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Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

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Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#51

Post by bryanlarsen »

aphextron wrote: post #45
simonhughes22 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the TPCast? That makes the vive wireless, and can already by shipped from China, coming to the US later this year. Intel is also releasing something similar for the vive next year. So that is wireless. LG is bringing out a SteamVR headset later this year with a higher pixel density. And valve just sent out the Kunckles controller to devs, which has full on finger tracking. So we are not very far away fr…

TPCast is a huge step forward. No one saw that coming within a year of the major headsets launching. I've definitely got my eye on that stuff. But it's still huge and clunky at the end of the day. It won't be until the major manufacturers integrate this stuff that mainstream adoption hits. I got into VR development with the mindset that the hardware will be ready in 5 years, and when it is the people who stuck with i…

Have you ever tried gloves or hand tracking? Without the haptic feedback that you get from a controller they're also extremely clunky and unintuitive.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#52

Post by ghaff »

ashark wrote: post #32
superplussed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing to me is that my 10 and 8 year old nephews have a PSVR, and Xbox, and an iPad, and all they want to do is play the iPad. They use the Xbox sometimes, and the PSVR collects dust. It seems nowadays low friction is the killer feature.

Kids aren't the only ones. Most of us in the wealthy West now have so many entertainment options that we ignore even many of the ones we've already paid for, or are continuing to pay for. Half the time I forget I have Prime Video at all, and I've temporarily got Showtime for Twin Peaks but despite knowing there are probably tons of other shows and movies on it (and not on Netflix/Prime) that I'd enjoy I've not even l…

In that vein, I read a piece recently. The gist was that, if you launch a TV show today that takes a season or so to get its footing and figure out how to tell its story, you're increasingly not going to make it. Of course, lots of shows have always been canceled early on. But, at least speaking for myself, today there are so many good to great shows that I don't have time to watch that if you don't grab me in an episode or two I'm tuning out.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#53

Post by ghaff »

borne0 wrote: post #44
Paul_S wrote: post #22

This is pointless, people are not buying VR because there is nothing there they really want to use it for, not because it costs too much. A gaming rig to run it will cost you more.

I think live sports and being able to switch between players/drone/sideline 360 views would be a killer app.

That's a popular opinion. And it's something that people have a demonstrated willingness to pay for.

It does make it into a solitary experience. And I think there's also the question of whether people would really want to be that immersed for a 2+ hour game.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#54

Post by sergiosgc »

aphextron wrote: post #48
sergiosgc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you are getting the 2 million total, but it is wildly off: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42707617 These are numbers for Q1,2017, placing a total of Rift, PSVR and Vive at ~750k units. This is for the worse quarter of the year, post launch hype and off Christmas sales. I'd wager there are 5 million units of "serious" VR units out there. Also of note, something I didn't know: The Vive…

>These are numbers for Q1,2017, placing a total of Rift, PSVR and Vive at ~750k units Combined with the sales from last year, that's almost precisely the 1.5 million units I mentioned sold of the major 3.

Except we're now in the end of Q2. Vive/Oculus now have four quarters of sales, not two, while PSVR has three. Even a linear extrapolation lands in 3 million units, and you still have to account for both the Christmas and launch factors.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#55

Post by logicallee »

philipov wrote: post #37

It is not Facebook's right to decide how much VR should cost. That's what a free market is for. They do believe in the free market, right? Right??

Ordinarily technical companies are well-differentiated which means they are not commodities that you can interchange precisely - unlike rice or wheat. So while it is not sensible to state "(biggest wheat importer) can't decide how much wheat should cost" since their options are probably within a very narrow limit where asking for just 15% more would cause their sales to drop to 0 and asking for 15% less would let them capture 50%+ of the market - but at a loss for them - the same is rarely true in the technical industry, which has high margins and high differentiation.

So for these reasons, Facebook's pricing choices are complicated and the free market does not clearly prescribe their pricing strategy in the way you suggest.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#56

Post by aphextron »

sergiosgc wrote: post #54
aphextron wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are numbers for Q1,2017, placing a total of Rift, PSVR and Vive at ~750k units Combined with the sales from last year, that's almost precisely the 1.5 million units I mentioned sold of the major 3.

Except we're now in the end of Q2. Vive/Oculus now have four quarters of sales, not two, while PSVR has three. Even a linear extrapolation lands in 3 million units, and you still have to account for both the Christmas and launch factors.

>Even a linear extrapolation lands in 3 million units

That's the thing. You really can't even extrapolate these sales in a linear fashion. There was a massive pent up demand for these devices, and the market is reaching saturation very quickly.

I wont argue that perhaps 3 million units of the major 3 headsets have been manufactured and sold to various outlets already. But what matters for developers is the install base of actual users. The latest numbers for SteamVR show an install base of ~220,000 users [0]. The biggest breakout hit game of 2016, Raw Data, has a current ownership number of ~90,000 users, with an average total play time of 2 hours. [1].

I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but the numbers simply wont be there to support large scale development of games until the install base increases at least 10x, which I do not see happening with this gen of hardware. A lot of this comes down simply to price.

[0] http://steamspy.com/app/250820

[1] https://steamspy.com/app/436320

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#57

Post by borne0 »

ghaff wrote: post #53
borne0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think live sports and being able to switch between players/drone/sideline 360 views would be a killer app.

That's a popular opinion. And it's something that people have a demonstrated willingness to pay for. It does make it into a solitary experience. And I think there's also the question of whether people would really want to be that immersed for a 2+ hour game.

Yeah, the solitary experience thing seems like the biggest hurdle. maybe a twitch like experience where one person directs the camera location and narrates with a bunch of follower who can control their own 360 view.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#58

Post by MikusR »

They ran out of the old bundle that had two boxes (one with headset, sensor ,Xbox controller and remote. other one with touch controllers and sensor). And announced earlier than expected the new cheaper bundle: one smaller box with headset, touch controllers and two sensors. The new box has no Xbox controller and no touch remote.

Re: Facebook can’t decide how much VR should cost

#59

Post by mtgx »

sigstoat wrote: post #43
mtgx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade seems like too much. Maybe 3-5 years. You know that expression "wait for the third generation" - I think it applies to VR headsets, too. I've also tried both Oculus Rift and Vive and despite what some may say, 1440p is just not enough. I feel like 4k needs to be the bare minimum resolution, so I don't plan on getting one until it has a 4k resolution. There are also other kinks to solve in the overall technol…

> You know that expression "wait for the third generation" which generation are we on, now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality#History

Obviously, I don't mean the 90's "VR", but the recent headsets.

Since Oculus Rift and Vive are still the first generation, it's generation 1.

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