The Oculus Rift Still Isn't Selling, In a Worrying Sign For VR (technologyreview.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Despite Mark Zuckerberg's early enthusiasm for virtual reality, the technology has stubbornly remained a hard sell for Facebook. Now, in yet another sign that VR is failing to capture the imagination of the public, the company has just cut the price of its Oculus Rift hardware for the second time this year. For the next six weeks, the Oculus Rift headset and its matching controllers will cost just $399. That's $400 less than when it first hit the market, and $200 less than when its price was first slashed in March. It means that the Rift now costs less than the package offered by its cheapest rival, Sony, whose PlayStation VR currently totals $460 including headset and controllers. Even so, it's not clear that it will be enough to lure people into buying a Rift. Jason Rubin, vice president for content at Oculus, tells Reuters that the reduction isn't a sign of weak product sales, but rather a decision to give the headset more mass market appeal now that more games are available.

Comments

Why is this surprising?

[gfxguy]

It's like 3D TV... an expensive and largely useless toy that really only irrationally exuberant developers and people with more money than common sense will buy.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[Rick Schumann]

Even the current moviehouse 3D technology isn't all that great if you ask me. The last 3D movie I saw was Avatar, and my reaction to it was "..gee, that's kinda interesting" but nothing more enthusiastic than that; I'm not willing to pay the extra couple bucks to see a movie in 3D. I work somewhere where 3D TV was part of our graphics card driver validation process, and that was even worse: It was like cardboard cutouts being moved on top of or behind each other.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[yuriklastalov]

People still don't want to pay $400 for a gimmicky motion sickness simulator? But how else are they going to consume all these rehashed "VR Experiences" we been churning out?

Just hearing the word "experience" in an entertainment context makes me gag. The boundless expanse of marketing drivel packed into that one god damn word is appalling.
  On the other hand, once you hear anyone talking about the "$PRODUCT Experience" you know they're full of shit.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[MightyYar]

On the other hand, Universal Studios has nearly perfected the art of combining a moving car with large, 3D halls to create very fun rides. It's very interesting to ride the various attractions of varying ages - it basically lets you see the progress over the last 20 or so years.

And several other companies have figured out how to give a pretty-good "4D" ride in a smaller, cheaper venue. Those theaters with the interactive seats and 3D screens have gotten much better over the last few years, and computers have gotten good enough to make them individually interactive. I just played a game at Niagara Falls (Canadian side) where my family and a perhaps 30 other people all stuffed into a theater to shoot zombies. The theater kept track of all our scores, took pictures of us while playing, and then reported the winner and all the other scores complete with pictures. The next step would be for the individual zombies to interact directly with the people shooting at them, but it was pretty fun as is. Anyway, based on all of the brand new 3D rides I've been seeing, I don't think it is going anywhere. It can give people a cheap thrill with much less investment and upkeep than a crappy fairground thrill ride that would require more space.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[Frobnicator]

It's like 3D TV... an expensive and largely useless toy that...

It is like many things, not just that. You are right that it is a luxury device, and a toy. But the same can be said of your PlayStation and XBox, your television, and your smart phone.

The luxury device is part of the reason they're lowering the price. You still need a high-end computer, something around $1500 and far beyond what most people have. They lowered the price from about $800 at launch to $400, but by the time you get a few games and the computer you are still paying two grand. If you already own the high end computer that meets the hardware requirements --- a luxury -- then the extra $400 won't be a painful addition.

Stereoscopic displays are a product that has been tried with many options over the years. None have taken off yet, but eventually it is one will. It may not be this generation of 3D devices, or next generation, or the generation after that. Or it may be this set, as the latest round are quite impressive.

For another thing, it is a technology that has a chicken-and-egg problem. There needs to be enough good products (in this field it is generally games and porn) to encourage hardware sales. And there needs to be enough hardware out there to ensure products get built. Without good products the hardware doesn't sell, and without enough devices the software cannot generate a profit.

Eventually stereoscopic tech will take off, there is little doubt of that. I've used many of the devices, including Oculus, Vive, PSVR, all the way down to Cardboard. I've tried 3D games all the way back to the VirtualBoy, and enjoyed trying Vectrex 3D with a game collector friend who could probably start a museum. I played a few shutter glasses games and stereoscopic arcade games back in the 80's. With all of that, I know that sooner or later the tech will take off eventually. Most failed because of the chicken-and-egg problem of needing both hardware and software. 3D TV never had any must-have products. 3DS has a good set of games and is still viable for steroscopic 3D. Both Oculus and Vive have some amazing position tracking hardware and have an ever-expanding library of software. They're gaining must-have products as AAA games are starting to include options for 3D play; Bethesda and EA have talked about several, such as Fallout and The Sims. Even existing games like Minecraft, GTA V, Half Life 2, Doom 3, people are creating 3D mods for Vive and Oculus.

I think this is the generation of hardware that will bring stereoscopic 3D to the masses, but if it isn't, we are extremely close to that critical tipping point.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[youngone]

People still don't want to pay $400 for a gimmicky motion sickness simulator?...

It's worse where I live. It looks like the Oculus costs something like $900 of my local money, plus an import duty, so something like $1200 I would think.
What I have done is spent $18 on a Google Cardboard type VR box I can put my phone in. It is actually made out of a sort of padded material that is comfortable to wear, and better quality than an actual cardboard box, but based on that design.
The reason for only spending that much money is that I have no real idea what VR is good for, but wanted to have a play to see if I might be missing out.
Turns out I'm not really.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[AuMatar]

No, one doesn't need to eventually take off. It could just be that people actually don't want it. There's lots of ideas that have been rehashed repeatedly and fail in the market each time.

Even as a gamer, I have 0 interest in VR. I don't want to wear something on my face, I'm far from convinced having a screen that close to my eyes is good for them, and generally I want to be able to look around my apartment when gaming- hell I usually have the TV in on the background and glance at it on occassion, or tab over to a brower (or have one on monitor 2). You can build the perfect VR machine and I just don't want it. And I think the market is showing the majority are with me.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[janoc]

Sadly, this is completely wrong.

There may not be a lot of retail market where margins are thin and development costs are exorbitant, but industrial market for VR is booming. We are literally turning down projects, because we have enough work.

Oculus' mistake is in focusing purely on the consumer retail - where $800 + $2000 for a PC is a tough sell, no matter what they do. For an industrial client used to pay $20-40k for an HMD *without* tracking it is an absolute steal, allowing a company to equip their worker training center for peanuts.

Valve & HTC understood this and are developing special business-oriented offers.

And I am not speaking about high end stuff like flight simulators or military (those rarely use HMDs anyway). I am speaking about blue collar workers training to operate machinery making car tires, making engine blocks or windshields - all for household brand companies I cannot name, unfortunately.

Or psychologists treating various phobias and anxieties. And those were examples only from a few of our recent projects.

Actually, even 3D TVs are useful for this - if we could actually find one that is actually sold with the glasses! Most stores don't stock and don't order them anymore, so we have to work with projectors instead.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[caseih]

We have the HTC Vive and to us it's actually a very useful tool, and it's already paid for itself in my opinion. Doing my kitchen renovation and could only determine so much with tape on the floor to try to figure out if there was enough practical space between the counter, the island, and where the table would go. Even tried mocking it with cardboard boxes. I just don't have a good enough imagination.

With VR we took a model of the design, done in Sketchup, and placed ourselves right in the model and in just a few minutes we could determine it would be a great layout and the spacing was just right. VR showed us the design with the right proportions, scale, and everything (actual size). Given that materials cost many thousands of dollars, the cost of the HTC was more than justified, and even in a way paid for with this one job. Anyone designing a house themselves should think about VR as a tool. It's cheap compared to what you'll sink into a house.

I'm not a gamer so all I use VR for is walking through house designs and other forms of architecture, a bit of flight simulation, and for fun once in a blue moon, Google Earth.

Gaming in VR isn't really that exciting, but the immersion offered by Oculus Rift and Vive is real, I assure you. It's very striking. It may indeed be an expensive toy, but it's actually not useless, and it works much better than you make it out to be.

Free as in beer

[Jamlad]

They could offer it to me for free and I still wouldn't take it because of the FB affiliation.

I'm waiting out for my hardware to catch up and the Vive II.

Everyone who wants it has it

[PhrostyMcByte]

I love my Rift but I'll be the first to admit it's still a compromised experience. It's too blurry and causes eye strain. And it needs a stupidly powerful PC to have a great experience. Everyone I know with a high-end gaming PC capable of running VR either already has a headset or has decided to wait for next-gen headsets -- exciting things like eye tracking, improved depth of field, and simply higher res are all on the horizon *if* VR can survive long enough to give us the 2nd gen it needs.

Not Necessarily Related To Sales

[mentil]

The Rift has had substantially lower sales than the competing Vive, which is a major reason they've been having more sales and price cuts. It was expected that over time the manufacturing costs would go down, so they're just passing the savings along to the consumer, as opposed to Vive which is keeping their headset's cost constant for now with plans to add new tech as it arrives (although they haven't really done this yet, aside from weight reductions).
The Samsung Galaxy Gear VR and Playstation VR have each sold over a million units, their lower price suggesting that a high price is the main barrier to adoption at this point. Personally I'm probably going to wait for the 2nd-gen headsets, since they will be substantially better in every way; my game backlog is long enough I will hardly be bored before that point; I've waited 5 years since the Rift was first announced, I think I can wait a bit longer (not that this helps VR sales at all...)

Windows Holographic VR headsets are coming in a few months, that will be $300-$400 and have better resolution and (arguably) tracking than existing headsets; they only work on Windows 10 and it's unknown if they'll ever work with existing (SteamVR) games, but if so, they could be a hit this holiday. Wireless headsets are coming in the near future, and that could be the difference that makes VR take off.

Not so niche, honestly...

[cirby]

"Expensive" gear?

Back when I bought my Apple IIe in 1983, it cost $2400 with a floppy drive and a color monitor.

That's about $5900 in today's dollars. You can buy a Vive with a reasonably overbuilt desktop to run it for about half that (I did).

A "cheap" Commodore 64 with a floppy drive in 1984 was about $1000.

That's $2300 today - about the cost of a decent Vive headset and a basic VR computer.

How niche was my Apple IIe? Or the Commodore 64?

I guess the whole "computer revolution" never happened then, right?

I know a lot of people who spent a couple of thousand dollars, just a few years ago, for a big-screen TV. Niche? Yet they still make large, expensive sets - and that ubiquitous iPhone is basically a thousand bucks, replaced every couple of years...

HTC Vive

[ProzacPatient]

Is it possible it's just being out competed by the Vive? I hardly hear anyone mentioning Oculus anymore ever since Facebook bought Oculus and the Vive hit the market.

People do like it

[SpaceDave]

There's one claim that comes up every time VR is mentioned on Slashdot - that VR is overrated, people don't actually like it, everyone gets eyestrain and nausea, etc.

I run a museum that has Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear headsets. I'm writing this at work and right now I'm looking at a queue of people waiting to use VR. It's the most popular attraction at our museum. Many of my customers come only for the VR because their friends raved about how awesome it is. Our feedback form and letters from school students consistently rate VR as the best thing here. I'm actually worried that the VR is so successful that it's threatening our physical displays - our "real" hands-on activities have become less popular since I introduced VR. Instead of investing in tactile displays I'm being forced to buy more VR headsets because my customers are demanding it.

Every day I hear people talking about how they have to get one of these things at home. What stops them is the price - *not* any disappointment with the technology itself. If I was looking for something to blame for slow sales it would be the cost of the computer, not anything at all to do with the technology or the experience it offers.

Re:People do like it

[SpaceDave]

The venue is space-themed so the content is about astronomy and spaceflight. At first I made my own VR videos from public-domain and stock images. This is actually easier than you might think - editing VR isn't much different to editing normal video and even shooting your own photos/video is getting easier.

Fortunately there's a lot more content available now and I don't have to make my own any more, I just buy stuff from the Oculus store. At the moment I'm using two apps:

(1) "Titans of Space" on the Samsung Gear. This is a looping tour of the Solar System. I covered the touchpad so users don't change anything. They just take it on and off as they like. Most people will go at least a few minutes and maybe 40% watch the whole 10 minutes. This is a safe, easy way for people to try VR. If they like it, they can step up to the Rift...

(2) "Mission ISS" on the Oculus Rift. This is an exploration experience set on board the International Space Station. The user has hand controls so they can point, grab and manipulate objects, and move themselves around in microgravity. It's incredible.

If you think VR is an overrated gimmick, you've never climbed into the Cupola on the ISS. Try getting that experience with a screen.

A word of warning... although it's getting better fast, finding good content for a museum is still a bit of a pain. As your friend will know, there are many considerations when you're offering turns to the public. I'd recommend starting with some simple non-interactive VR videos or even still images. You also need to understand comfort and intensity settings. It's not hard but if you get it wrong you'll have people falling over and/or throwing up.

Re:People do like it

[Anonymous Coward]

My job is developing games/promo material including VR stuff. VR projects are a super easy sell, you show anything VR to a marketing exec or investor and it blows their mind because it isn't something they have ever seen before. The wow factor is completely off the charts.

The thing is though the office has stacks and stacks of every kind of VR headset you could want and a lot of gamers, but you never see people plug one in to just play a game at lunchtime/end of the day. Apart from for work they never get used.

You are watching people experience those first wow moments all day, but not seeing how people feel about it once they have owned a headset for a few weeks.

Rift is fantastic.

[Toasterboy]

There aren't a lot of apps yet, but Oculus Rift really is fantastic. It runs OK on relatively old gaming hardware... I have both the DK2 and the consumer release version with touch controllers. It certainly runs better on a NVidia 1070 (or better), but it ran just fine on my previous card, a GTX480, which is below minimum requirements technically. It also runs pretty well on a gx980(which is a mobile gpu for laptops). Everyone whom I have demonstrated my rigs to wants one (and my gaming rig is a 4 year old i7 box, outside of having a 1070 recently upgraded). Given that the Rift is mostly cell phone screen, plus a few electronics, and some cameras, $400 is what the price point should have been at launch. You need a beefy system, but it definitely doesn't have to be a crazy rig.

Having tried the HTC Vive, and owning some older VR equipment (Vuzix stuff), it's pretty clear to me that the Rift is the best VR equipment I've used. It's more responsive, and looks better (higher res screens). Other stuff I've tried tends to be kind of laggy with respect to head tracking and motion controllers, but not the Rift.

Elite Dangerous in VR is a fantastic experience, as is In Medium (3d sculpting). I've also run a fair number of older titles through VireioX with good success; Skyrim is pretty cool in VR. Even my 80 year old parents like many of the experiences. Viewing 360 degree photos of sites in Egypt in VR is amazing.

VR games are _different_ from existing games though.. the VR experience is more intense, and more immersive, and some things that worked on 2D screens don't work well in VR... for example, the speed you run at in most FPS games can be 50-70 MPH, which in VR makes you want to hurl, because running that fast through corridors is kind of disorienting. I also tend to be sated with VR after a much shorter gaming period...the experience is just more intense. I believe VR is here to stay, but it will take a while for developers to discover what works well in game experiences.

Doesn't work well with glasses

[Roger W Moore]

Even the current moviehouse 3D technology isn't all that great if you ask me.

Also like cinema 3D the Occulus Rift does not work well with glasses (it's possible but a major pain to put it on and take it off). That's about 42% of men and over half of women so you have almost halved your potential market before you even start.

Re:Ehem: I told you so!

[SpaceDave]

Any product that makes at least 30% of it's owners physically sick is probably not a great investment.

This is wrong and I'm getting really tired of people trotting out this un-fact. If you don't set up the comfort settings correctly it will make you sick but it's trivially easy to to get it right so that 99% of people will feel fine. I run public VR installations and it does *not* make people sick. Right now I'm looking at the 50th person today to try VR. Not a single complaint.

Yes it was free

[SuperKendall]

Umm.. that's not free you gave them money.....

Which was for Dev Kit 1, which I received. That was not free, no.

Nor was Dev Kit 2, which I was able to buy at a reduced price...

But the final Oculus, that was free because I was never told I would get one as part of the Kickstarter, nor did I have any expectation I would receive the final unit without paying anything. I assumed I would have to buy one at a discount. That was an extra step obviously made possible by Facebook money, which they did not have to do and was very kind to their supporters.

Re:Simple answer.

[jon3k]

Never required a $2500 PC (more like $500-$1000, you know, like any decent gaming PC). Tons of available games. I love watching all the old slashdot luddites shit on VR, most of whom have never experienced it.