costed the same as a console then yeah, a lot of people would get them as a casual purchase and not think twice about it. Looking forward to how PSVR sells though, they have a good price point going at 400$ with a ton of games releasing along with the headset.

 

People were losing their freakin' minds that Assetto Corsa didn't offer VR support - heck, even I voted for VR Support when Stefano posted that informal, non-binding poll months back. I figured, the way people talk about VR, like tons of people had VR headsets or they were in the mail and wanted to be able to use them with Assetto Corsa.

 

@ALB123 More like what few thousand people bought VR at the beginning turned extremely vocal because it immediately dawned on them that their 500-700$ headset could very well turn into a 500-700$ brick given how very little of them were in circulation... general rule of the internet is usually the vocal minority can seem pretty loud on the surface. So their best bet was to wrangle the devs of any game they were interested in into thinking VR was an "every man's peripheral" with widespread adoption. They did sell well even with the price in mind, the whole "oh they are selling like hotcakes, so much so that they are running out of stock" thing is all well and good until you consider how few were actually produced in each batch.

 

I think the percentage of VR headset users will be a lot higher in sim racing than in the regular population. There are two reasons for that 1) a sizeable number of sim racers have the money to buy expensive peripherals as demonstrated by the wheels, chasses, triple screes, etc that they employee 2) VR is a natural fit with sim racing and adds important elements to the experience.

I have a Rift and love it with AC. I have tried it with a few games and they hold no interest for me. The VR just doesn't work that well within the game. I think the expense issue is important but I think the big issue is that there is no general purpose game that is compelling with VR, a game that main line that gamers are dying to own.

 

Yeah! I'd like to know how many people in AC have VR? I would be willing to bet it's more than 0.2%.

 

I know I can't drive anywhere near as well with triples. VR is the way to go in AC and I only have the old DK2.

 

I read a post where a guy said that the steam survey didnt reconize his VR headset because it was turned off. Can this be why its such a low number?

 

We always had small camp of VR sim racing enthusiasts, long before CV1 or Vive.
Did it really grow that drastically since then? I saw spike of VR interest for a few months following CV1 release and now it seems way too quiet. I was really looking forward VR, the only reason I did not go for triple screen as everyone was screaming "hey, dumb move, this is so old days, triple screens will be obsolete in no time as soon as CV1 hits the market".
And the sad reality is that we are not quite there yet, not even close.

 

This article is senseless... 0.3% of what? 0.3% of all 185 million steam accounts? 0.3% of the 36 million steam accounts being active last 2 weeks? It is all based on the steam survey which is also only done by a couple of people each month (can't remember when I was asked about participating in it the last time).

So from the survey it's 100k to 500k VR headsets, which isn't bad for early adopters. But besides the enthusiasts where is the high quality content which justifies the price? I'm still very interested in it, but as long as AC hasn't got a final support for it I stick with using my triples and wait.

By the way, numbers are awesome when you use it the right way:
36 millions active steam accounts last two weeks
80.000 playing AC last two weeks
= 0.2%, so all AC players got a VR headset

 

Yeah, you can't compare that survey to real sales. Steam doesn't log if you use the Rift unless you fire up Steam-VR. Rift has sold more than double of the Vive, and looking at the future, Rift is getting MS on board soon.
And, you have to take in account that some products don't sell at certain times of the year simply.
I agree that it's a niche, and my guess of VR users in AC is <5000. But, estimated sales are just past 2million worldwide, so potentially someday a few more of those owners will hear about AC, since it's among the best VR-sims there is.
I just got Aerofly2, and quite a big group of the flightsim community are using VR and doesn't even know AC exists. As Tocano points out, it takes more than a few lousy VR experiences to win people over.

 

Whoa, where did the 2 million sales estimate come from?! AFAIK the 2 mil figure was just was just some silly projection... Last I heard Vive had just passed a measly 100k sales figure in July 4 months after going on sale, assuming people were buying it at the same rate since then I'd say they prolly sold at most 170-200k units total by now and the latter figure I find to be kinda pushing it. Even if the Rift moved twice as many units as the Vive, if you take a conservative estimate it'd be around 350k units. Going for a total of ~500-600k units combined. It's a good figure for early adoption but not a huge one either. I do think there could easily be around or over 5000 users of VR for AC though. Those things are kinda match made in heaven for simming in general. Given how the most played VR game on steam by a huge margin, Tilt Brush has about 130k users, you should get a fair idea of how many VR sets are floating around in public. Compare that to any normal title that sells well and is still considered a failure in sales terms like Tomb Raider which sold 8 mil some copies around it's launch period you'd see how niche-tastic the whole VR thing actually is still. To put Tomb Raider sales into perspective, GTA sold like 60 mil copies. Why do you think there isn't a huge influx of top quality VR games/experiences/thingamajigs... most game studios understandably don't wanna delve into making stuff that sells in the hundred thousands as a best case scenario. That's why I have huge respect for all sim racing dev studios in general, they are making products that very few people will buy.

 

The big problem is most people haven't experienced VR and until you do, it's not extremely compelling. Almost everyone I know who has a PC for sim racing and has tried my rig ended up buying a rift. And every game friend who has tried my vive went out and bought one or really wants to, but is waiting to upgrade their PC hardware first. And non gamers who have tried it in my house have been completely blown away by the experience. I think as more people experience VR firsthand, it will grow. Yes, prices have to go down as well, but you really don't get it if you think it's just an expensive fad that will go away. VR is the future of gaming. The market share will grow. And games will get so much better.

And the rift in the current state is fantastic for sim racing, but room scale and hand tracking controllers with the vive is the ultimate experience. It still blows my mind that I'm able to experience technology like this. And to think it's only going to get better...

And to think my first gaming experience was on those silly Nintendo game & watch handhelds, and the Atari 2600. My 6 year old son is walking around a mountain cliff picking up sticks and throwing it to a robot dog as if he's right there in the world.

 

They sold DK2 world wide and i bought it. They sell CV1 only in 20 countries and it is not available to me yet.