While between HTC/Valve and Oculus, the companies have been coy on official sales figures, Steam data suggests that the HTC Vive install base is approaching the 100,000 mark.

Having launched just about three months ago on April 5th, the HTC Vive is the flagship headset of Steam, through which Valve is the main distributor of games for the headset. And while the Steam Hardware & Software Survey gives relative percentages of headsets used with Steam, we need to turn to other means to find actual figures.

Vive-consumer-unboxing (67)
See Also: HTC Vive – Review A Mesmerising VR Experience, if You Have the Space

That’s where SteamSpy comes in, which aggregates data from millions of Steam users into useful statistics about games sold on the platform. And though SteamSpy doesn’t track the number of HTC Vive headsets running on Steam, it does track the three VR games that come bundled with each Vive purchase: Tilt Brush, Fantastic Contraption, and Job Simulator. Thus, we can see the total number of owners of these games, giving us what appears to be a fairly accurate indication of Vive sales.

According to SteamSpy, Tilt Brush is the most popular of the Vive’s bundled games, now sitting at 94,911 (± 8,213 margin of error). Assuming each owner of Tilt Brush is also a Vive owner, the margin of error brings the headset’s install base as high as 103,124 or as low as 86,698 three months since launch.

To put this into perspective, Oculus sold some 175,000 Rift DK1 and DK2 development kits over the course of their lifetime offering (August 2012 – October 2015).


Update (7/5/16, 10:04PM PT): We’ve come to learn that Job Simulator was the only of one the three bundled Vive games to be made available at launch, while Tilt Brush and Fantastic Contraption had both been made available for the Vive DK1 and Vive Pre. That means that Job Simulator’s ownership figures (currently 77,975 ± 7,340), are likely the most accurate gauge of consumer HTC Vive sales, while Tilt Brush gives us a good idea of the total Vive install base, including the Vive DK1 and Pre. This also accounts for the discrepancy between SteamSpy’s ownership data for Job Simulator compared to the other two bundled games. Given that discrepancy, we can figure that the total Vive install base consists of some 24,000 (± 7872) Vive DK1 and Pres.


While that’s still far from ‘mainstream’, the steep $799 price means that with only 77,975 sales HTC has likely pulled in around $62 million in revenue.

SEE ALSO
The First $100 You Should Spend on Meta Quest Games

Other factors may skew the data slightly higher than the actual number of Vive headsets sold; SteamSpy counts the number of Steam accounts that own the bundled games, which may include a number of users who own Vive development kits (the Vive Pre and Vive DK1) which technically weren’t ever for sale. This group likely numbers in the single-digit thousands, so the SteamSpy data should still be giving us a good ballpark for HTC Vive sales figures.

steamvr-oculus-rift-setup-install-games
See Also: How to Use the Oculus Rift With SteamVR in 4 Steps

Curiously, one of the other bundled games, Job Simulator, seems significantly lacking compared to Tilt Brush or Fantastic Contraption, coming in at only 73,137 owners; one hypothesis being that users simply miss the humor of the game’s name; though it’s a fun VR experience, I can attest to hearing people say “Why would I want to do a job in VR?!” on more than one occasion when hearing the name.

Now that we have real figures to work with, we can rough out some additional data about VR headsets in use with Steam. Using 94,911 as our baseline assumption of the HTC Vive headset install base, we can use the latest (April – June) Steam Hardware & Software Survey to guesstimate that there’s around 36,000 Oculus Rift (CV1) headsets attached to Steam along with some 8,700 Rift DK2 headsets. Of course the 36,000 figure for the Rift is unlikely to be an accurate headset sales estimate as most Rift users are likely to be using the official Oculus Home platform to access VR games for the headset.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Anyone that says, “Why would I want to do a job in VR?!” is clearly a moron, because it’s the best game in the bundle!

    • My experience is that it is clearly designed for children, and the only people who liked it in my family were 7 or younger.

      • Raphael

        So you actually have no real experience of VR then? VR is replacing triple monitor gaming setups. I know many who have ditched triple monitors for VR and use it on a daily basis. All major flight sim developers now support VR and VR is very important in simulation. So it sounds like you don’t know anything about VR with such a dumb statement,

        • Jolard

          I think he meant Job Sim, not the Vive. I agree that job sim was cute, but mostly seems aimed at kids.

          • Raphael

            Oh, then I am the dumb one since I can’t follow the flow of conversation. I don’t like comedy games so I thought I’d have no interest in job sim but on Vive it’s impressive. Feels like I’m really standing in a store serving hotdogs to robots.

        • I own a Vive.

          • Raphael

            So do I.

        • victor

          I for one have ditched both my triple-24″ inch montiors and 46″ monitor for VR and and I aint EVER going back (for gaming that is)

          • Raphael

            That seems to be common now… Lot of Elite D gamers say the same. I actually became tired of non-vr gaming long before Oculus or Vive were ever a thing.

        • JustNiz

          > All major flight sim developers now support VR
          Not true. XPlane is arguably THE most accurate flight sim and is waaaay behind on VR support.

          • Raphael

            Last time I looked at XPlane it had no realistic sense of speed. Taking off looked like a hot air balloon ride. That would have been a few years ago I guess.

          • JustNiz

            It supposedly has by a long way the most realistic physics of all flight sims. As a pilot used to flying (real) Cessna 172, I can tell you that at least Microsoft FS physics is a joke.

          • Raphael

            I can neither agree nor disagree since I haven’t followed explain for some time :) See I typed explain instead of x-plane? Genius. DCS World is my sim of choice.

          • JustNiz

            Yeah DCS world looks good, at least from some youtube videos. I’m looking forward to trying it. I still think they could/should have made the ground/scenery look better though.

          • Raphael

            They did! It’s called DCS 2.0 and the first terrain is Nevada. Absolutely stunning. Photorealistic, jaw-dropping level of detail.

          • JustNiz

            Great! Thanks! Will take a look tonight.

      • Pistol Pete

        What cave does your family live in? ;-)

      • Well here’s some experience: I am 41 and I liked the game.

        Now that you have that experience, you can avoid saying such judgmental things in the future.

        • Rayza

          “anyone who says something i don’t agree with is a moron”

          and that’s not judgemental?

          • You’re misquoting my original statement, which is moronic, or at the very least, Trollish.

            What I said is that anyone that says a job in VR can’t be fun is a moron. The game is clearly fun, and about 2 dozen journalists who have written stories on it agree. The game practically SOLD room-scale VR, it’s been covered so much.

          • jlschmugge

            You are thinking most consumers are as informed as you. If someone had never heard of something called “job simulator”, screen shots and the name alone really don’t sell it. It definitely has to be experienced to appreciate the satire it is.

        • Or I can draw the opposite conclusion; that you’re either physically or mentally 7 years old.

          • I draw the conclusion that you’re a teenager. Perhaps you should let the adults speak.

          • j

            go back under your bridge

        • Munchy

          I haven’t played the game and I think it sucks badlt lol, what it about hahaha

      • I’m inclined to agree. My 8-year-old nephew wouldn’t give us the damn headset back once he got into Job Simulator.

      • Raphael

        It’s not a game I would ever consider outside of VR. It was impressive in VR but in general I prefer serious stuff like DCS World, pcars, elite D.

      • RavnosCC

        I enjoyed 3 out of 4 of the jobs. And my wife, sister, and father really enjoyed it. We’re all well over 25 years old. I’m not sure how you can propose that it’s “clearly designed for children” with such a small test sample…

    • Jason

      I liked about the first 5 minutes of Job Simulator. But then the jokes got pretty repetitive and the gameplay even more so.

      That’s not a judgment of the game, as clearly it has fans. But different people like different things. However, my judgment of someone who doesn’t understand that and thinks everyone that disagrees with them is stupid is, well, best left unsaid I suppose. It won’t really matter to you anyway.

      (For reference, I am a 40 year old Vive owner.)

    • DiGiCT Ltd

      Job simulator is the worst game in the bundle, its boring.
      You just keep on doing repeating stuff, it was fun for the first 30 minutes after that i just had it with the game.

      • I played for about an hour, did all of the stuff, and probably won’t play it again. BUT… I did enjoy that hour and because of that it was “Fun”. You had fun playing it. How bad can it be if it was Free and you enjoyed it briefly?

        I’m can not grasp the hate I’m seeing for this game. It was a good game for what it is, a simple toy that introduces you to the fun of room-scale VR gaming.

        • DougP

          Agree – it’s also fun, after playing through it, to let others use it to try out VR.

          Personally, I wish they’d release other “Jobs” for it – I’d return in a heartbeat.

    • AtmosContagion

      Not everyone is going to agree with your opinion or enjoy that type of game. I almost never play those types of games, much preferring RPGs, platformers, and fps games.

      I feel that the “why would I want to do a job in VR” argument is often less about “doing a job in VR” and more about the type of game.

  • superdonkey

    its early days for consumer vr but its looking good. i expect psvr will boost things considerably given sonys clout but maybe it will take a price drop or two to really get out there

    • Jean Thompson

      I tried PSVR and was very disappointed. The image quality was almost not even as good as oculus DK2. Even Gear VR Looks better. thing that immpressed me was the comfort. But you get what you pay for.

      • I hope the PSVR isn’t too bad, as it’s going to be the VR the VAST MAJORITY of people are going to see. High-End PC Gaming isn’t very popular, it’s been on the decline for ages now. Superior as it might be, it’s very niche. I can’t even get my gaming friend to consider building a new rig, even though he loves what he’s seen with the VIVE, it’s just too much for him. But he will be getting the PSVR. I think *many* people will. The real VR race will be between console and mobile. PC VR will be for the hardcore enthusiasts.

        • Jean Thompson

          It’s kind of a bummer that these console gamers won’t get to see how awesome VR looks and (amazing roomscale) on PC though. Unless they know someone who has one. I don’t really play much, I mainly design. I mean the difference is so crazy I could see someone try psvr and be turned off from VR. (Not knowing just how much better pc vr is)But if they tried VIVE they would be amazed and want one.

      • JustNiz

        Given the limited power of the PS4 GPU (compared to PC) realistically there was never any way that PSVR was ever going to be able to get even close.

  • situbusitgooddog

    “Of course the 36,000 figure for the Rift is unlikely to be an accurate headset sales estimate as most Rift users are likely to be using the official Oculus Home platform to access VR games for the headset.”

    That’s a curious statement to make to be honest – you don’t need to be using Steam to access VR games, you just need to have VR hardware attached to your computer when the Steam hardware survey runs. So for your statement to be correct, Rift owners would have to be gaming exclusively on Home and not using Steam at all for even flat gaming. Of course some people will choose not to participate when prompted, but you would expect distribution of refusals to be even across the hardware spread.

    I know you guys need to keep Oculus happy to maintain access in the future, but judging by the Steam hardware survey and the incredibly low user numbers on top-tier Home games such as ‘The Climb’, it appears that either sales numbers of the Rift have been wildly overestimated or their shipping woes are even worse than everyone assumed.

    • benz145

      This has nothing to do with keeping Oculus happy, simply the fact that we don’t have enough evidence to say that the figure is likely to be accurate. For one, we don’t know precisely how Steam counts Rifts (ie: must they be actually used to play a game in the survey month to count in the figure? Are they counted simply by being attached or must they be actually used to initiate SteamVR?), and we also can’t say definitively how what percentage of Rift users are playing through Home exclusively (as you considered as well); it could be significantly higher or lower than we might guess. If you can find a solid figure for Rift sales, we’d be happy to report on it ; ).

      • situbusitgooddog

        We do know how Steam counts Rifts though, in exactly the same way it counts Vives – yes they are counted simply by being attached to your PC when the survey is run, why would it be any different? No you don’t have to have played a game, the hardware survey pops up randomly while you are using Steam and not just when you are in VR. The survey isn’t purely for VR headsets, it’s a general hardware survey that they’ve added a new VR category to.

        I’m sure you can find a handful of people who claim that they never use Steam but they must surely represent statistical outliers in PC gaming. Meanwhile Oculus-only games are a graveyard – https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4mh4m5/less_than_1000_owners_of_the_climb/

        In the absence of ‘solid figures’ (do vague tweets from Palmer count? If not, that’s all they do) It’s not unreasonable to draw a conclusion from the data we have.

  • Actually, Job Simulator is the one to look out for. It’s only available since the commercial release and it was bundled as well. Since the code for the free vive games was one code for all three games, consumers didn’t have the choice to activate only one of these games. The overhead is probably dev units.

    • Shawn Blais Skinner

      ^ This. There’s 20k additional dev copies for the other games, so the 79k from Job Simulator is the closest thing to the number you’re looking for.

  • Pistol Pete

    Damn the Vive is whooping the Rift bad!! Power to the VR people!

    • Kris Roadruck

      Rift is disadvantaging itself by not having the volume to ship immediately. I wont buy one until the situation is I give money, next day I get product. I imagine there are many others like me. Vive is already offering immediate shipping.

      • roaet

        Mine shipped in 1 day. Seemed pretty good.

        • Sang

          Mine shipped over the weekend it (Fedex) I ordered it friday and it came monday. Pretty insane.

      • AtmosContagion

        Shipping seems to be actually pretty quick now (they are pretty much caught up now) and people have been able to pick up Rifts from retail stores for a while now of they want them immediately (lots of people jumped ahead in line this way).

        • Munchy

          problem is rift already tried to stop exclusive tites running on other vrs, that’s not gamer friendly and as this is a new tech we aren’t locked into any one so I definatly wont invest in the rift, even if the contoler system was viable, which it currently isn’t.

          • Kalle

            No, they tried to stop people for not using Oculus Home. The Revive developer had in his next release a way to incorporate the Oculus home games inside SteamVR without even the need to run Oculus Home. That would destroy the Home platform. As an emergency to this they added the DRM, and it was removed later on, and now there’s been no talk about the integration in SteamVR. Probably Oculus and the dev of Revive come to terms.

          • shijocj

            Same reason I jumped the ship!! I was not confident Rift controller is good with two optical sensors and also I will get 360 walkable roomscle with vive, which I don’t regret now at all!! Rift owners can say anything but I am confident that Rift with touch will still be lagging behind on immersion compared to Vive!!

        • Jardar Øhrn

          And that was a huge gaffe by Oculus wasn’t it. Starting to sell their HMDs at retail while they still hadn’t delivered their pre orders.
          A lot of people outside of the areas that actually got the retail stores with Oculus in store suffered huge delays to their delivery because of huge batches of HMDs being delivered to retail stores first.

          • shijocj

            The day the news came out …was the day I cancelled my Rift!! :P
            Now a proud Vive Owner

      • victor

        maybe that’s becuase there has been more orders for the oculus than the vive?

        • JustNiz

          Presumably you’re talking about CV1 orders as pre/dev version orders were all filled ages ago and those units are no longer available so are basically irrelevant now. Would you care to back your assertion up with some actual evidence?

          • victor

            Yes of course I’m talking about CV1! Impossible to get actual evidence at this point as oculus have not released market sales info. I just made assumption becuase normally in the tech world(in which I work in by the way), the more demand there is for a high tech item, the longer the shipping wait since components cannot fulfill production volumes. The assembly houses are NOT normally the problem!

          • JustNiz

            Thanks for making it clear that you just pulled it out your ass.

          • victor

            Your WELCOME!

      • S-Y G

        Getting my RIFT Tomorrow, so I just can’t wait. I understand what you’re saying… I’m sure that the Vive opportunistic and rushed release has nothing with the component shortage which is causing this situation. ;)

        It’s so great to see Gabe Newell just sling shit at the RIFT in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.

        Neither VIVE, nor valves are knights in shiny armors… They’re the same as all the other players. Including Oculus, but at least Oculus isn’t fueling senseless politics to get an edge…

        • Jardar Øhrn

          Fanboy alert!

          Here are some facts for you. Valve has from the very start opted for an open platform and be inclusive of other HMD devices that can support the APIs made available through steamVR. Oculus went with the walled garden approach and wanted to exclude all other HMDs from being usable with games purchased through the Oculus store. Coupled with Oculus buying exclusive or timed exlcusiveness titles for their store while Valve let the organics of the market itself manage their exclusiveness (room scale with tracked hand controllers at launch). Only after a very loud uproar did Oculus concede to allow other HMDs that managed to get hacked support play the games in their store.

          Conclusion. Oculus attempted to rig the market in their favor from the start and Valve/HTC seem to have trusted in their product to lead the way.

          For their walled garden approach alone I decided to no longer support Oculus, and I do own the DK2 and think it was a great HMD.

          • S-Y G

            Lol , yes, maybe fanboy a little you’re right, but more than that, it’s concern about Valve’s strategy that I have.

            Their open platform approach is the same marketing that they have been using since the playstation 1 era.

            Valve never benefited from exclusives. As a matter of fact, exclusives have always hurt PC Gamers more than most.

            I think Valve is just being opportunistic and playing politics here. This is my opinion and this is what I am not comfortable here.

            I really believe Valve rushed out their product to be able to compete with the RIFT at launch. That’s one thing that I cannot encourage….

            The walled garden approach is he same approach Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have always used… Exclusives are some of the best games I played…

          • Jardar Øhrn

            So you are actually in favor of exclusives? Exclusives are anti consumer, that is not negotiable.
            I as a consumer should not be pressured to purchase a gaming system to play a title then purchase another system for the next title. Especially when some systems game prices are almost double that of PC in some cases.

          • S-Y G

            I don’t know. As a developper, I can appreciate the benefits of targetting only one platform.

            I also work in support, and I understand the benefits of having only one platform to support.

            And well, you can have a way better quality if you target only one platform. So there are advantages to exclusives.

            I know the issue of exclusives is an important one, but I think that it’s not all black and white… there are shades of gray. What bothers me, is that Valve keeps playing politics around exclusives.

            What bothers me too, is that Valve is a bit dirty too, but no one seems to be calling them out about it…

            I am upset because I feel that Valve is using dirty politics to win a platform war. They even rushed the product to compete at launch… That’s not good corporate values man… No matter what their stance is on exclusives…

          • Justos

            People believe what they want to believe. Valve is a business just like any other. They are out for your money.

          • Jardar Øhrn

            Organic exclusiveness isn’t the problem. The bought exclusive deals are. If a developer decides to target a platform for their own reasons then that is up to them, but if it is funding for their game for exclusiveness then they don’t deserve customers, especially since that money comes from somewhere, previous purchases made by other customers that may not even be interested in their title.

            Valve didn’t rush out the vive, I have never had a product with better build quality in my hands. The vive is excellent and was in fact delayed to improve it, the right call.

            About valve doing shady stuff or what not, sure. But it is not related the their VR product so let’s stay on topic. Or should we maybe discuss Facebook’so shady behaviour as well?

          • S-Y G

            I think in this case that Oculus wanted to ensure that some VR experiences would _really_ work out well on the RIFT.

            You make some very good points. A lot of reviews ( and my personal experience agrees ) describe the Vive as “incomplete”, or still a “prototype”. It’s not just me. I think they needed a couple more months. I really do.

          • JustNiz

            So why not just target OpenVR then? it supports both rift and vive and probably will support every other HMD that will come around. How is that worse than supporting an API that only has just one HMD?

            How is valve playing politics around exclusives? How is valve dirty? you keep pulling anti-valve claims out the air that literally no-one else is making, and without giving any supporting evidence or even reasons. You very much appear to be a totally brainwashed fanboi.

          • Justos

            Oculus home was never a walled garden. You must not know what that means. The fact that I don’t need to buy my games from Home means you are wrong.

            The issue people have with Oculus is not even about their own customers.

          • JustNiz

            > Oculus home was never a walled garden.
            Of course it is. get real.

            >> The fact that I don’t need to buy my games from Home means you are wrong.

            That was exactly what the DRM that Oculus implemented was trying to do. And you can’t buy any of their exclusives anywhere else. It would totally be a walled garden if SteamVR weren’t better than that and didn’t also support Rift. Also Home is also always-on and always spying on you. Oculus’s EULA automatically gives them all ownership to anything you do or create, and all of your personal data. Oculus are clearly totally untrustworthy.

        • shijocj

          Blah Bhah!! Lets see how it goes when Touch comes out! :P (you know by leaks)

      • Tim Cornelius

        Ordered my VIVE Saturday! Billed this morning, and is being released for ship.

    • Justos

      Steam survey results are not even close to an accurate representation of how many rifts are out there. Why would you think it is? Oculus have been selling everything that they make. Its not like nobody is buying them. You are naive if you believe there are less than 100k rifts out in the wild right now.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        I really don’t think there are 100k rifts out there at the moment, Oculus has a serious delivery problem, and it’s pretty quiet from their camp.. (I own a DK2 and I’m not planning on buying a CV1 or Vive for quite some time).

        • AtmosContagion

          That “serious” delivery problem was over a month ago. There isn’t much of an issue anymore (fortunately…).

        • beestee

          At my office I know of 5 Rift pre-orders, and all have been filled already. I even returned my personal Rift for replacement (left/right screen disparity) and received a new unit within the same week that I sent the unit back. Don’t know of anyone at my office that has a Vive yet, but I think we will probably get at least one for the office.

          • JustNiz

            Vives aren’t hard to get at all. According to users on Reddit their orders are apparently now being filled within 2 or 3 days and I believe you can even buy them off the shelves at some Gamestop/Microsoft stores if you’re there before they immediately sell out.

      • Pistol Pete

        Ya but if Oculus makes 1 Rift at the same rate 10 Vives are made. Well you can do the math. Lol

        • S-Y G

          Yeah, but Rift and Vive use components from the same manufacturers and there is a component shortage… I guess you can also do the math…

          If really HTC can produce more headsets than Oculus, it must be because they are able to secure more components ….

          And now they’re trying to spin the notion that they seized the market because they have more units out there ( maybe ) ?

          LoL, seriously, Valve is one nasty organisation.

          • repzyree

            I have followed the Oculus Rift with great enthusiasm over the years. I have no problem with the Rift, as a matter of fact I think the overall build quality of the Rift is better than the Vive. however, I think the Rift’s supply issues are not one of Htc’s (or Valve’s) volition, evidenced by them sharing only one component (namely the Toshiba TC358870XBG 4K HDMI to MIPI Dual-DSI Converter, which has been in mass production for over 2 years). I think personally that the Rift’s production problems lie in the fact that Oculus is a relatively new company that has never produced anything that complex in such large scales (now I am fully aware that they made both the DK1 and the DK2, but both were small scale with some degree of “off the shelves” parts) while Htc has been in the hardware manufacturing business for almost 20 years now, and know all the dangers associated with getting hardware from paper to product and out to the customers.
            To be honest I literally do not give a rats ass what HMD ends up being the prevailing one. However when someone makes a valid argument and you come with your “tu quoque” which I can’t find any other reference on what so ever, I find it a bit disconcerting, and it seems like it’s a claim you have pulled straight out of your ass.

          • S-Y G

            I did pull it out of my ass to be honest. I don’t have all the facts. I had to google the term “tu quoque”. I understand why my argument may seem like this type of fallacy… (though, to be fair I was expressing an opinion and an intuition more than trying to make an argument )

            To be honest, I’m not 100% rational on this issue, and I’m a bit too lazy to research my facts. I’m outraged at Valve, because I really feel that their venture in VR was opportunistic. I also feel that their position on exclusives is opportunistic.

            That being said, even if I’m lazy and wont bother to build a real logical argument on the matter, I still feel the need to express myself.

            I am not sure however that : “(…) Ya but if Oculus makes 1 Rift at the same rate 10 Vives are made. Well you can do the math. Lol (…)” is a valid argument backed by facts. I think it was just someone expressing their opinion as well…

          • repzyree

            The tu quoque was rather reffering to the overarching argument of the walled garden of which you responded to on a post higher up, however I chose to respond to this post because this is the only post I could find where you spesifically stated that valve was stealing components from oculus.

          • S-Y G

            That actually makes more sense. I guess I could tune down what I’m saying to “take what HTC/Valve says and does with a grain of salt”… I am still not presenting it as an argument, but rather an opinion based on intuition.

            I’ll admit I was probably pulling at bad threads that may have no actual ground in reality. However, while what I am saying is implausible I wouldn’t qualify it as impossible. Even if none of my “concerns” pan out to actual provable arguments, and sound premises, I am still very doubtful about Valve. I don’t like the “political” marketing that it seems to me they are doing.

            Regarding the Tu quoque, are you sure I am not rather doing a “trial of intent” ? The Tu quoque seems to apply, but it’s a bit of a stretch ?

          • pooh flinging monkey

            Well at least you are now realizing you have almost zero grounding in reality. Your intuition is ridiculously off.

            So when Oculus started poaching people from Valve, you were cool with that? Even after Valve spent considerable time helping out Palmer the year or so before?

          • Kendall

            It sounds like the only actual “political” issues are yours, and yours alone.

          • S-Y G

            Yeah sure… Valve isn’t playing politics and their stance on exclusives isn’t marketing…

            I take issues with the fact that the market is focused on politics when in fact I would rather it be about the hardware itself.

            I don’t care about the strategies of either when it comes to how they work ( or don’t ) with partners.

            Oculus has the best hardware ( by a small margin, but they’re still on top ! ) and some people are getting the impression that the Vive is better because of the politics surrounding all this. It’s not.

          • JustNiz

            > I’m outraged at Valve, because I really feel that their venture in VR was opportunistic. I also feel that their position on exclusives is opportunistic.

            Unless you actually meant Oculus not Valve, your whole argument seems VERY strange and definately needs more explanation.

        • TimothyStone

          Not really something to be concerned with. 100,000 isn’t that much and most titles will play on both.

          The thing that you have to start thinking about is the future.

          What if Microsoft works with Oculus (which is a HUGE possibility) and they really do need each other at this point.

          Microsoft is creating a console for the “Hard Core” with higher end hardware in late 2017, this will be perfect timing for a next generation Oculus VR device to come out.

          Microsoft has no problem with shipping hardware. So, now it’s all down to price and that is the only sticky point at this point.

      • Munchy

        lets face faces a joypad is not good enough for vr like the current rift and in many reviews they all say the same thing oculas rift is not a great experience htc vive is, so which do you want to try? hell lets not forget rifts doddgy pracices, at this stage I=t makes sence not only to invest in htc because they haven’t tried to screw anyone over yet, but also simply cause their vr is a full experience including controls, rift is not. it really don’t get simpler than that today.

        • S-Y G

          Yes ok, so buy your fucking Vive, and when the Oculus Touch releases, you’re stuck with inferior movement tracking, and inferior headset with a bunch of wires and that weights a ton…

          And why ? Cause Valve, rushed their release to be able to compete with Oculus at launch.

          So who is really using dodgy practice ? A guy who had a dream, started a kickstarter and was picked up by a big corp OR the guy who has been trying to get into the “hardware” business for years and never really succeeded and suddenly decided to get into VR once the road was paved ?

          Valve is no one’s hero… Stop smoking crack.

          • JeanClaude

            Pretty sure the movement tracking of Vive is superior. And it requires less wires, at least USB 3.0 wires. Occulus is just using cameras, and they need direct line of sight.

            I’m not taking sides yet, but I haven’t gathered the info your proposing.

          • TXinTXe

            Wires:
            Oculus: 2 USB 3 ports, 1 HDMI, 1 USB 2 (for the xbox pad). When touch releases you change the USB 2 port for an USB 3 (for the extra camera) and that’s it.
            Vive: 1 USB 2 port, 1 HDMI, 3 power cables (with at least 2 power outlets in one side of the room and another in the oposite corner) and headphones cable (that just goes to the headset, but still).
            The movement tracking with the lighthouses of the vive has 2 advantages: one is that with only 2 units you can track several headsets/controllers with no problems and the other is that they cover a larger area (like 5x5ms as opposed to 3x3ms with constellation), they still need direct line of sight (it uses lasers) and the quality of tracking is more or less the same in both cases, oculus has the advantage that with just one camera it can track the headset in 360º and with the vive you can’t do that.
            So, in conclusion: If you have a really big playroom to use for VR, vive is the better option, but if you live in a normal house with a normal play space you are better of with the oculus (not to mention the quality of the controllers themselves, oculus seems to win hands down with the ergonomics and capacities of finger tracking and the like).

          • JustNiz

            You’re missing the point that Vive tracking uses a lot less of your CPU than Rift tracking, because Rift uses the PC to do some fairly heavy duty image processing from each constellation camera to extract the head position, whereas the Vive HW does nearly all the position processing itself.

          • TXinTXe

            Yeah, quite a lot, almost 1% of 1 core… (and even with that almost all games that support both headsets natively run better on the oculus thanks to the ATW).

          • JustNiz

            Have you got any links to credible pages confirming that? Given what it must be doing I’m finding a CPU load that little hard to believe. Also for roomscale its going to ramp up a lot.

          • TXinTXe
          • JustNiz

            Sorry but I said credible. Palmer Luckey has already proved himself to be anything but.

          • TXinTXe
          • JustNiz

            Dude you’re obviously a complete Oculus fanboi. Citing a reference of someone obviously with a bad setup who even says right in their post: “with the base stations and controllers off (so no tracking, the headset is basically just a screen), vrcompositor still doesn’t budge from it’s 20% usage, definitely sounds like a bug. “. Lame.

          • TXinTXe

            You asked for another source since you say that you don’t believe what palmer says, and then when I put you another in which they clearly say that the whole oculus package with home an everything just take 5% of one core you just get upset because they also talk about a bug in steamVR… and I’m the fanboy? As they say in my country… “cree el ladrón que todos son de su condición”.

          • JustNiz

            Even the last link you provided says rift uses 5% which blows your own earlier claim of 1% of 1 core out the water.

          • TXinTXe

            5% with everything running, not just constellation…

          • JeanClaude

            Are you saying the Rift doesn’t need to be plugged into a power source? It gets all its power from USB3?

            I find the power outlets more convenient for the roomscale. It’s annoying having a long usb that must go to your PC.

            Ideally, I’d love for Valve to sell the tech or license it to Occulus. I think roomscale is the true future and potential of VR.

            I agree that the finger tracking in Rift is cool. In fact, eventually I hope it becomes just a simple wristband that does full hand tracking and you just buy cheap plastic accessories if you want to simulate a gun, or a wheel, etc.

          • TXinTXe

            You have to have a cable anyway (for the moment at least) so better that it’s just one and not 3, isn’t it?

    • AtmosContagion

      There are also not any hard estimates for the rift nor the data to extrapolate that information like people have been doing with the Vive.

      I have seen some estimates putting rift numbers way higher than the Vive because of a dev leak on their install base (unfortunately, no one can say for sure how true the “leak” was…). I have also seen most put it more reasonably at Vive levels; maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less.

      I personally really don’t care as long as these companies aren’t pointlessly hardware locking people out of their games.

    • Tad Springer

      What part of “Of course the 36,000 figure for the Rift is unlikely to be an accurate headset sales estimate as most Rift users are likely to be using the official Oculus Home platform to access VR games for the headset.” didn’t you get? I for one haven’t logged onto Steam since my Rift came!

    • JustNiz

      It does seem that ever since Facebook took them over, Oculus have scored several massively clueless own-goals with their overly greedy/community-damaging business tactics. Clearly the majority of tech-savvy early-adopters aren’t actually as sheep-like as Faceboculus would like.

      • S-Y G

        It’s the people who believe that Gabe Newell is Jesus Christ who are fucking deluded…

        He’s an opportunistic millionaire, and all that anti-exclusive bullshit ( which they have been slinging since the playstation 1 era ) is just marketing…

        It’s sad to see how many peoples just throw their money at that moron.

        • JeanClaude

          I’d love for you to come up with arguments. I personally have nothing against Facebook, and don’t even mind a closed platform if the VR is awesome, cheap and has good games. Personally, I just root for the best tech to win. For examlle, I’d love to see the Occulus using Valve motion control tech. But I also know of no reason to dislike Valve. They gave the PC a great game platform and have been mostly pretty good at keeping the community open and innovative.

          • JustNiz

            All of the spying and data mining and lame DRM attempts completely turned me off Oculus forever.

          • JeanClaude

            Oh, I know the reasons for not trusting Occulus, I wanted to hear the reason for not trusting Valve. Appart from the usual every company only cares about themselves, I don’t know of many good indication that Valve isn’t trying really hard to please its users.

          • JustNiz

            well thats exactly my point about valve too. You were the one who said you have nothing against facebook. That seems to be just because you’re uninformed. If you knew the truth about what they’re doing with your data and how they are getting it you probably would or at least should.

          • JeanClaude

            I meant it more as I don’t really mind. I know they are definitly mining my data and actively bullying themselves into a leadership position with VR. It’s obvious they took that as a strategy, instead of purely relying on making a better product. But I guess I’m not too bothered by it.

            I’m aware of their data policies, and I assume responsability for what I share with them knowing that.

            I’d rather they not bully their way into VR, but as of now, I’m just excited VR is getting money poured into it. Eventually, Apple and Google and Samsung probably are all going to drop Gen 2 VR headsets also. And Microsoft and other company might drop Light Field based headmounts. While Sony is probably about to dominate the landscape by end of the year. So I feel like VR will have its fair share of healthy competition.

  • Sam Kennedy

    Also if you own a Rift and A vive and take part in the steam survey it only counts your Rift which I found kind of odd. So the steam survey numbers are at least slightly skewed (mind you by a very small amount) it was just something I noticed when taking the steam survey. It just said I had an oculus Rift (I have both plugged in)

  • Sch@dows

    Seeing as I was not asked to participate this month (was asked in May) I wish steam would give the number the percentage is based on.

    As for steamspy, its just estimation and you have to take into account the error margin provided.

    In my case, the “experiences” bundles with the Vive were useless. I started Tilt Brush once to see some of the pre-recorded works, but i’m not an artist.
    I tried job simulator, played for 10-15 minutes in the garage, and quit. Boring.
    I didn’t even downloaded Fantastic contraption since the game bored me already in its videos.

    I wish there was real games like Lucky’s Tales (or Early access like Eve Valkyrie) bundle with it, but with all the experiences I lived afterward, I don’t regret choosing the vive.

  • Me

    Regarding Job Simulator: It’s been two weeks since I got my Vive, and only got my codes two days ago after complaining through HTC’s support.
    Got a response within the day by the vendor with my codes (didn’t bought the Vive on HTC’s website, but pre-ordered it through a local store’s website).

    Bottom line, some people might have a Vive and don’t know they can get the free bundled games, while others I know of have bought games for VR just because it’s the summer sales, but are still saving for the Vive itself, so I wouldn’t base any conclusion on these numbers.

    • benz145

      Did you get individual codes for each game?

      • Me

        No, sorry i should have been more precise, just one. What was strange was that I didn’t get any reply at all from HTC’s support, but instead got it directly from the vendor (FNAC, in France).

        It looked like this:

        Ceci est un mail automatique, merci de ne pas répondre.

        Bonjour Yannick,

        Merci d’avoir précommandé le HTC Vive à la Fnac.
        Vous trouverez ci-dessous le code pour débloquer les jeux Tilt Brush, Job Simulator et Fantastic Contraption.

        Merci de suivre la procédure suivante afin d’activer votre code :

        1- Visitez http://www.steampowered.com pour télécharger et installer Steam sur votre ordinateur.
        2- Lancez Steam et créez un compte Steam si vous n’en avez pas encore.
        3- Dans Steam allez dans la Bibliothèque et cliquez sur l’icône + en bas de la page pour activer un produit sur Steam.
        4- Suivez les instructions et entrez le code unique dans le champs ci-dessous.

        Votre code : ##################

        Bon jeu et à bientôt en magasins et sur Fnac.com.
        L’équipe jeux vidéo de la Fnac.

        Funny also, nowhere was it advertised that free games would come bundled with the Vive, and I only asked the support while I saw on reddit you had to ask them via email.

        Bah, as long as I got my games and didn’t bet on the wrong horse, I’m fine.

  • kontis

    Valve’s own statistics say that 0.15% of active Steam users own HTC Vive. The latest official data says that Steam has 125 million active users. That would be 187K Vives.

    If your estimations are correct Steam has lost more than 40 million active users in a year, despite the fact that the concurrent users peak increased 2+ million…

    It doesn’t add up. One possible reason, which is rather silly, that I can think of is a large portion of Vive owners not redeeming the bundle code with tilt brush. Maybe 10% would be believable, but this is too much.

    • Psycold

      There are also thousands of developer kits called the Vive Pre that were given to devs way before we could buy them.

    • Spike

      On the Vive subreddit there have actually been quite a few people that didn’t even realize the Vive came bundled with games and ended up buying thing like Tilt Brush, so this probably does account for some of this.

  • Psycold

    This makes me happy.

  • Pec

    The Oculus walled garden attempt has back fired. PC gamers have spoken, they’ll have no part in Facebook trying to create a monopoly by bribing developers and establishing hardware exclusivity. VR platforms should be treated no different than any other peripheral. You don’t see any Acer-monitor or Razer-mouse only games do you? Valve understands this, and so does their design and manufacturing partner HTC.

    • jlschmugge

      I have been seeing exclusives for games since I was born I the late 70s. Sure the Rift is a PC peripheral, and PC owners haven’t seen this type of exclusivity divide on the platform alone, but people are far over-reacting to this, especially since all of the “exclusives” are either only timed, or developers only have so much resources to build for the Rift, resources that they only had in the first place because of Oculus investment.

      Growing up, I’ve usually only been able to afford one console, or just a PC, so I became used to not being able to play Sonic, or not being able to play Mario Kart 64, or Half-Life till years later. This is still the case with owning only a PC and seeing all these great games on XBOX, PlayStation, and now even all these VR games for the PSVR.

      I understand the slippery slope that setting this precedent for exclusives on PC hardware means. And yes, Oculus has stumbled all over this one, but I feel more bad for them and their growing pains, instead of this virulent lynching the internet. VR does not win if the Oculus dies. There is nothing for Vive owners to benefit from their vitriol. Tired of exclusives? How about you don’t get any new games? You just want to start bitching about exclusivity on PSVR now?

      A little bit of grumbling is appropriate. The same grumbling as a kid when you couldn’t play a game when it was on another console. But people need to get off this bandwagon. Everyone invested in VR should be on the team of VR, not siding with one HMD, or you will be stuck playing the same crappy version of VR pong forever on your $800 device.

    • AtmosContagion

      The only problem was hardware exclusivity; most people are actually fine with storefront exclusivity.

      Oculus, thankfully, removed the hardware lock a couple weeks ago, so there really isn’t too much of an issue at this point (as long as they don’t try to pull something else…).

      • Pistol Pete

        I’m not fine with it! I canceled my Rift order because of their crap tactics. Bought a Vive instead.

        • Munchy

          ill be getting a vr when they mature, itll probably be the vive too for same resons, I also think the ps4.2 or neo is a squeeze tactic by sony so I wont be investing in their technology, they knew before soun ps4 vr was coming, it should have been included.

          • JustNiz

            Just given the relatively low power of the GPU in the PS4 (compared to PC) there’s no way in hell that the PSVR experience could come even close to PC VR no matter what they do.

      • Munchy

        exept its the start oif the vr technology and do you really want to support a company that out of the gate stuck locks on software? I understand why people stil use microsoft its huge and been around years, the oculas has shown so quickly that it intends to try and maximise profits at the expence of the gamer experience even so early on in vr tech, its insulting to think people aren’t intelegent enough to not invest in that bs, thkful or not for them unlocking it should never have happened and they know it, that’s why people are loving ther htc vive, htc hasn’t tried to screw anyone lol.

      • S-Y G

        I don’t think exclusives are always bad.

        Some exclusives are some of the best games that I have played. Because it’s easier for the dev to focus on creating content that renders well on one platform.

        I think Oculus decided to strike some exclusive deals because they wanted to make sure that some VR experiences were going to be real success on their platform, because they want VR to succeed.

        They just got unlucky that it was Valve who “jumped in” as their “first competitor”, a company that has been spreading anti-exclusive propaganda since the playstation 1 era. The reason is simple, it has always advantaged them and the tactic has given then loyal followers. It’s great marketing, but that’s all it is.

        The steam sheeples are really idiots if they believe that Gabe Newell is a knight in shiny armor.

        I hear no one whining about the exclusives on PS VR….

        • J.C.

          Someone here has imagined a very different series of events as to how Oculus and Vive came to be. But that’s ok, Serge doesn’t let things like Facts get in the way of raging fanaticism.

          Exclusives on PSVR are a different animal than Oculus’ exclusives. It’d be more like “There are two headsets available for the PS4, and some games will only work on one of them”. People would lose their fucking MINDS over something like that, and that’s precisely what Oculus pulled. It benefits them in NO way whatsoever, and VR as a whole will not survive if every headset has exclusives. You’re thinking VERY short term here: when there are over a dozen headsets, each with exclusive titles for them, VR will die a sad, segregated death.

        • Kendall

          Cute daydream.

      • JustNiz

        …and their crappy EULA terms and all the personal data collection. There’s no way I’d ever let Oculus Home on my PC.

    • Mike W

      Jesus, get OVER it. “PC gamers have spoken” – christ on a stick lol…

      As schmugge says, exclusives is the fucken oldest concept in RETAIL, not just games. Get over your preciousness and realise it’s just fucken life and that’s how it goes. Oculus is still doing what they’re doing and fortunately, like every other company worth more than a billion dollars they don’t give a fuck about keyboard warriors in the internet comment realm. They give a fuck about REALITY and reality dictates that money is an important and necessary target for businesses and therefore they have to employ strategies – as already noted, that have been around forEVER – to best support their business.

      VR platforms should be treated no differently than any other peripheral, platform or product in the world. Thankfully, Oculus knows this.

      • Tad Springer

        Couldn’t agree more. I’m getting so tired of all these Vive fanboys having to make everything a platform war…

      • JustNiz

        >> VR platforms should be treated no differently than any other peripheral, platform or product in the world. Thankfully, Oculus knows this.

        Lol WTF are you talking about? Oculus are the ones that tried to lock down a freaking peripheral with hardware-based DRM. What a fanboi.

  • victor

    I have oculus and definitley not using steam!

    • Derek

      That’s actually really dumb

      • victor

        Only teenagers can reply like that!

        • Derek

          Definitely not a teen-ager, and not sure about the relevance so I’ll power through. Steam is 2 thousand times bigger than oculus home. You’re a fool if you don’t use it

          • victor

            I used to use it and don’t like the overhead on my PC and slows down VR a little so I uninstalled and so prefer to remain a “fool”!

          • JustNiz

            So you’re sticking with Oculus Home that is always-on and sending your personal data back to Faceboculus all the time? Lol ok dude.

          • victor

            Oculus home not always on! And who cares if facebook is monitoring, if it’s not them then it’s some other site. This is the internet, get used to being monitored one way or another and stop with the facebook paranioa crap. If you’re on the internet then you’re in the matrix grid period!…facebook or not!

          • JustNiz

            Yes, it is always on. and even if you like being a sheep, plenty of other people care about their privacy,
            http://uploadvr.com/facebook-oculus-privacy/

          • victor

            Uhhh NO it is NOT always on!
            Obviously you havent tried oculus!

          • JustNiz

            Are you saying the link I posted above is factually wrong?

          • JustNiz

            From my link above: “when you install the software to run Facebook’s Oculus Rift it creates a process with full system permissions called “OVRServer_x64.exe.” This process is always on, and regularly sends updates back to Facebook’s servers”.
            Are you saying this isn’t true?

          • victor

            Ok I just checked. With the DK2 all you have to do is power it off by it’s switch but on the CV1 there is no power switch so just need to unplug the usb plug and voila no OVRserver process hence no “spying”. So still all is good for paranoid people.
            And no I’m not sheep becuase privacy for me is for real life, don’t care if I’m being watched for which internet website I go to= nothing to hide here. Anyhow as soon as you’re on the internet you have potential of being tracked by something or other, so you are fighting losing battle. If you REALLY REALLY care about your virtual privacy then don’t go on the internet.

          • Tad Springer

            I agree with Victor. Oculus home works perfectly with the Rift – there’s no reason to use Steam unless you want non-VR games, Vive games or you want the other small number of other Rift games that aren’t on Oculus Home (which means there’s a high change they didn’t pass Oculus’s software quality tests).

          • victor

            “bigger” does’nt necessarily mean better!
            And by the way Steam is “bigger” only for non-VR

    • DougP

      New to PC gaming then?

      • victor

        No I am just not a teenager anymore , don’t live with my mommy and have a career and gf to tend to so I cannot play games 10 hours a day like before. I play only three games now- Elite Dangerous, Warthunder, and project cars. That in tiself keeps me happy and takes up all of my free time. So steam is usless for me, on top of the fact that steam adds background software layers to the already intense VR calculations by both gpu and cpu.

        • DougP

          Thanks for all the personal info but don’t see how that’s in any way relevant.
          If we’re *sharing* now – I’m also not a teenager, happily married, & have disposable income – some of which I spend on technology for entertainment.
          Also, I can’t game for “10 hours a day”, and never did.
          I used to write video games & enjoyed that more than playing.
          I’m an IT professional, busy life w/mostly outdoor activities for entertainment & exercise.
          Do own a nice home with a large basement, where I was able to build a “VR room” (15×11′) as we’re finally at a time where PC gaming (& much more w/VR!) is interesting again.
          a “good week” of gaming for me is when I get to spend an hour or two – or a rainy weekend indoors perhaps a few more on that rare occasion.

          All of that said (& sharing out of way- so happy to know you have a gf)…. back to my point:
          Most, as in VAST MAJORITY of PC gamers use Steam
          For someone to be an assumed PC/gaming “tech enthusiast” who’s invested in this (basically) 1st-gen VR, you’d be a very rare exception to NOT be using Steam, the de facto std for gaming distribution. Hence, my question.

          Re: “on top of the fact that steam adds background software layers to the already intense VR calculations by both gpu and cpu.”
          That sounds like some Facebook headset FUD.
          Can you provide a link to your source for that, demonstrating that somehow using Steam for VR gaming is somehow more burdensome than Oculus?
          Otherwise, I’ll assume that’s incorrect/BS as I’ve not read that anywhere.
          Also, you have Valve behind Steam & the Vive…a massive & top-tier gaming giant. To imply that they’d bungle their platform for VR, somehow eating up resources, and upstart Facebook would “get it right” just sounds preposterous.

          • victor

            Wow!
            ok sorry to have hurt your feelings dude! Look I’ve used steam and I’ve used oculus direct, along with people who I converse in forums specifically for elite Dangerous and warthunder and found everyone with VIVE to have issues whereas oculus runs amazing. I personnally don’t care much about other games as those 2 are time intensive complex games and I am more than happy with them and using oculus. That is not to say the VIve won’t catch up soon but for now those 2 games run exceptionally well thru oculus direct. If you have a vive then I most certainly would recommend steam, but not for ELite dangerous specifically.

          • DougP

            No hurt feelings here. Just pointing out that much of your response seemed inappropriate & perhaps assumptive.

            I’ve heard about issues with Elite Dangerous.
            I think that the issues are related more to how the game was developed for VR, mostly targeting Oculus.
            Nothing to do with Steam & all about how it was developed.

            I think that it would be better for BOTH headsets if they’d dev on single platform like OpenVR, where basically the game will run optimized on both headsets.

            This is more of a learning curve for devs & maturation issue of the market than it is about specific limitations or overhead say with Steam. Honestly I’d be surprised if there wasn’t more overhead & less optimisation on Oculus Home, simply due to Valve’s dev expertise & experience.
            Regardless, these things will be ironed out in months/years to come.

            Understand you’re not playing other games.
            Personally, I’m trying out just about everything that’s out there right now – out of curiosity & wanting to demo for friends/family, but I get focusing in on just the titles you’re interested in.
            However, there are somewhere over 250 VR titles on Steam, so I’d not let concerns about Steam overhead deter you from eventually loading it on your system, should other titles appear that peak your interest.
            You can always use the web store for Steam to see if any “must try” titles come up.

            I was bummed to learn about the poor optimisation with Elite D for Vive. It stopped me for purchasing the title.

          • victor

            Sorry to hear you can’t play ELite with Vive. Meanwhile I am playing Elite with my oculus NOW and loving it!
            Agree with you I want both the Vive and oculus to do well in the longrun (along with starvr)

          • DougP

            You misread my comment.
            It’s not that I *can’t* play EliteD now. The reason I didn’t buy it was due to the bad reviews on Steam.
            My point about *issues* is that I’d heard some people w/some gripes about some things not being optimized.
            However, there are plenty of people playing ED on Vive NOW & loving(or not) it – quite possibly more w/Vive than Rift.

            If/when the reviews indicate it’s worthwhile, I’ll consider it.
            I’ve been more interested in House of the Dying Sun as my space-combat go-to.

            On a related note – since having the Vive the past months I’ve just fallen for room-scale. It’s just so much more immersive having your *hands*/*arms* in games. At some point I’ll probably settle back to doing some seated experiences ( I have some titles I just haven’t fired-up )…but for now, I’ll keep enjoying my room-scale games NOW.

            Agree having more VR headsets/systems out-in-wild & succeeding is great for the future growth of the market.
            Hopefully nobody on the PC-side will poison those waters by trying to pay-for-customers by locking content-exclusives…that would be awful.

          • victor

            So what exactly is the ADVANTAGE of using steam if the only games I care for is warthunder and elite dangerous?

          • DougP

            I never said there was an advantage to using steam if the only games you care about are those 2x titles.
            1) I was simply questioning a PC gamer *NOT* having/using Steam
            2) [since asking that, a different question, I’ll answer] Maybe some time in the future you’ll be more interested in playing only those 2x titles in VR? ( i.e. something great/better will come along – it does happen ) In meantime, you can use steam website to search/check reviews … in case something ever does come up.

            FYI – you can have steam installed & NOT running (i.e. taking up zero resources). Just launch if/win you wanted to use it.
            It simply gives you *options* …& access to the vast majority of games distributed on PC platform.

            Again, if you get tired of Elite/Warthunder at some point….or just want to try out something fun/cool/different to show you gf/friends in VR, you’ll have access to way more VR titles on steam.
            No reason to be afraid of it taking up resources – just turn it off when not using it.

          • JustNiz

            You can use SteamVR instead of oculus home which has a better VR interface, and most importantly it isn’t spying on you all the freaking time.

          • victor

            how do you know that it isn’t spying?
            even if it did, so what I don’t really care!
            I’m no schizo!

          • JustNiz

            Clueless.

  • Justos

    I find it curious that everyone jumps the gun on the steam survey results. I have a Rift and did not participate in it. Im pretty sure a high % of rift owners are the same boat. We use Home because its convenient and we want to support Oculus. I only use steam for my monitor games now. (I realize the article mentions this, im just gauging the comments)

    Btw it really doesn’t matter who sold more. Both companies are pouring a ton of money into this and they will both exist for quite some time. Lets just enjoy VR and stop the dick measuring contests.

    • DiGiCT Ltd

      There are also games on steam for oculus, probably more of them will be there in future due to the SteamVR dev kit which support both devices.
      It makes it for us devlopers more easy to deploy our games as they have a much larger user base as you can see in this article.
      Oculus home only has their users which is limited compared to steam users.
      Most people also dont like to have so many different platforms to play their games, Steam is just the best way to go for devs if you want to reach the most VR owners, either rift or vive its more easy to deploy and the game will simply work on both.

    • JeanClaude

      Arguably, one has good reasons to be mad at the hardware locking. Similar to how people used to hate on region locks when those were a thing.

      It’s hard to know if some of the exclusivity came allowed some games to be published, in the sense that they needed that money to even exist, or if it’s just a bribe not benefiting consumers at large.

  • DiGiCT Ltd

    The total is much higher as the estimation in the article as in China nobody got the tilt brush in the bundle, only the other 2 games.
    Also there will be users which did not use the code for those games as they actually already decided to play the game they wanted to buy or even just the Lab expierence.

    Personal i liked the lab the most as it shows really the fun in VR, the 3 free apps are lesser to have fun with.

  • Konchu

    Be interesting when we get some official numbers for the Vive and the Rift CS1. Not so much to stroke the fires of fanboys but to see how well VR is doing in general. Since both sold the units primarily themselves we may not see it until they have to report their financials.Retail sales are harder to hide. These numbers are more valid on the Vive I believe due to the fact they can search pack-in titles. But even pack ins could have many unclaimed. I have seen places on line to buy the unused codes so some people may have had no interest to use the codes, some could even be used by Oculus users anticipating touch and having access to these or using other devices like the Razor Hydra. Audio shield is one of the top titles for the Vive and it has around 56,000 which would make it around a 50% adoption rate hypothetically. Even if you had this sort of adoption rate on an Oculus tiltle in Steam with revive support that is a extremely unreliable.

  • LarZen

    I’m taking the numbers with a grain of salt. But it’s around that ballpark most likely. In other words extremely low. No wonder we only got short games and tech demos to play around with. It’s impossible to earn enough fast enough to keep ahead.

    No wonder Oculus is paying studios. They at least get some games with some more meat on the bones.

    Let’s not kid ourselves. The HTC Vive will be the underdog with Oculus Rift close behind. And with the PSVR and mobile VR being the market leaders in not only headsets in circulation but also software support and revenue.

    • Sam Illingworth

      Fine by me. If PSVR grows the market that benefits us all, provided the games aren’t all exclusives.

  • Tumbler

    I’m a Brit in China, I didn’t get ANY of the “western” games, but 3 Chinese alternatives, this plus the fact that they are starting to push Vive here in China might mean the numbers are significantly higher. China is using “Viveport” instead of Steam, and there was recently a “Mobile technology” exhibition in Shanghai, Vive, Rift and Gear were present in estimated quantites of 40 / 20 / 30 (rough).

    • JustNiz

      Does the chinese firewall block steam?

      • Tumbler

        Simple answer is “yes” more complicated answer is “sometimes” …

  • Victor Carnaggio

    I have an Oculus DK2 and the consumer version of Vive. Overall, the direction Vive went with open platform and room scale flexibility left no doubt that the Vive is the way forward.

  • Shiner

    Weird, I got a Vive, but never bothered to even get interest at Job-simulator. While I have seen it is in the store, I am pretty sure it is not in my library either.
    So, I am pretty safe that my Vive is left out of this statistic. Without trying to place my case as the majority, I fail to see how this one game would relate to actual Vive sales.

    (PS, Vive won me over because of room movement. Well worth the extra Euros. Having it delivered within days was nice, but not what pulled me over)

  • nathan

    i seriously doubt the data is even close to accurate. there selling so many of them that they cant keep parts in stock. Palmer lucky said they sell 50k of them a month so there’s about 200k of them out there. i have both and hardly use the vive as my living room is to small and i keep waking my lamps and the wall with the remotes. i almost never use steam for vr game purchases as oculus home is fairly nice and easy to navigate. although now i wish i did on multi plat games. OCULUS RIFT. the good oculus fits my head better has less screen door affect and the Fresnel rings are less noticeable. the bad the cord is short compared to vive ,the nose gap is to big although it does come in handy for scratching your nose and seeing the keyboard and it doesnt come with oculus touch. HTC VIVE. the good comes with a long cord and vr controllers it has a bright screen. the bad $200 more then oculus, screen door and Fresnel rings are more noticeable, it’s disorienting when tracking fails almost broke a hip from falling. i would recommend oculus for the average gamer that didn’t like kinect or ps move. but if you got the money and a big house htc vive is good to i guess. also on a side note i think oculus will be xbox scorpios vr headset.

    • JustNiz

      At this point I wouldn’t trust a single word that comes out of Luckey’s mouth.

      • nathan

        to be honest i dont think it’s lucky’s fault he is the president of oculus but i think the facebook ceo’s are the one’s fucking things up. facebook just needs to let him do his thing.

  • David

    You guys keep forgetting about China. Steam doesn’t exist there and HTC is heavily investing in marketimarketinin Chinese markets

    • JustNiz

      I can;t believe that no-one in China uses Steam (unless the great firewall of China is blocking it? genuine question, I wouldn’t know). Otherwise there’s nothing stopping you from using Steam from anywhere in the world

  • Munchy

    no offence but after trying to close games for other vr sets I’m not gona invest in oculus, itll be htc vive or something else, and not sony, I don’t like the whole ps4.2 bs., I had enough of these terrible calls from company’s and then back peddling only to see the companies continuously do this bs, eg microsoft always online xbox one, one drive changes, and force install were x doesn’t mean no, I may be stuck in microsoft eco system but I’m not in oculus, so its easy to stay away from that brand.

  • Sabina Guerra

    I bet that thief who owns Facebook is now seeing Gabe in his nightmares. That’s what you get mother*ucker. That’s what you get.

  • Monitorm

    Its going to take at least several Million units sold before AAA game developers commit to native VR games. Basically most content for the next few years is going to be Demo in nature with the odd High end game supporting a VR strap on.

  • Obi Gen

    I think when it has a base of around 500,000 or greater and software with a little more substance then those….”games” it has I will consider one.

    If anything its a neat novelty item.

  • Chris

    The vive has blown my mind for the last 4 weeks in a row. Best time of my life. And i did not even try most of the games I bought from steam sale….

  • Bat Manson

    Why don’t you take the lab? It is the app bundled with the Vive. Owners on steamspy do not count twice if they have 2 different devices… The number is 200k as of July 12th.

  • Mike Jackson

    Anyone would be crazy nuts to buy oculus rift over the htc vive

  • Jon

    100k really isn’t that much considering it is a new product….