oculus-john-carmack — John Carmack at Oculus Connect 5 | Image courtesy Oculus

Ex-Oculus CTO: ‘Beat Saber was much more important to VR’s growth than Half-Life: Alyx’

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Feb 7, 2025

John Carmack, former CTO of Oculus and legendary programmer, isn’t shy when it comes to voicing his opinions on all things XR. To Carmack, Meta’s block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber (2018) was “far more important than Half-Life: Alyx” in pushing adoption of the medium.

While Valve’s PC VR game Half-Life: Alyx (2020) is largely prized as the pinnacle of ‘AAA’ VR gaming, Carmack maintains Beat Saber was “far more important,” owing to the hit rhythm game’s release on the original Quest in 2019.

“Whenever I post something critical of Meta’s handling of VR, there are always some old timers that pile on with “Yeah! More AAA PC VR Games is the way to win!”, Carmack says in a recent X post. “To be clear — standalone VR was the biggest win that VR ever had, by a huge margin, and Beat Saber was far more important than Half-Life Alyx.”

Images courtesy Meta, Valve

To Carmack, creating ‘AAA’ games exclusively for PC VR headsets simply isn’t a worthwhile pursuit for studios looking for a return on investment:

“Using a PC to drive VR experiences is a boutique niche. Still valuable and definitely worth supporting as a bonus feature, but not something that was going to turn into even console level success, let alone mobile level,” Carmack says.

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It’s difficult to argue with Carmack on that point. To date, Beat Saber has generated 10 million unit sales on Quest alone, which doesn’t take into account the mountain of paid DLC music packs Meta has released over the years, including packs from Metallica, Britney Spears, Daft Punk, 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Dr Dre and more.

While Valve has never released specific download numbers, according to estimates aggregated by SteamDB, Half-Life: Alyx has between 2.2 million and 4.4 million owners at the time of this writing.

That’s not to say ‘AAA’ PC games can’t create what Carmack calls “VR bonus features” though, which would ostensibly entail sidelining VR support as an optional mode while developing for traditional monitors:

“The economics of AAA development were never going to be widely brought to bear on a PC accessory. I do think there is opportunity for AAA content to profitably have “VR bonus features”, but not fully designed-for-VR projects at comparable levels of effort.”

Daniel Dobson

A non VR version of Beat Saber, would be a diminished version. It plays to the strengths of the hardware, just as Tetris once did on handhelds.
- Ondrej
  
  Not sure if Tetris is a good analogy since Tetris was invented without any involvement of handhelds.
  - Christian Schildwaechter
    
    Tetris was originally developed for PC, but it really took of because a very clever distributer convinced Nintendo that bundling Tetris with the original Game Boy would open it to a much wider audience than bundling one of their own IP titles like Mario, thanks to the simple to grasp rules and general accessibility the simpler Tetris gameplay offered.
    
    So in fact very similar to Beat Saber, which also first released on PC and PlayStation in 2018, and only later became a launch title for the 2019 Quest 1.
- mirak
  
  A non VR version of Alyx would be diminished version.
  You are sabotaging VR by saying otherwise.
  Also if Alyx was available on Quest, I can't imagine it wouldn't be even more successfull than beat saber.
  - Daniel Dobson
    
    I hope I'm not sabotaging VR – my conjecture is that the Half Life series was successful and beloved already, before Alyx. It had already achieved greatness, without VR?
    
    But I am not sure that the same is true of Beat Saber? I don't think I'd find it great, without VR.
    
    Seems like we would both welcome Alyx on Quest, and perhaps some day we will do.
    - mirak
      
      It will be available sooner on an HTC pc standalone headset hopefully.
    - mirak
      
      But it's like saying your average VR wave shooter with pretty much no story or map design, would be a diminished version without VR.
      
      So because Alyx does the effort of having a story compared to a basic VR wave shooter or beatsaber, this would magically make it less a VR game.
      
      But if you look closer at it, there are many things in Alyx that wouldn't work without VR, like rythm,of the games, all' the mini games ,the combat sequences are tailored for VR and would be dull without VR.
      
      Because if you go there, beatsaber is basically stealing Star wars light sabers and if it had a story and maps, would be like Starwars old republic games etcetera, and without VR it would miss the VR interactions and using sabers and make it duller.
      And you would say that it had success anyway, but it's not probably interesting the same people.
      
      As I said I find this thinking like scoring a own goal, because it makes thinks that as soon as a game as a story that would have any sort of interest in non VR, then it would automatically make VR irrelevant.
      
      That's maybe what the company thinks, that if a good story can make bucks with non VR, why waste it on VR.
- CaryMGVR
  
  You ever the movie "Tetris" …?
  
  Disturbing and very frightening. lol
  - Daniel Dobson
    
    I will have a watch – thanks :)
Dale Kirkley

I wish he was wrong.

He isn't.
- mirak
  
  His reasoning falls apart when you think that Alyx could have been ported to Quest and sell way more headsets.
The Power

This guy is short sighted. Alyx is the most important VR game ever if not one of the most important video games ever. You can't measure the importance of a game from just looking at downloads and revinue. Beat saber is like a phone game you play on VR whereas Alyx is what VR is supposed to be. The problem is VR still has not been adopted by enough people and this is mainly due to the lack of AAA game experiences. It's a bit of a catch 22 unfortunately. I do think his advice of developing AAA games for both flat screen and VR at the same time is a fair way forward to satisfy the bean counters who are solely interested in revinue but also continue to push the state of the art in gaming. Eventually VR will be the main platform and flat screen support will be the afterthought rather than how it is now…so long as companies continue to produce content so that utilization of VR can continue to rise.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Ah, another in the eye of the beholder thing YOU think that Alyx is everything VR should be. Others think that Beatsaber is everything they think VR should be. Personally I think both are equally important and gave their strengths in the advancements of VR. Not everybody is interested in games like Half life:Alyx and not everybody is interested in games like Beatsaber.
  - mirak
    
    Sure but if they ported Alyx to Quest, his point would be non existant, because they would have sold way more Quest than Beatsaber has helped to sell.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      Again, don't underestimate the simplicity of a game that attracks many people. Alyx is a single player storyline game, which most people will only play once, so you'll need more of those to keep people interested in putting on the headset. Games like beatsaber are games that are played over and over indefinitly and keep people coming back.
      and again, it's many times not the graphics that maje games great or keep people coming back, it's the gameplay.
      Even tough I have HL:A for many years now, as it came free with the index controllers I bought for my HTC Vive Pro, I still haven't played it yet, but games like beatlabs on my Pico 4 keeps being the games I play most, and I am a big adventure game lover, so HL:A should be the games I really like to play.
      
      I'm sure HL:A would sell a lot of copies if released in the Quest, but I doubt it would be the systemseller you think it to be. Let's not forget back in the days with the original gameboy it was tetris that drove the numbers, not the Nintendo mario games.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Fully agree on simpler experiences often seeing way more overall engagement, proven just by looking at the Quest Top 20 or mobile games now generating more than half of all gaming revenue.
        
        [youtu_be/D1dv39-ekBM enlightening/depressing 58sec short by Thor/PirateSoftware for those believing that more advanced gameplay will win in the end]
        
        But please, try HL:A, even if only the first ten minutes. Not because it is a mind altering experience or the best thing since sliced bread. It was for some, esp. those deep into the Half-Life franchise that had been waiting for 13 years, but if you've already had it for a couple of years, that won't be you. Instead simply because it is such a great example how to make a world in VR feel richer and alive. And it's not the big things like turning objects into weapons on-the-fly, but the minute details and consistence of the world they built. It is definitely worth exploring for at least a couple of minutes just to have experienced it, even if pretty much everybody has seen the open scene somewhere else by now.
      - mirak
        
        When Alyx was released, once I realised it didn't have multiplayer like Half Life 1 and limited modding possibilities, I though that Valve blew a huge opprtunity for VR there by not making Alyx a plateform to gaming and modding like Half Life was.
        
        Multiplayer is what made me spend a lot of time in VR with Pavlov VR, and Pavlov is an exact clone of Counter Strike which was a HL1 mod.
      - Herbert Werters
        
        By the way, I've played four big story Alyx mods that offered me at least the same playing time as Alyx.
      - mirak
        
        I played some mods like gunman contracts that was pretty fun and must be released as standalone game I think, but I have to do the ones you talk about.
      - Herbert Werters
        
        Levitation, ZHEPTICS, …
        These are two of which the names spontaneously come to mind.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        Oh, I'll probably LOVE HL:A, no doubt about that, one of the reasons I still haven't played it, is due me thinking the HTC Vive Pro (1) won't give me better experience visually speaking and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. HL:A is exactly the type of games I like, adventure/exploring/puzzle. I already saw a major improvement visually when I used my Pico 4 wirelessly (on my current old rig) over the HTC Vive Pro/wirelessmodule, with the lab and Alyx rooms in steam home. It amazes me how much detail those scenes have compared to other games I've played like Alice, Red matter 1, Downward spiral horus station, Robinson the journey, Abduction and many more like that. Also time comes into perspective, I want to keep playing until it is done, but these are long games so I can only play them during vacation when I have multiple consecutive days.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Fair enough. In this case I hope both for you and all of us that soon, ideally before your next vacation, we will get a number of affordable, hires and at least optionally wireless HMDs we can upgrade too for an even better HL:A experience, so glorious it will be basically impossible to stop playing it (again).
        
        Another benefit you get from waiting several years is that by now there are a number of impressive DLC sized HL:A mods. Alyx with about 12h playtime was longer than most VR games, significantly longer when obsessing over all the tiny details. Or adding meta gameplay like carrying around a rodent friend that some Half-Life 2 players chose as a replacement for their emotional support garden gnome. But the game still ends, and having a bunch of often great free extra content can come in handy in case of withdrawal symptoms.
        
        Spoiler alert: those looking for a small VR friend, but not fond of floppy rodents, could check the side of Russel's fridge or the junkyard outside of his lab. I never tried it myself, but make sure to hold him tight during all loading screens.
      - mirak
        
        I never bought or played beat saber.
        I tried pistol whip which is similar, and although I enjoyed it, I don't find this replayable much, although yeah maybe if new levels are released from time to time I could come back to it, but I don't really feel like I want to improve my scores that much.
        
        So while I agree Alyx isn't much replayable, I did it two times I think, it's sort of the same with beatsaber without new expansions.
        
        The game I found really replayable for me, is a mulitplayer game like Pavlov.
        
        I think beatsaber has multiplayer I see how it could be much more interesting with some form of direct contest.
        
        But a game like Alyx, provided a multiplayer, dlc or efficient modding were added, similar to what happened on Half Life 1 which was almost a game plateform, I do think it would change your perception of things.
        
        I think Valve blew something here by not making it an equivalent of HL1 with multiplayer, better modding possibilities etcetera.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        Beatsaber and pistol whip are completely different type of games. PW has a progress through levels with an ending, at least from what I've played, whereas BS is just merely different songs which you can replay over and over like many do as they also use it as a fitness exercise.
        I can't remember any multiplayer addon to HL1, only mods and TC's (like the immense popular counterstrike). Multiplayer does add on a lot of replayability, like you mention with games like Pavlov (for me it was (non VR) tactical ops (which was created out of dislike of the camper/slowmovement of Countrrstrike, but more arcadelike), followed by Battlefield heroes until that one closed, followed by Dirty bomb, until that one kinda died out, and then followed by Counter strike Globa Offensive, which is more a modern version of Tactical Ops then it is of Counter Strike, as it is more arcadelike, which I like).
      - Herbert Werters
        
        That's a purely subjective assessment you're making.
      - Andrew Jakobs
        
        No, rather an objective assessment, just look at history, as it is a lot of times the simple games which attract most players. Hell even a game like gorillatag is a good example (personally not a game I like, but it sure has a lot of people playing it).
        And I do think HL:A has everything a great AAA VR game should have and whish there were many more games like that, as I like adventure/exploring games.
      - Herbert Werters
        
        But everyone acts as if money doesn't play a Rolex. There is simply a difference when you compare F2P games or endless games with full-price singleplayer story games. You can't do that.
xyzs

Well, I deeply respect JC, and he's right on the financial and growth side of things, Beat Saber is a mainstream banger that was needed for VR sells.

However, technology is also defined by what the state-of-the-art looks like, and HLA is by far the gem that showed the world what VR can achieve.
So, it's not the Beat Saber is more important, they are both important in 2 different ways.

Let's take smartphones, iPhone was the top reference and a luxury product from the beginning (the HLA of smartphones) and Android Phones were the much more accessible and much more popular in terms of sales (the Beat saber of smartphones).

Yet, if humanity had to mention and remember one smartphone product line this is to be remembered, would it be the famous iPhone, or would it be Android ?

The answer is the iPhone, same goes with HLA vs Beat saber.
- Dragon Marble
  
  Why is Beat Sable not state-of-the-art in terms of innovation? What exactly is HLA's technological achievement?
  
  If you spend more resources, you build a bigger game. That's a given. On the other hand, if someone ports Alyx to Quest, I would call taht a real technological achievement.
  - xyzs
    
    Beat saber has zero innovation.
    They borrow the lightsaber concept from Star Wars and blended it with existing Fruit Ninja, then added music to it to make it more attractive and fun. That's it.
    Any dev with 1 year experience can develop that game easy.
    
    I am even surprised they were not sued by Disney greedy lawyers yet.
    - Dragon Marble
      
      The reason HLA may still be the king is simply because — after it revealed the ceiling of the VR market — all subsequent developers have readjusted and put a corresponding ceiling on the budgets.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      Uhm, you say beatsaber didn't innovate, because it took elements and brought them together. And then you say HL:A did innovate, even though it also really didn't do anything new except combine elements that already existed.
      in reality, there hasn't been a real innovative game around for decades as they are all just incremental steps forward of combined things that already existed.
      
      and you say that any good dev with 1 year experience can come up with beatsaber, but none did. Sometimes it's just the simplicity that makes it great. I'll bet more people enjoy Beatsaber as they would Half Life Alyx.
      in that regard you could say that HL:A isn't really great as people were merely desperate for HL content and THAT is what made HL:A so successfull. It would have been more impressive if they were so succesfull with a brand new IP which didn't rely in a very large fanbase already.
  - Christian Schildwaechter
    
    Are you serious? Even if we ignore all the incredible world building, emphasis on exploration and direct interaction, and all the books that will be written only about the design innovations that HL:A brought to VR, the level of purely technical optimization they achieved is mind boggling. We saw Fallout 4 VR forcing GTX 1080s to their knees in 2017 due to lacking optimization, and for most it took 3rd party FSR hacks to get it to run at decent speed.
    
    Meanwhile 2020 HL:A not only ran well on a GTX 1060, but it dynamically adapted to the available performance with barely any visible degradation on weaker machines. It looked gorgeous everywhere, and weapons handling was phenomenal on day one, esp. compared to the WTF mess of unpatched FO4 lacking scopes. Heck, people managed to stream HL:A from a Steam Deck with VRDesktop and its SSW reprojection on Quest. Not necessarily recommended, but playable, and testament to the incredible technical achievement and level of optimization HL:A offered in addition to its groundbreaking game design.
    
    And as esp. the CPU part in Quest 3 is still lacking compared the power of the APU in the 2022 Steamdeck, a port of HL:A with lots of CPU heavy physics would still result in a subpar experience. Even if for some reasons Valve decided to support Quest in its required Source game engine in the first place. Mobile HL:A will have to wait for an x86 AMD APU powered Deckard.
    - Dragon Marble
      
      HLA is not open world. They took the approach of "crafting a small room at a time".
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        That argument is valid for Red Matter 2, which is carefully designed to only ever have to render a very limited amount of objects, and heavily relies on pre-baked lighting. This is what causes people to wrongly assume that mobile ARM SoCs can now offer near the performance of PCVR, while it really is mostly excellent level design and cleverly painting the walls.
        
        HL:A is a linear game (not "open world"), but offers tons of pretty open spaces with lots of moving objects and dynamic lighting still simply impossible on mobile. The opening scene has you standing on a balcony, looking over City 17. Yes, it also uses clever level design to reduce the load on mid-range GPUs that also have to render it in much higher resolutions and frame rates for two eyes than flat AAA titles. But the wide and open landscapes in FO4 you were probably referring to with "open world" aren't the only parts where performance was abysmal. And game developers have know for some time how to deal with open views through draw distance tricks like level of detail and imposters, which is why flat Fallout 4 ran just fine on PS4 hardware from 2013.
      - CaryMGVR
        
        "Red Matter 2" is garbage.
        
        *"They took
lobtronic

Sad that this is a current conversation when HL:A came out in 2020 and Beat Saber 2019.
Christian Schildwaechter

TL;DR: There is an important difference between showing what is possible and showing that it is financially viable, and both HL:A and Beat Saber were crucial for VR, just in different ways.

The wording is important here. Carmack doesn't say that AAA PCVR doesn't make sense, he says AAA PCVR "only" won't be financially viable. He also doesn't say that AAA Quest would be financially viable either. This is pretty much what Sony seems to have concluded when designing the PSVR2: the VR market in general is too niche to pay for the insane budgets of AAA, so the best you can do is attach VR to already existing AAA projects that will make their money back with flat screen sales, now called hybrid games.

And this has delivered some of the most impressive VR games, first on PSVR1 with Resident Evil 7, Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR, and now with RE4/RE8 and Gran Turismo 7 on PSVR2. A lot of PCVR users playing flat AAA titles in VR with the help of UEVR is pretty much the DIY version of hybrid games.

Even though some early hybrid games were very successful, VR was clearly an afterthought, with esp. proper 6DoF controller support missing, so everybody started asking for games designed directly for VR instead of being patched for it, which seamed feasible when VR was still expected to rapidly grow to tens of millions of users. But nobody had done proper 6DoF VR design before, and out of the big gaming studios, only Ubisoft dared to release a number of mid-sized VR-only games that were still mostly experiments.

And this is where Valve stepped in with Half-Life: Alyx: not to prove that AAA VR was financially viable, instead to show how to do VR game design right. No doubt they hoped that this would entice other AAAs to follow suit, but it first and foremost was a beacon to guide the design of future VR game development. HL:A blew a lot of people's mind and showed what you can do in this immersive medium. And even though we never got a second title like Valve's lighthouse project that lists a whopping 393 people in the credits, you can clearly see the impact it had on current hybrid design in for example RE8.

I'd agree with Carmack that Beat Saber did way more to popularize VR than HL:A, simply because it provided such an excellent and recognizable entry point drawing in new users. I mean, you get to play play with lightsabers, and tons of people who never touched a VR HMD will recognize it immediately. Beat Saber users also show way higher retention, and it was the first game that made people realize you could use VR for fitness, bringing in a whole new group of users. All this helped grow VR and thereby made developing other VR games even possible.

HL:A didn't do all that much for growing VR directly, even though we saw a one-time doubling of SteamVR user numbers after it released that never dropped back to pre-release levels. It mostly showed what VR can do, and it's legacy will be less pushing VR into the mainstream, and more having forever changed the minds of a generation of game developers that will design everything that will still come in the future. VR would be much poorer without both Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx.
- Herbert Werters
  
  Everything that needs to be said has been said. Thank you!
Ondrej

1. Full beat saber experience was never possible on standalone. Only on PC. And vrchat's impact was far more important for human lives than beat saber and that case is even more skewed towards PC.

2. It's funny how many PC enthusiasts are not aware that after releasing Rage Carmack became a MOBILE dev only. His ONLY reason to join Oculus was the deal with Samsung to create GearVR. He also did NOT want to join the Rift/PC department and always stayed at GearVR/GO/Quest. He also believed controllers didn't have future and it should be just hand tracking. Ironic with Beat saber (and he did notice that irony)

3. John is a statistics guy. He is far more impressed by mainstream appeals and big numbers of users than anything else, like quality or artistic relevancy. He was following creator of Flappy Bird the moment it became viral – do you think he was impressed by gameplay? No. Just the number of downloads.

Tl;Dr stop projecting your vision of a person on a person. Just because Carmack is a genius programmer and inventor it doesn't mean he has to perceive the world the way you imagine a person like that should.
- brandon9271
  
  What is full beat saber experience that's missing on the standalone Quest version?
  - Rob Scott
    
    I had the same question. I’m guessing because the tether gets in the way.
    - brandon9271
      
      But He said the only way to get the full experiences on PC.. which I stream wirelessly so there's no tether either way. lol
      - Rob Scott
        
        Oh yeah, had it backwards. Dunno.
    - GeraldT
      
      You never experienced Beat Saber … until you got a leash!
      
      Doubt that is it … likely something about the modding options. In any case, that argument seems pretty weak, pretty sure people on standalone consider Beat Saber just as fun as those on PCVR.
      
      And I am pretty much a PCVR only guy … just love standalone for the fact that it enabled us to get rid of that leash!
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      But that's just the full experience, having an extra obstacle of having to deal with the cable…
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  id Software released Rage in 2011. Carmack was very important for the early success of Oculus, which started as an obscure project known mostly to those posting on the MTBS3D (meant to be seen) forum concerned with all types of stereoscopic gaming, which included Carmack. He took Luckey's duck-taped PCVR HMD prototype and showed it to journalists during E3 2012 with a hacked version of Doom 3, the YouTube videos of which are still worth watching.
  
  He also tried to broker a deal for an official Doom 3 VR part with ZeniMax, who by then owned id Software. Carmack's support helped a lot with the DK1 kickstarter and Oculus getting venture capital support, and his firmware changes improved the tracking accuracy at a time when Oculus was only planing to release a VR HMD as a PC peripheral, years before there was talk about Facebook buying Oculus or a mobile HMD deal with Samsung.
  
  He no doubt became a major advocate for mobile VR at Oculus, believing it to be a pre-requisite for mass adaption, and porting Minecraft to Gear VR himself to proof it was viable. But claiming that he became a mobile dev only after Rage and was only interested in mobile VR is patently false.
  
  Carmack wasn't only the one that enabled 3D first person action games with the initial id engine for the 1993 doom, but also a firm believer in PC gaming and PCVR. And he had his hands in a lot of pretty revolutionary products not only requiring technical competence, but also a lot of insight into what the market wants or will actually accept. So simply dismissing anything he says based on his experience of spending literally decades with cutting edge technology would not be wise.
GeraldT

Both titles are incredibly important for VR … but I think Beat Saber was more important because it actually was a system seller for the gameplay, while Alyx was for the IP (while still done incredibly well).

The worst thing that happened to Oculus/VR was the Meta sale … back in the day we had so many Game Jams and were really exploring, then Evil Corp decided to put up barriers and instead of dealing with uncontrollable indies, they tried to win the audience with big names etc. to make sure they have full control of their walled garden.

Gameplay is king! And we should have had a thousand indies instead of a few AAA titles that only burned money without creating something worthwhile. Valve did better, but they decided to not turn it into a cash burn battle with Evil Corp and I do not blame them.
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  I still hold a grudge against Oculus for out of the blue shutting down Oculus Share, the site where they hosted a lot of the early, very experimental VR stuff, because they wanted people to only use their official "for pay" store. This pretty much destroyed the record we had of the first days of consumer VR, and especially the cutting edge part.
  
  Admittedly this is what App Lab was for. Developers wanting to release on Quest as the largest VR platform treated it like an App Store light for games that didn't make it through Meta's obscure store rules, but it really was a laboratory intended for experimental stuff. That it never saw the level of innovation we saw on Oculus Share or other platforms like itch_io today is more due to developers focusing on apps that might sell rather than exploring what is possible.
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Without the money if Facebook, I doubt if Oculus would have been able to survive. If it weren't for Facebook, the DK2 with slight fixes would have been the CV1, and as an original owner of the DK2 I can attest that it would not have been a good release. It still is the only headset I own which makes me nausious within minutes, even older headsets with crappier lenses/resolution/framerate never did that. CV1 as we know it was only possible, at that time, with the money from Facebook. And no matter how you not want it to be, it was thanks to facebook VR is as large as it is today, without facebook we would still have a much smaller group of users and less interest from developers to even try making VR games.
  - Christian Schildwaechter
    
    TL;DR: Pico over several years releasing a series of (mobile) HMDs while working with less capital than Oculus had already collected before DK2 even shipped, hints that things might have also worked, even though differently and at a slower pace, without the Facebook purchase.
    
    You are right that without the massive influx of money, CV1 would have been much worse. But the initial plan was for it to release a few months after the USD 350 DK2, which shipped in 2014-07, for a price in the same "ballpark". The Oculus Rift CV1 finally shipped two years later for USD 600 with an Xbox One controller, as the Touch controllers would only become available half a year later for an extra USD 200.
    
    It is of course hard to predict what could have happened otherwise, but without being bought by Facebook, Oculus would probably have released a 2014 HMD mostly intended for seated VR with regular PC games patched for 6DoF head tracking and stereoscopy, already featuring an 72Hz+ OLED display, but with only 960*1080 instead of 1080*1200 pixels per eye, for significantly less money, maybe USD 400 instead of USD 600.
    
    DK2 was a giant step forward from DK1 that shipped a mere 15 months earlier with a 60Hz LCD 640*800 per eye display and 3DoF headtracking only. Oculus was iterating rather fast back then, and the DK2 used the complete front section of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 incl. the working touch screen. The Note 4 with a 2560*1440 OLED display that was later used with the first Gear VR became available in 2014-10, so they could rather easily have upgraded the display to beyond the resolution that CV1 offered in 2016.
    
    CV1 was perceived as very expensive, esp. since it lacked 6DoF controllers, which brought the price to double of what a non-Facebook CV1 might have costs almost two years earlier. In what was probably the first step towards heavily subsidizing hardware prices with Facebook money, Oculus then dropped the price for CV1 plus Touch from USD 800 to only USD 500 because the HTC Vive with full room tracking was vastly outselling CV1 that offered mostly standing VR with two constellation cameras, and only experimental room tracking.
    
    So there could have been an alternative future where Oculus never got bough, instead relied on more investment rounds after already having collected USD 91mn in addition to the USD 2.4mn raised on Kickstarter. Given that Pico, founded in 2015, released several mobile headsets, up to the very Quest 2 like Pico 3 Neo Link with DP-in, all with only USD 87.2mn in total financing before being bought by ByteDance in 2021, this could have worked for Oculus too for quite a while.
    
    And with the much lower investment required for "dumb" HMDs without SoC, RAM, flash, battery etc., and a focus on what we would now call hybrid games with much lower development costs than newly created room scale VR games, VR could have grown slowly, but steadily. Oriented first along what a core of VR enthusiasts with strong stomachs could handle, but iterating much faster, mostly using phone displays (which made it do 4K by 2015) and powerful PC GPUs. We will never know how successful this version of Oculus could have been, but it is pretty sure that VR would look very different today.
    - Herbert Werters
      
      Oh man, that's exactly what many people don't want to understand. Thank you for the summary.
STL

Carmack is unfit for the job. He doesn’t understand where the money is. Without modded Skyrim VR, there would be no VR. People playing modded Skyrim VR pay „whatever it takes“!
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  I guess you play Skyrim as you main VR game…
Republican Vampire

Vr is dead
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  As you disqus profile is private, I cannot check, but I vaguely remember you posting exactly this (several times) in the past, and nothing else here on Road to VR. So I can only assume from your user name that every few months you wake up from your grave to distribute the same braindead message, which some people still alive have propagated basically for a decade over and over again.
  
  The discussion of those that actually use VR that happened in between should really have shown you that your ideas are mostly routed in false assumptions, or never bothering to check the facts, or simply believing the wrong people. Not surprising if you lock yourself away from the real world in a coffin most of the time that also serves as an echo chamber.
  
  Or maybe you simply want VR to be dead just like you, because those cold nights in the dark coffin can get very lonely. Having some nice, cozy virtual reality around to show you a wide and open world full of opportunities could let you forget that you boxed yourself in (mentally). Which surely would be nice, esp. if it was also dead, just like you, so it could understand you better. But just think of it this way: all the new teenage users that have flooded esp. Quest, now causing Meta to switch more to a free-to-play, make Horizon Worlds great again approach, bring in a lot of fresh blood.
  - Republican Vampire
    
    Get some ass loser
    - CaryMGVR
      
      One time, I kissed a girl ….
      No, really !
      
      Well, she doesn't live here, she lives in Canadia, right?
      And then one time, right, she stole money from her Mom's purse, right?
      And then she bought drugs and then we took marihuana.
      
      THIS I SWEAR!!
- mirak
  
  They sold more Quest for christmas than PS5 or Xbox.
  - Christian Schildwaechter
    
    ~~They~~ Amazon US sold more Quest for Christmas than PS5 or Xbox. Which isn't necessarily representative, as a lot of consoles are traditionally sold by retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target.
    
    Total PS5 sales estimates are at 71mn worldwide after Q4'24, an increase of 5.4mn compared to the quarter before. Even if 100% of MRL's USD 1.08bn Q4'24 revenue would have been from selling USD 300 Quest 3S, this would be only 3.6mn units, despite Quest 3S just having been released, and PS5 being as old as Quest 2.
    
    Overall PS5 has sold at least 2.5 times as many units as all Quest HMDs since 2019 combined, and until a couple of months ago, the number of still in use PS4 matched that of PS5. VR is definitely not dead, but comparing it to the currently most successful gaming console still makes it look rather weak.
    - mirak
      
      The argument of amazon sales is not weak when answering to a post that says VR is dead.
      
      Now yeah I forgot to say it was amazon.
  - Herbert Werters
    
    Playstation had a turnover of around USD 28.9 billion in the 2023/2024 financial year, which ended on March 31, 2024. Meta generated revenue of USD 2.1 billion in 2024. I don't think we need to talk about Amazon sales here. I don't think that matters when it comes to the figures. Meta would have to sell 10 times more quests than Playstations to achieve these sales. The Quest has a user and a revenue problem.
    - mirak
      
      I you don't believe at all in VR yes, that's the catch :D
David Aspinall

you don't have to use your brain in Beat Saber, says it all……..
TonyVT SkarredGhost

Both have been important for different reasons
FrankB

He’s not wrong, there is a large chunk of Quest owners who bought their Quest just to play Beat Sabre. It’s an easy game for newcomers to VR to understand would have zero nausea.
mirak

I think all his reasoning falls appart if you think that Alyx could have been ported to Quest.

It would sold way more headsets, and way more games.
FRISH

Doesn't surprise me, beat saber is iconic. It's a great entry to VR with low motion sickness and has high replayability. Half life Alyx is a great example of what VR is capable of and I'm glad it exists. Still looking at steam charts, the player count does seem underwhelming for the effort. It doesn't surprise me that others haven't gone all in. Hopefully more games can consider on having standard and VR modes.
ShaneMcGrath

Each to their own, I bought a Quest 3 for AAA style games streaming off my high end PC.
Can't stand beat saber.
Runesr2

Number of ratings for Beat Saber:

Steam: 67,800
Rift: 13,200
PSVR PSVR2: 25,900
Quest 1-2-3(s) & Pro: 52,100

So seems Beat Saber meant much more for PCVR and Playstation VR than for the Quests. Still we are talking about nearly 160,000 ratings in total.

Alyx has 83,000 ratings today, about half of the total number of Beat Saber ratings.
No doubt Beat Saber has been important for VR adoption. But Beat Saber does not at all show the potential of VR – there is no reality to Beat Saber, you just stand still and slice boxes – while Alyx showed the full power of true VR immersion.
Comparing Beat Saber to Alyx is like comparing apples to oranges. Beat Saber is more for the sport, Alyx is for the full immersion. It's not really about how these game are different, but how such games work together in strengthening VR as a platform.
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  I recently compared ratings and the number of people that got to the first achievement for Metro Awakening and Skydance's Behemoths between Quest and Steam. And even though these won't be representative, for both the ratio of people that got the achievement to those leaving a rating was about 1.8:1 for Steam vs Quest (1.7x for Metro, 1.9 for Behemoth.) If the same applies to Beat Saber, with Steam users ~1.8x as likely to leave a rating, you end up with either
  
  Steam: 67,800
  Quest 1-2-3(s) & Pro: 52,100 * 1.8 = 93,780 or
  
  Steam: 67,800/1.8 ≈ 37,677
  Quest 1-2-3(s) & Pro: 52,100,
  
  depending on whether SteamVR users are 1.8x as likely to leave a rating than Quest/Rift/PSVR users, or Quest users 1.8x less likely to leave a rating than SteamVR/Rift/PSVR users. And most likely every platform will have a different factor that will also vary at least somewhat depending on the game.
  
  With HL:A being SteamVR only, corrected for "leaving rating likeliness" cross-platform Beat Saber would have significantly more than twice the number of actual players, but trying to calculate this will come with a giant margin of error due to the different, unknown factors. And, like you wrote, be very much like comparing apples to oranges anyway.
- Christian Schildwaechter
  
  I recently compared ratings and the number of people that got to the first achievement for Metro Awakening and Skydance's Behemoths between Quest and Steam. And even though these won't be representative, for both the ratio of people that got the achievement to those leaving a rating was about 1.8:1 for Steam vs Quest (1.7x for Metro, 1.9 for Behemoth.) [www_roadtovr_com/batman-arkham-shadow-1-million-players-quest-3/#comment-6644125941] If the same applies to Beat Saber, with Steam users ~1.8x as likely to leave a rating, you end up with either
  
  Steam: 67,800
  Quest 1-2-3(s) & Pro: 52,100 * 1.8 = 93,780 or
  
  Steam: 67,800/1.8 ≈ 37,677
  Quest 1-2-3(s) & Pro: 52,100,
  
  depending on whether SteamVR users are 1.8x as likely to leave a rating than Quest/Rift/PSVR users, or Quest users 1.8x less likely to leave a rating than SteamVR/Rift/PSVR users. And most likely every platform will have a different factor that will also vary at least somewhat depending on the game.
  
  With HL:A being SteamVR only, corrected for "leaving rating likeliness" cross-platform Beat Saber would have significantly more than twice the number of actual players, but trying to calculate this will come with a giant margin of error due to the different, unknown factors. And, like you wrote, be very much like comparing apples to oranges anyway.
  - Kissenschlachter
    
    Interesting. Maybe it’s just more convenient to type on a keyboard than on a phone. Also Steam (with its update history, etc.) maybe more fun to use than the Meta Horizon Shop.
    - Christian Schildwaechter
      
      It could be the convenience of typing. Or Steam users being able to leave a simple thumb up/down rating directly on the page from which they just launched the game, while Quest users have to first open the Horizon phone app, skip past Horizon Worlds ads to the Quest store, find the game's page and then give a harder to decide 1-5 stars rating.
      
      Quest users are also younger on average, which could make a difference. Or maybe mobile app store users leave less reviews in general, or Europeans favoring PC gaming leave more reviews than console heavy US/Japan. I personally prefer longer Steam reviews with filters for play time, language etc over Quest reviews, where I usually filter for one star ratings first to see fundamental issues, lowering the impetus to leave one myself.
      
      There are a lot of unknown factors when comparing different games on different platforms by ratings. It only allows for a rough estimation of how well some games do, but without official numbers that's unfortunately one of very few indicators we have. at all.
      - Herbert Werters
        
        But you also have to take into account that it may not matter how high the friction is to give a rating. Anyone who has decided to say something about the game will do so regardless of how they have to write it. Therefore, both can be at eye level.
      - Christian Schildwaechter
        
        Yes, but I explicitly compared the number of people that reached the first achievement directly to the number of ratings to check whether the rating behavior differs or both platforms are "at eye level". Most people that bought a game on either Steam or Horizon store will launch it at least once, and a comparable amount of players should make it to the first achievement. That makes the achievement count a much more accurate approximation for how many people bought a game than ratings that only a fraction of the game's buyers will leave.
        
        If the ratio of ratings to owners/achievements differs between platforms, but not between the games (1.7x and 1.9x), with Steam users on average 1.8x times as likely to leave a rating, this strongly hints that the ratings/rating behavior on the two stores are indeed not at eye level, with higher friction for leaving ratings on the Horizon store.
        
        Of course these two games only offer two data points. To verify there is a somewhat constant differing factor between the platforms requires to look at more games available on both and then again compare achievement counts to given ratings.
      - Herbert Werters
        
        I understand that. I was just about to ask if other games have been compared to see if it’s the same there.
ZarathustraDK

"Pfff…*clutches his Nokia 1011*…Snake is much more important to computer-gaming than Doom.".