Live data from Hacker News

Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

uploadvr.com

81–90 of 144 posts

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#81
I'm not a fan of lock-in at all but if Oculus don't make money selling the hardware and can't expect a high chance of sales from their store then how are they suppose to make money? Is their whole business model based on purchases from the Oculus store?

Competition is good. I don't like how Oculus is trying to create their own locked in ecosystem but I don't like how some people only want to buy things from Steam either.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#82
post #70

Been working on VR side projects for 3 years now, I've built against the DK1, DK2, CV1 and the Vive and I have to say there's zero question in my mind that Oculus is FAR behind the curve. The Vive was love at first sight, the Oculus was quite the opposite. The Vive is stunning, not only because room-scale VR is fantastic. (I don't share the opinion that the future rests solely with room scale, there's plenty of stuff…

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012).

That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#83
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012). That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

Can't agree more, especially since the secondary market is quite good right now and you can very easily sell it and get a Vive. ;)

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#84
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012). That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

Can't agree more, especially since the secondary market is quite good right now and you can very easily sell it and turn it into a free Vive. ;)

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#85
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012). That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

Can't agree more, especially since the secondary market is quite good right now and you can very easily sell it and turn it into a free Vive. ;)

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#86
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, I was one of the DK1 backers so got the CV1 for free. I haven't used it much past the first week - only to demo to friends and such, really. I have some disillusionment about it also - it seems like Valve VR/Vive is getting a lot more dev support. Having tried the Vive also, I think delaying the Oculus motion controllers was a critical error. It turns out the motion controllers really open up a lot of use case…

I also got CV1 for free from being a Kickstarter. Having a Vive, the Oculus CV1 is just a paperweight right now. Even when Touch finally comes out, it has been under so much secrecy and so many NDAs that I'm thinking it might have significant issues.

How is Touch a secret? They had stations with it at PAX East. They're different than Vive's wands but seemed equally good.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#88
post #72
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, SteamOS is not needed for Steam Link and I've never used it. Steam Link just streams content from your PC.

Valve doesn't publish figures on the number of Steam Links sold. But just look at the Steam Hardware Survey[1]. Valve recommends a quad-core PC to be used as the host[2]. But half of Windows users have two CPUs or fewer. The number jumps up to 64% when you look at OS X users. Meanwhile, the top 10 graphics cards are pretty well split betweel the latest NVIDIA cards and a bunch of Intel on-motherboard cards. I don't t…

I still find it very implausible that first mover advantage alone made Valve into a sustainable multibillion dollar company for so long with very little lock-in and very few anticonsumer practices. They have consistently outmaneuvered all their competitors for over a decade on multiple fronts. Their foray into hardware is just the most recent example. I think pointing to an outdated version of WebKit contained in the app is really grasping at straws for trying to find a way to make it look bad.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

One thing worth noting is all Kickstarter backers get a free Oculus CV1 from Facebook (that's of course in addition to the DK1 they received after backing in August 2012). That decision takes away a lot of the "betrayal" of the Facebook acquisition - for backers it's an incredible return on investment (that was unlikely to happen if it weren't for Facebook)

I don't share your conviction that ROI is far more important than any ethical consideration. I seem to recall the KS pitch was full of aspirational language about a democratized future of VR spearheaded by a close-knit team of diehards who wouldn't fall prey to Big Whatever.

You're suggesting that the majority of backers will be mollified by an artifact of the very forces that Oculus promised to avoid; I'm sure some of them will be.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#90
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform. Hopefully they will just go out of business instead. No more walled garden bullshit, this is a VR peripheral. It doesn't need an app store attached.

Why does it need DRM? Can you imagine if you bought a monitor and it turned out you could only run specific programs and could only use approved peripherals? "Oh, you can't run Google Chome, but we have an amazing equivalent: Oculus Explorer! We're also gonna monitor your mouse movements for the purpose of improving your customer experience. In addition, to ensure a consistent UX, you can only use Oculus approved mic…

Oculus DRM doesn't work like that at all. Anyone can program against the oculus API and release software for it. It's not like there is a standard VR api (OpenVR is anything but, it's controlled by a single company with their own intentions).
Post reply on HN