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This is great but man, vr selling barely 11m in 2021 is not what I imagined when ppl kept saying in the 2000s-2010s that it was the future.
Looking forward to PSVR2 this year
Looking forward to PSVR2 this year
It's honestly a great headset at a great price. I had one at launch, but I honestly prefer the Index.
What I think it's going to be give the Quest 2 some competition is PSVR2. That's going to be interesting to watch.
What I think it's going to be give the Quest 2 some competition is PSVR2. That's going to be interesting to watch.
I feel like the Quest is the Blackberry of the VR market… Blackberry proved that a smartphone market exists back in the 2000's with great success, but then Apple and Google swooped in and completely eviscerated Blackberry with much better software, usability and devices that weren't black bricks tied to physical keyboards and really reached mass market usability.
Feel like we're going to see the same thing happen soon with the Quests VR market– someone is going to release a headset that's more approachable than strapping a giant brick to your face and using game controllers for most interactions.
Feel like we're going to see the same thing happen soon with the Quests VR market– someone is going to release a headset that's more approachable than strapping a giant brick to your face and using game controllers for most interactions.
PSVR2 will exist as a periphery for PS5 owners, not as a direct competitor to Quest. The calculus for the majority isn't "I need a PS5 + PSVR2", it's "I have a PS5, and I'm interested/curious about high-end VR gaming"
Sony could have done that and the ability for use on PC making it a high value device and they would have been in the dominant position now lol. Instead they released a cheap, but half baked system into a sea of much more feature complete VR systems, with proper controllers and 6DOF. Now they're poised to release a Gen 2 that's basically where VR was 4 years ago? Honestly it's a bit confusing to me. I may get it for exclusives or something, but that would likely be down the road when it's got a good catalogue under its belt.
Unfortunately, it won't unless Sony allows it on PC. Keeping it strictly PS won't hurt Quest at all.
With how few units Sony has been able to ship, I wonder if they will push back the launch of the PSVR2?
I think PSVR2 will have a market for VR gaming… I don't think it'll move many units for VR experiences and software outside of VR games though… that's where Apple is going to step in and compete with Quest.
Assuming it launches at the end of this year, there should be enough of an install base to get rolling. They've sold 17.3M PS5s by the end of 2021, it should be well into the 20M range by PSVR2s launch (even with shortages). Besides, I don't think there is much of a point in delaying it if the hardware + some nominal software library is ready. We knew there would be shortages for the current gen consoles but that didn't preclude them from launching either.
The Quest 2 turned me into a VR believer. I still don't think it's the only way to play games or that it's better than standard gaming, but I see it like another branch of gaming. You have PC/Consoles/Handhelds/VR. It makes genres like the LightGun Shooters viable again, and gives so much more atmosphere to something like Tetris Effect and REZ. Plus, emulation on it is a ton of fun as well. I've experienced a ton of Virtual Boy games I would've never had an opportunity to play in their intended format any other way.
Vive Wireless Adapter is a thing. I have an OG Vive with the wireless adapter and there's basically no difference in quality vs playing wired.
It won't in the enterprise space, but they might make a dent within entertainment as a whole. There is the Sony VR collaboration with Manchester City + now the NFL to virtually watch matches, along with SME for concerts/performances, and TV/movies (at least, there is a Head of VR within SPE).
Only Apple can compete at the same level, and their products will be very expensive.
The iPhone moment can either be Apple or Meta then. It's not like Quest 2 is the best they've got under wraps.
If you assume even 20% growth each year, it surpasses the console market by the end of the decade.
So it's really doing fine. Certainly no worse than the first few generations of consoles, or first few generations of PCs.
These things have existed forever and nobody watches them. Live-streamed video from performances/sport is probably the most useless part of VR, but one that enterprise likes to throw money at and pretend is good.
I have had so many meetings about VR streamed concerts in my day job because there's a lot of money there and, without fail, everyone thinks they're rubbish.
I still think MS is best positioned in the enterprise space, given their long history & penetration of workplace tools. Teams is already a very suitable platform that could be adapted for VR.
Microsoft is in a good position for enterprise for sure. Consumers would be a different story, but I think they can still be a good competitor in the consumer space down the line, just not anytime soon.
It can work really well with the right tech.
We need to ditch today's 180/360 videos and have volumetric videos as standard, so you can actually move around naturally in the video - important for comfort.
The resolution also needs to be higher, and spatial audio needs to be baked in to each recording.
Lastly, it all needs to work as a social experience where you can easily jump into a recording with other people.
Live-streamed yes, but the PoC collaborations are in virtual recreation of the stadium + games (players specifically using Hawk-Eye skeletal tracking). Concerts are more in-line with how Epic exhibits them, within a virtual platform such as Fortnite; VR would simply make it more immersive.
The technology and business models are still in their infancy within VR recreation for entertainment, I have no illusions that they will necessarily be successful. But early indications - at least from Fortnite for concerts - show a level interest & engagement if held in an appropriate platform/environment + target audience. It's nascent, I'm fine with corporations throwing shit against the wall while figuring it out.
11 million (if accurate) in a year is phenomenal for a VR headset (oh, Quest 2 is only 80% of that, but still impressive, and if you add q4 of 2020 I'm sure it's hit 10 mil) and far surpasses anything that has come before. And I bet the customer retention rate is solid too. The Quest 2 is also pretty much the only thing keeping PCVR alive right now, even if it's not as healthy as I wish it was. There's at least enough of a reason for some devs to make PC ports with better visuals.
And we ain't seen nothing yet. When micro displays and pancake lenses (and hopefully high quality foveated rendering) start to hit in the next year or two, hoo boy hold onto your butts, shit is about to explode. Bulky heavy headsets will soon be a thing of the past. Oh, and not to mention AR camera passthrough, which will be great for things like productivity. I'd wager that dashboards will start to default to AR for awareness of surroundings and general UX friction reduction.
And we ain't seen nothing yet. When micro displays and pancake lenses (and hopefully high quality foveated rendering) start to hit in the next year or two, hoo boy hold onto your butts, shit is about to explode. Bulky heavy headsets will soon be a thing of the past. Oh, and not to mention AR camera passthrough, which will be great for things like productivity. I'd wager that dashboards will start to default to AR for awareness of surroundings and general UX friction reduction.
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Wow, that would mean Quest 2 sold around 8,736,000 units? That's incredible for a VR headset.
The fact that VR in general sold 11.2 million means VR is officially mainstream? Those are comparable number to very successful consoles.
I hope VR keeps up the momentum. I really look forward to the day when we get Mixed Realty headsets that can play desktop VR quality standalone. It will only get better from there.
I also just hope Valve or other companies offer comparable alternative devices so I don't have to buy a Quest.
The fact that VR in general sold 11.2 million means VR is officially mainstream? Those are comparable number to very successful consoles.
I hope VR keeps up the momentum. I really look forward to the day when we get Mixed Realty headsets that can play desktop VR quality standalone. It will only get better from there.
I also just hope Valve or other companies offer comparable alternative devices so I don't have to buy a Quest.
I feel like the "expensive" Apple story is all relative.
The iPad was rumored to launch at over $1000, but it launch at $499 and was cheap for what it offered compared to other tablets on the market.
Apple Watch is a massive success and it launched at $350, a good value for what it offered at the time compared to its competitors.
iPhone was expensive at launch but they quickly dropped the price after launch and it became a massive success.
I don't think the Apple headset is going to be out in the stratosphere price wise compared to Quest. Will it be "expensive"? Maybe? But I'm sure it'll have things like better optics/screens, sleeker/slimmer design etc, but it'll have a mass market price at launch. Their new products always launch competitively for what they think their users will pay- especially if they're launching into a new market segment.
Got one and love it. I'd look at others but I don't see a reason to spend $700 for a clunky setup
One great thing about the quest is there's no setup. When someone comes over and wants to try VR all I have to do is hand them the headset and controllers. Every person I've let try it has come away saying they want to buy one.
One great thing about the quest is there's no setup. When someone comes over and wants to try VR all I have to do is hand them the headset and controllers. Every person I've let try it has come away saying they want to buy one.
VR isn't like smartphones or tablets. By the time Apple got into the market, the material costs were not all that crazy.
VR requires much deeper R&D than what companies had to do in the smartphone era. There's a lot more logistics that goes into an advanced VR device than a smartphone.
I'd say VR as a whole needs to have a similar market size to that of consoles to be considered mainstream.
If you have 3 consecutive years of VR shipping near console level numbers (45 million/year at it's peak), that should do it.
Yeah, I don't think MS are vying the consumer space for now. They don't need an HMD to start, just use the enterprise model as they've been doing with office/windows/teams etc., and work with hardware manufacturers + software companies to ensure a vibrant ecosystem on their platform.
I also think the medium needs Nintendo to push it forward, but Nintendo wont do it until they're ready
The amount of gameplay ideas they'd come up with would inspire other AA-AAA developers to be more creative.
I think they'd spend less time trying be more immersive on a superficial sense (graphics etc...) but focus more on the core gameplay of whatever they create. Imagine Pikmin in VR
I'd agree that the market as a whole would need to grow to be comparable to consoles, but I'd say 8,000,000 for Quest 2 alone is already pushing mainstream console type numbers. If it can grow to over 10,000,000 per year, that's usually the threshold for a successful console. 12-15,000,000 per year would mean it would be doing Wii, PS2, PS4 type numbers.
Not that I'm rooting for Meta to be successful at anything given thier shady buisness practices, but they are doing an excellent job of pushing the Quest and VR towards the mainstream. It was crazy seeing the Quest 2 co Stanly outselling all Switch models and all consoles the majority of the holidays on Amazon.com.
Apple has been developing AR/VR tech for years now… ARKit/RealityKit have existed for a long time, they support things like spatial audio, hand tracking, depth sensing, real-world object anchoring, they have working Lidar and depth sensors in their current phones and tablets, they make Reality Composer and are constantly talking about AR applications every year at WWDC. Although they're more focused on AR passthrough vs "VR" (which Meta has also been dabbling in).
AR Creation Tools - Augmented Reality - Apple Developer
Reality Composer is a powerful tool that makes it easy for you to create interactive augmented reality experiences. Reality Converter quickly converts your existing 3D models to USDZ.
The only difference is their stuff is currently trapped through a phone or tablet viewport, they're doing a ton in the AR/VR space… they just don't have a headset yet, but their software is certainly there for it.
I see where you're coming from, but that would be Quest only.
If it did those numbers, it's fair to consider it a 'mainstream product' but VR wouldn't be mainstream exactly, until you have another two products doing the same thing each year, or just any combination to get to 30-40 million units shipped a year, for a few years.
45 mil in a year? Where on earth did you get that number Darth, lol.
They're doing plenty of R&D on VR/AR, yeah. I'm saying that the R&D is more daunting. There's a lot more areas to cover than what Apple had to do to create the iPhone. Many more fields of science are involved, and you have to be much more careful with heat, battery, processing, and have to experiment with complicated optics.Apple has been developing AR/VR tech for years now… ARKit/RealityKit have existed for a long time, they support things like spatial audio, hand tracking, depth sensing, real-world object anchoring, they have working Lidar and depth sensors in their current phones and tablets, they make Reality Composer and are constantly talking about AR applications every year at WWDC. Although they're more focused on AR passthrough vs "VR" (which Quest has also been dabbling in).
AR Creation Tools - Augmented Reality - Apple Developer
Reality Composer is a powerful tool that makes it easy for you to create interactive augmented reality experiences. Reality Converter quickly converts your existing 3D models to USDZ.developer.apple.com
The only difference is their stuff is currently trapped through a phone or tablet viewport, they're doing a ton in the AR/VR space… they just don't have a headset yet, but their software is certainly there for it.
Wait, I thought you were limited to whatever is on the Oculus platform? That's part of why I haven't bought one yet lol
Switch sold around half that in 2020. Like I said though, that was more about the peak. A typical year would be more like 30-35 million across all three.
Let's just go with VR selling 30+ million units for several years, and then it'll be mainstream, since you'll have prior years adding up on top of that.
I bought a Quest 2 a couple months ago. It's easy as hell to load games from Steam onto it, including HL Alyx and other non-Quest games. The catch is that it uses your PC to run the games. I have good PC and it works great.
You can play all VR games that are available using Steam VR. Either wirelessly using Airlink (or the better $10 virtual desktop) or Oculus Link which uses a cable connected to your PC. albeit if your PC is capable of running those games.
Oh, the combined markets, lol, sorry I misread. That's still high though, I think if it could consistently hit like 20 mil a year for a few years it would still pretty much be considered mainstream. I'd say once you have around 100 million concurrent (monthly) VR headsets in use I think thats pretty mainstream. Consoles probably didn't get there until what, the mid-late 90's?
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Like others have said, this isn't surprising. The price, technology, and convenience is there with Quest 2.
Sony kind of screwed themselves with PSVR. Given how many years it has been out, it feels like it should be dirt cheap and heavily advertised. But it's not even really on shelves. I know COVID and a new console gen has constrained part supplies but it would have been smart to establish more presence a few years ago.
Sony kind of screwed themselves with PSVR. Given how many years it has been out, it feels like it should be dirt cheap and heavily advertised. But it's not even really on shelves. I know COVID and a new console gen has constrained part supplies but it would have been smart to establish more presence a few years ago.
Monthly users? Yeah, 100 sounds about mainstream. I was thinking more about units sold in general, but monthly users is another metric you could use.
I dont see how a vr headset with some optics and what amounts to smartphone electronics requires "more logistics" or different fields than a smartphone. Maybe for the lens system, but they bought a company doing that for AR applications.
You're talking about a company that develops milling equipment for their manufacturers just so they can mill a specific part, or buys a saphire plant just to have enough supply (that last one didnt work out btw).
Anyways, I bought a quest last year. Its a pretty great device in terms of usibility. The software though... there is a bunch of high quality apps, but then the dropoff is STEEP. I have a 30% discount that I cant find a good use for. Nothing really appeals to me.
RE4 VR was not a good experience for me personally btw. First time I ever felt sick in VR.
OP
OP
It's a VR headset too. Not just a VR "console" lol.
It's a hybrid.
Yea, sorry, I'm kinda pulling these numbers from my ass haha. I'll just say I'm glad the VR market is healthy, and the outlook is even healthier considering the tech hasn't even matured yet.
It's a great piece of hardware and was my entry into VR. Before Elden Ring coming out I was using it almost daily. The wireless capability is huge, and it's actually pretty capable without a PC. Air Link works shockingly well too, for those with a capable PC / router. I've never really felt like I needed a cable. At first I was playing several things, but lately it's become my Beat Saber / Eleven Table Tennis machine, and honestly I'm not bothered by that - helps break up my day of sitting at an office chair all the time and get the heart rate up a bit. My fiancé and I share ours, but I'm definitely going to consider getting whatever the next Quest is so we can play things at the same time.
Only real complaint if you could call it that, would be you really need to spend another $50-100 ideally in order to get the most out of it via accessories - the stock strap and extremely limited battery become uncomfortable and restrictive very quickly. A comfortable third party strap + external battery almost completely solve this though, especially with the battery acting as a counter-weight as the device itself is front heavy.
Only real complaint if you could call it that, would be you really need to spend another $50-100 ideally in order to get the most out of it via accessories - the stock strap and extremely limited battery become uncomfortable and restrictive very quickly. A comfortable third party strap + external battery almost completely solve this though, especially with the battery acting as a counter-weight as the device itself is front heavy.
Apple is really the only ones that have a chance. Sony fucked up making the PS5 a requirement for PSVR2 that at a minimum means it won't cost less than $800. And that's a high barrier to entry.