This makes me wonder if the pc market is going to have a compatibility war. Which would remain the question of will a game use the VIVE and OR without having to be specifically coded for both? If that is the case we are in for quite the war. Steam vs Facebook..... And if Sony decides to enter the pc picture. Ideally we hope there is some sort of pivot program they can center around. But it is possible they will be cutthroat and well you will end up with a HDDVD player that no longer has any products. My money will be on Sony because they have done this more then once and came out victor.
They learned something from BetaMax and don't plan on repeating that debacle again. I think Samsung is going to be one of the primary contenders because they understand and know mass market appeal better than any of the other hardware options. They also have a huge existing install base. They can literally subsidize or bundle those headsets with their handsets to promote adoption.
Google is sort of a joke in this regard. They love to experiment and will always throw an iron into the fire, sometimes two or three. Gmail, Inbox, Hangouts, Google Talk, Wave, Google+ etc. They throw stuff at the wall and go with what they feel like. It's hard to say what their agenda is and where they'll go with it, much like Glass.
There might be a format war, but eventually I think they'll settle on standards. Or someone will be popular enough and settle the standards question for the rest.
I think if one of them starts losing they can just make software that universalizes them. Someone is already trying to do it and claims to have done it with Vive. Problem with that opens the door to anyone making headsets which could be good but also could just be horrible.
The problem right now is, we DO have a lot of sets vying for control of the market as a whole, regardless of whether it's PC, Console, or Mobile. It has turned into a format war so to speak.
Sure, right now Samsung is the only contender in the mobile space really, with all other headsets really being wired, but that won't stick around for long. Cardboards are also available, but other mobile handset makers like Huwei are making comparable sets for comparable phones.
PS VR has so far said they are not just going to be for consoles and that there is "no reason" why PS VR can't work on PC as well, meaning their set may be PC compatible.
Oculus is not happy with the way PC VR is turning out for them
And they wanted to keep their rift store like steam, it's own ecosystem. Yet as you mentioned, it is a format war at this point. To keep the Rift Viable they need to lock down who gets to use their software or else HTC's Vive, or Sonys PS VR would be able to access their "exclusives". It's like.. what if Nintendo allowed everyone to play Mario Kart and Zelda? Nobody would buy a NIntendo system.
Too many companies are jumping into the headset market, not enough are jumping into the software market.
One of my predictions has been that the Rift will no longer sell hardware within the next 5 years and move to be more software focused. Will facebook let it stop hardware creation? I think when it realizes where the vast amount of VR users are (which will be either the PS or a Cell Phone) they'll turn into a content maker and not a hardware maker.
I think HTC will stop producing sets as well. They may go the way of Samsung and create a mobile device similar to the Vive.
PS VR is slated to be the top set by end of year and it hasn't launched yet. In fact it's supposed to be the top set by the end of the year and PS VR will only have been launched 3 months prior to years end.
It's just too much hardware with no reason to buy the hardware. I believe they've had ample time to prepare for this. 250 VR apps they say on the Rift Market.... out of the top 10, 7 are videos... that should be pretty telling.
I think GearVR has been getting noticed from others interested in getting into the field. Only those with really clever obfuscating skills can see this as a sign that GearVR is doing poorly. I am sure plenty will show their skills
"According to Rojas, Android VR will be a standalone unit that’s not as powerful as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, but offers a noticeably better experience than both Cardboard and Gear VR."
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I'm actually really not interested in EA, Activision, or Ubisoft; my tastes veer more toward Double Fine, Amanita Design, Polytron, and Guild Software. 10 years ago my answer would have been different.
And no, it really doesn't matter to me, a humble consumer, whether or not GearVR has enough users to attract the eye of software giants. Let it be indie, I say; so long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem, I'm happy: so long as this doesn't become another Ouya (which I own), a product that only had a user base around 100,000 or so.
I'd also like to see someone address @maskedweasel 's theory that there are closer to 10 million GearVR owners, not 1 million.
Without the exact numbers released on gearvr's handed out, nobody can be certain, BUT what we do know from various sources around the net is...
about 1 MILLION VR "units" have been sold between the Rift and Samsung VR, Gear VR accounting for the vast majority. These are sales numbers - not giveaway numbers. Samsung confirmed that they were giving away many more sets than the 300K they originally were quoted on giving away http://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-is-giving-away-far-more-gear-vr-units-than-we-expected/ to the tune of upwards of 1 million.
We know that Samsung is STILL SHIPPING free gear VR sets to people that used the promotion but didn't receive their set in-store at the time, or via the preorder site.
We do know that Samsung does give out thousands of units in other ways too -- just last month they handed out over 3K at a conference.
We won't know the exact numbers, but we can make an educated guess that the numbers are well over 1 Million units, at the very least it would be in the realm of 2 - 3 Million units.
It still doesn't account really for "people used" though, as several could use a single device, and as stated a single display could get 2 - 6 people an hour with the average 10 minute demo. (the demo is more like 5 or 6 minutes, kind of short)
But you do have to ask... with all the "information" available, why such secrecy over the real numbers.
Exact numbers sold on Rift and Gear VR. Exact amounts of Retail sales, and Specific Numbers on non-commercial entities that are utilizing the sets. In most cases when you toot your own horn, you give very specific numbers on what is going right, not generalizing and muddying the data with unsubstantiated claims of usage.
I'm actually really not interested in EA, Activision, or Ubisoft; my tastes veer more toward Double Fine, Amanita Design, Polytron, and Guild Software. 10 years ago my answer would have been different.
And no, it really doesn't matter to me, a humble consumer, whether or not GearVR has enough users to attract the eye of software giants. Let it be indie, I say; so long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem, I'm happy: so long as this doesn't become another Ouya (which I own), a product that only had a user base around 100,000 or so.
I'd also like to see someone address @maskedweasel 's theory that there are closer to 10 million GearVR owners, not 1 million.
Without the exact numbers released on gearvr's handed out, nobody can be certain, BUT what we do know from various sources around the net is...
about 1 MILLION VR "units" have been sold between the Rift and Samsung VR, Gear VR accounting for the vast majority. These are sales numbers - not giveaway numbers. Samsung confirmed that they were giving away many more sets than the 300K they originally were quoted on giving away http://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-is-giving-away-far-more-gear-vr-units-than-we-expected/ to the tune of upwards of 1 million.
We know that Samsung is STILL SHIPPING free gear VR sets to people that used the promotion but didn't receive their set in-store at the time, or via the preorder site.
We do know that Samsung does give out thousands of units in other ways too -- just last month they handed out over 3K at a conference.
We won't know the exact numbers, but we can make an educated guess that the numbers are well over 1 Million units, at the very least it would be in the realm of 2 - 3 Million units.
It still doesn't account really for "people used" though, as several could use a single device, and as stated a single display could get 2 - 6 people an hour with the average 10 minute demo. (the demo is more like 5 or 6 minutes, kind of short)
But you do have to ask... with all the "information" available, why such secrecy over the real numbers.
Exact numbers sold on Rift and Gear VR. Exact amounts of Retail sales, and Specific Numbers on non-commercial entities that are utilizing the sets. In most cases when you toot your own horn, you give very specific numbers on what is going right, not generalizing and muddying the data with unsubstantiated claims of usage.
Wow. Just wow.
I can't begin to imagine what Oculus (or GearVR) did to you? Are you... are you a shareholder, or something?
You've got a serious negative spin going, here. I don't think there's any reason to be quite so existentially morose.
One million users in April is great news.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I'm actually really not interested in EA, Activision, or Ubisoft; my tastes veer more toward Double Fine, Amanita Design, Polytron, and Guild Software. 10 years ago my answer would have been different.
And no, it really doesn't matter to me, a humble consumer, whether or not GearVR has enough users to attract the eye of software giants. Let it be indie, I say; so long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem, I'm happy: so long as this doesn't become another Ouya (which I own), a product that only had a user base around 100,000 or so.
I'd also like to see someone address @maskedweasel 's theory that there are closer to 10 million GearVR owners, not 1 million.
Without the exact numbers released on gearvr's handed out, nobody can be certain, BUT what we do know from various sources around the net is...
about 1 MILLION VR "units" have been sold between the Rift and Samsung VR, Gear VR accounting for the vast majority. These are sales numbers - not giveaway numbers. Samsung confirmed that they were giving away many more sets than the 300K they originally were quoted on giving away http://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-is-giving-away-far-more-gear-vr-units-than-we-expected/ to the tune of upwards of 1 million.
We know that Samsung is STILL SHIPPING free gear VR sets to people that used the promotion but didn't receive their set in-store at the time, or via the preorder site.
We do know that Samsung does give out thousands of units in other ways too -- just last month they handed out over 3K at a conference.
We won't know the exact numbers, but we can make an educated guess that the numbers are well over 1 Million units, at the very least it would be in the realm of 2 - 3 Million units.
It still doesn't account really for "people used" though, as several could use a single device, and as stated a single display could get 2 - 6 people an hour with the average 10 minute demo. (the demo is more like 5 or 6 minutes, kind of short)
But you do have to ask... with all the "information" available, why such secrecy over the real numbers.
Exact numbers sold on Rift and Gear VR. Exact amounts of Retail sales, and Specific Numbers on non-commercial entities that are utilizing the sets. In most cases when you toot your own horn, you give very specific numbers on what is going right, not generalizing and muddying the data with unsubstantiated claims of usage.
Wow. Just wow.
I can't begin to imagine what Oculus (or GearVR) did to you? Are you... are you a shareholder, or something?
You've got a serious negative spin going, here. I don't think there's any reason to be quite so existentially morose.
One million users in April is great news.
and to be honest, deciding to buy a Galaxy S7 on a promotion in which you get a VR headset for free instead of buying a different phone or not during the promotion is still a positive and more importantly not a negative.
many VR critics that started off saying VR will never ever in a million years even get passed the Crowdfunding stage are really starting to grasp for straws
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I can't begin to imagine what Oculus (or GearVR) did to you? Are you... are you a shareholder, or something?
You've got a serious negative spin going, here. I don't think there's any reason to be quite so existentially morose.
One million users in April is great news.
I don't understand your aversion to wanting specifics? Where is there a negative spin? This is solely sharing information from other resources.
For example, lets say you were choosing between 2 very similar MMOs. They are both Buy to Play.
1 MMO releases statistics after 6 months of launch. "1 MILLION PLAYERS LOGGED IN DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL" after they've given away over 2 Million Free Copies just the month before.
So you ask yourself... how long did they play? Who logged in? Is it the same people on multiple accounts? How many were just curious because they received a free game in comparison to those that would have actually bought the game?
The 2nd MMO releases and 2 months later they announce - "We're Spending 500 MILLION DOLLARS on NEW Cash Shop Items you can buy. No details on when or what will be released. Stay tuned"
So.. @phaserlight you say that population doesn't matter... but it does. Popularity breeds support which breeds growth which breeds expansion.
This is a hardware war -- plain and simple. It isn't "OH is VR going to stick around or not?" The truth is, it will stick around for the near future, there are too many companies invested in it. The question is.. in what form? And what horse will you be backing? You can back every horse -- but those of us taking a skeptical approach and looking at the market as a whole are hedging our bets.
Do you want to buy a Rift today, just to see them discontinue the hardware in a couple years? Do you want to buy an HTC Vive when PS VR comes out and the majority of high profile gaming titles are available there instead? Do you want to use the Rift today when you can do more than 80% of it on a cell phone you might already own?
You can try to fight it, you can ignore it like Sean does, but VR in its current form isn't "catching on" so much as just existing. There are no leaders here. There is saturation and marketing to edge out competition and garner support.
That is the truth of the situation. It isn't just one guy on a forums take on it.. from the links I've posted it's been shared across other analysts as well.
Everyone expects growth from VR in the next 4 years. Everyone is just unsure where it's going to come from and what system is going to prevail.
I can't begin to imagine what Oculus (or GearVR) did to you? Are you... are you a shareholder, or something?
You've got a serious negative spin going, here. I don't think there's any reason to be quite so existentially morose.
One million users in April is great news.
I don't understand your aversion to wanting specifics? Where is there a negative spin? This is solely sharing information from other resources.
For example, lets say you were choosing between 2 very similar MMOs. They are both Buy to Play.
1 MMO releases statistics after 6 months of launch. "1 MILLION PLAYERS LOGGED IN DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL" after they've given away over 2 Million Free Copies just the month before.
So you ask yourself... how long did they play? Who logged in? Is it the same people on multiple accounts? How many were just curious because they received a free game in comparison to those that would have actually bought the game?
The 2nd MMO releases and 2 months later they announce - "We're Spending 500 MILLION DOLLARS on NEW Cash Shop Items you can buy. No details on when or what will be released. Stay tuned"
So.. @phaserlight you say that population doesn't matter... but it does. Popularity breeds support which breeds growth which breeds expansion.
This is a hardware war -- plain and simple. It isn't "OH is VR going to stick around or not?" The truth is, it will stick around for the near future, there are too many companies invested in it. The question is.. in what form? And what horse will you be backing? You can back every horse -- but those of us taking a skeptical approach and looking at the market as a whole are hedging our bets.
Do you want to buy a Rift today, just to see them discontinue the hardware in a couple years? Do you want to buy an HTC Vive when PS VR comes out and the majority of high profile gaming titles are available there instead? Do you want to use the Rift today when you can do more than 80% of it on a cell phone you might already own?
You can try to fight it, you can ignore it like Sean does, but VR in its current form isn't "catching on" so much as just existing. There are no leaders here. There is saturation and marketing to edge out competition and garner support.
That is the truth of the situation. It isn't just one guy on a forums take on it.. from the links I've posted it's been shared across other analysts as well.
Everyone expects growth from VR in the next 4 years. Everyone is just unsure where it's going to come from and what system is going to prevail.
Argumentum ad populum.
I'm enough of an informed consumer to decide without having to bring in what "everyone expects".
Further, it seems like you want to be viewed as having a balanced, moderate outlook, but words like "muddying" and "unsubstantiated" are value statements. It might be muddied and unsubstantiated to you, but to me it's a simple word of encouragement.
We are using different rulers to measure Oculus' PR.
I also never said that population doesn't matter; I said it doesn't matter to me beyond a certain point (that of sustaining a dynamically stable ecosystem). We can argue about where that point is until the cows come home, but according to the OP's link Oculus views the number they've shared as 'better than expected'.
You can choose to dismiss it as PR (you wouldn't be alone), but I stand by my initial statement that one million is a very encouraging number. See my examples regarding WoW, Star Citizen, and Ouya. Yes, conversion rates are important, but right now it's all just guesswork; the only "firm" number released is one million users in April.
I was interested in how @maskedweasel arrived at his estimates of 10 million owners (I'm willing to buy that there are over a million), but I see that he is more interested in this figure as a didactic effort to paint GearVR as a failure because of a low engagement rate. So there are around 120 million GearVR capable smartphones in the wild; is there anything at all to suggest how many of these have a GearVR to go with? Any numbers regarding the volume of preorders that chose GearVR as an extra?
@maskedweasel could be right for all I know, however, that's not the message coming from the article. If anything, it's "be cautiously optimistic".
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I'm enough of an informed consumer to decide without having to bring in what "everyone expects".
Further, it seems like you want to be viewed as having a balanced, moderate outlook, but words like "muddying" and "unsubstantiated" are value statements. It might be muddied and unsubstantiated to you, but to me it's a simple word of encouragement.
We are using different rulers to measure Oculus' PR.
I also never said that population doesn't matter; I said it doesn't matter to me beyond a certain point (that of sustaining a dynamically stable ecosystem). We can argue about where that point is until the cows come home, but according to the OP's link Oculus views the number they've shared as 'better than expected'.
You can choose to dismiss it as PR (you wouldn't be alone), but I stand by my initial statement that one million is a very encouraging number. See my examples regarding WoW, Star Citizen, and Ouya. Yes, conversion rates are important, but right now it's all just guesswork; the only "firm" number released is one million users in April.
I was interested in how @maskedweasel arrived at his estimates of 10 million owners (I'm willing to buy that there are over a million), but I see that he is more interested in this figure as a didactic effort to paint GearVR as a failure because of a low engagement rate. So there are around 120 million GearVR capable smartphones in the wild; is there anything at all to suggest how many of these have a GearVR to go with? Any numbers regarding the volume of preorders that chose GearVR as an extra?
@maskedweasel could be right for all I know, however, that's not the message coming from the article. If anything, it's "be cautiously optimistic".
Cautiously optimistic is the name of the game and exactly the words used by analysts. I don't see how you could see 1 Million Users of a piece of hardware without any direct correlation to ownership as being anything other than marketing.
As a basis for comparison lets play a quick game -- Lets take the number of Best Buy Stores currently in the US. 1,055. This isn't counting cell phone stores - just Best Buy. Lets say that each best buy store has 1 Gear VR set (mine has 2 BTW) to test. Lets say the gear VR set averages 1 person per hour, and the store is open 8 hours a day. That's 240 users in a single store for the month of April. Multiply that by the 1055 stores for the month of april you have 253,200 people that tried the Gear VR set for the month of april.
Understand that, it doesn't count cell stores, multiple people per hour, users of gear VR at home, or in general. How do we know what numbers we are expecting and what we can trust. If you had 4 people per hour, you've pretty much reached over a million users across the US.
Are we encouraged by curiosity of VR or are we encouraged by the penetration of VR in the retail market sales as a whole? I bought the gear VR set, I, my girlfriend and her 2 kids have used it in the month of April... how do they quantify that? Where are the statistics there?
As per my links we know units sold are almost a million gear VR sets, and that units given away were nearing a million as well, with shipments still going out throughout this month.
Samsung is even giving people the option to *sell back* their gear VR headsets for a 100 dollar credit. I would likely say partially because they've been giving away too many, and it's brought the cost down substantially for the gear sets across the board. You can buy a 99 dollar gear VR set new in box, from someone who received a free one but didn't want it for 50 - 70 bucks. I bought mine for 50 bucks, and received 100 dollars in FREE gear when I got the S7.
@phaserlight It's okay to view this information however you want. We can go back and look at SWTOR on launch when they were expecting 5 - 6 million players the first month yet talked about how great the 1 million in the first month milestone is and realize that a facade to garner more attention and support is how marketing works.
Everything is great. Carry On. Make Money.
I'm actually rooting for Gear VR over all other sets (aside from PS VR) simply because I feel Gear VR is the only viable option for gamers that want a complete uninhibited experience. I think it needs work, but it's truly the best we have out today for daily usage and market saturation. That doesn't mean I'll let things slide. If they wanted to impress me - give me exact, factual, real world data and tell me how you got there.
I'm actually rooting for Gear VR over all other sets (aside from PS VR) simply because I feel Gear VR is the only viable option for gamers that want a complete uninhibited experience. I think it needs work, but it's truly the best we have out today for daily usage and market saturation. That doesn't mean I'll let things slide. If they wanted to impress me - give me exact, factual, real world data and tell me how you got there.
One more thing and then I'm out of this conversation:
I'm all for solid numbers. The difference between you and me is that I don't take it as obfuscation that Oculus isn't sharing more than the "1 million" number at this point. If it were me, I'd be playing with my cards pretty close to the chest, too, with so many new players entering the market. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
As a basis for comparison lets play a quick game -- Lets take the number of Best Buy Stores currently in the US. 1,055. This isn't counting cell phone stores - just Best Buy. Lets say that each best buy store has 1 Gear VR set (mine has 2 BTW) to test. Lets say the gear VR set averages 1 person per hour, and the store is open 8 hours a day. That's 240 users in a single store for the month of April. Multiply that by the 1055 stores for the month of april you have 253,200 people that tried the Gear VR set for the month of april.
Understand that, it doesn't count cell stores, multiple people per hour, users of gear VR at home, or in general. How do we know what numbers we are expecting and what we can trust. If you had 4 people per hour, you've pretty much reached over a million users across the US.
Are we encouraged by curiosity of VR or are we encouraged by the penetration of VR in the retail market sales as a whole? I bought the gear VR set, I, my girlfriend and her 2 kids have used it in the month of April... how do they quantify that? Where are the statistics there?
This is more guesswork; what measurements have you taken to suggest that there is a GearVR in every Best Buy across the US? Where does the 1 person per hour figure come from?
You are waving your hands around in the air, figuratively speaking. This is ironic, because it's the very thing you are accusing Oculus of doing. Sometimes too much information can be a form of obfuscation, too. At any rate, I'm not sure this is a helpful thought experiment because a couple of the numbers seem like they are pulled from thin air.
But OK: let's say for the sake of argument that every Best Buy in the US has 1 GearVR, and each GearVR gets 1 person per hour. Unless Oculus is sending out surveys, I'm going with each of those headsets gets counted once.
Are you now suggesting that Oculus has a way to measure who is using the headset? I find it far more likely that Oculus simply has a way of tracking how much each headset gets used. This is particularly true because Oculus included the average duration of use per session.
What on Earth drives you to suggest that Oculus is, more or less, making these numbers up? If this really was hand-wavium, as another poster pointed out early in this thread, Oculus could have fabricated a far more impressive number.
(edit: before anyone asks 'well, why didn't they say headsets if that's what they were counting?' The reason is that using the word "people" is better PR).
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I'm actually rooting for Gear VR over all other sets (aside from PS VR) simply because I feel Gear VR is the only viable option for gamers that want a complete uninhibited experience. I think it needs work, but it's truly the best we have out today for daily usage and market saturation. That doesn't mean I'll let things slide. If they wanted to impress me - give me exact, factual, real world data and tell me how you got there.
One more thing and then I'm out of this conversation:
I'm all for solid numbers. The difference between you and me is that I don't take it as obfuscation that Oculus isn't sharing more than the "1 million" number at this point. If it were me, I'd be playing with my cards pretty close to the chest, too, with so many new players entering the market. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
As a basis for comparison lets play a quick game -- Lets take the number of Best Buy Stores currently in the US. 1,055. This isn't counting cell phone stores - just Best Buy. Lets say that each best buy store has 1 Gear VR set (mine has 2 BTW) to test. Lets say the gear VR set averages 1 person per hour, and the store is open 8 hours a day. That's 240 users in a single store for the month of April. Multiply that by the 1055 stores for the month of april you have 253,200 people that tried the Gear VR set for the month of april.
Understand that, it doesn't count cell stores, multiple people per hour, users of gear VR at home, or in general. How do we know what numbers we are expecting and what we can trust. If you had 4 people per hour, you've pretty much reached over a million users across the US.
Are we encouraged by curiosity of VR or are we encouraged by the penetration of VR in the retail market sales as a whole? I bought the gear VR set, I, my girlfriend and her 2 kids have used it in the month of April... how do they quantify that? Where are the statistics there?
This is more guesswork; what measurements have you taken to suggest that there is a GearVR in every Best Buy across the US? Where does the 1 person per hour figure come from?
You are waving your hands around in the air, figuratively speaking. This is ironic, because it's the very thing you are accusing Oculus of doing. Sometimes too much information can be a form of obfuscation, too. At any rate, I'm not sure this is a helpful thought experiment because a couple of the numbers seem like they are pulled from thin air.
But OK: let's say for the sake of argument that every Best Buy in the US has 1 GearVR, and each GearVR gets 1 person per hour. Unless Oculus is sending out surveys, I'm going with each of those headsets gets counted once.
Are you now suggesting that Oculus has a way to measure who is using the headset? I find it far more likely that Oculus simply has a way of tracking how much each headset gets used. This is particularly true because Oculus included the average duration of use per session.
What on Earth drives you to suggest that Oculus is, more or less, making these numbers up? If this really was hand-wavium, as another poster pointed out early in this thread, Oculus could have fabricated a far more impressive number.
I think you're hitting the nail on the head. You're right... I pulled educated numbers out and worded it in a way that makes it seem doubtful of Oculuses numbers. You accused me of doing the same thing that Oculus is doing to the public.
The fact is -- we don't KNOW where they're getting their numbers from. I don't know there are Gear VR sets in every cell store and every best buy. I know at my nearest best buy they have 2 sets. I know at the frys electronics by my house they have 1 set. I could stand to reason that best buys around the country have a minimum of 1 set.
But why do you think they didn't say 1 Million People Used Their Own Gear VR Headsets? Or Bought Used VR Headsets. Here are a couple quotes that brought me to doubt the numbers. *****************************************************************************************************************
"At a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oculus’s mobile head Max Cohen said the “one million people” number takes in account anyone who has seen a virtual reality video game, movie, or other related VR media on a Samsung Gear headset. "
"He did not specify how Oculus tracks the number of people using the Gear VR"
"Cohen was vague on many of the details behind the one million figure, and said the company did not know statistics like each person’s age or gender."
"He also acknowledged that in comparison to the mobile device market in general, the one million-user number is relatively small. Google’s Android operating system that powers millions of smartphones worldwide, for example, counts over 1.4 billion monthly active users."
"Technology analysts and investors will get a better picture of how the virtual reality market is growing if Samsung or Oculus eventually release how many Gear VR devices have been sold since it was releasedlast November. It’s one thing for a person to be merely astonished by a friend’s virtual reality headset, and another thing for that person to want to actually buy one."
Again, I'm not just pulling out Bias and attacking wildly. I don't just magically come up with numbers or question things without cause. If they release data tomorrow and say "800K Gear VR units sold, not counting what Samsung gave away for free" y'know what? Thats not a knock out of the park but I do consider that a substantial amount. I wouldn't declare it a success, but hell, at least it would be real.
I'm actually rooting for Gear VR over all other sets (aside from PS VR) simply because I feel Gear VR is the only viable option for gamers that want a complete uninhibited experience. I think it needs work, but it's truly the best we have out today for daily usage and market saturation. That doesn't mean I'll let things slide. If they wanted to impress me - give me exact, factual, real world data and tell me how you got there.
One more thing and then I'm out of this conversation:
I'm all for solid numbers. The difference between you and me is that I don't take it as obfuscation that Oculus isn't sharing more than the "1 million" number at this point. If it were me, I'd be playing with my cards pretty close to the chest, too, with so many new players entering the market. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
As a basis for comparison lets play a quick game -- Lets take the number of Best Buy Stores currently in the US. 1,055. This isn't counting cell phone stores - just Best Buy. Lets say that each best buy store has 1 Gear VR set (mine has 2 BTW) to test. Lets say the gear VR set averages 1 person per hour, and the store is open 8 hours a day. That's 240 users in a single store for the month of April. Multiply that by the 1055 stores for the month of april you have 253,200 people that tried the Gear VR set for the month of april.
Understand that, it doesn't count cell stores, multiple people per hour, users of gear VR at home, or in general. How do we know what numbers we are expecting and what we can trust. If you had 4 people per hour, you've pretty much reached over a million users across the US.
Are we encouraged by curiosity of VR or are we encouraged by the penetration of VR in the retail market sales as a whole? I bought the gear VR set, I, my girlfriend and her 2 kids have used it in the month of April... how do they quantify that? Where are the statistics there?
This is more guesswork; what measurements have you taken to suggest that there is a GearVR in every Best Buy across the US? Where does the 1 person per hour figure come from?
You are waving your hands around in the air, figuratively speaking. This is ironic, because it's the very thing you are accusing Oculus of doing. Sometimes too much information can be a form of obfuscation, too. At any rate, I'm not sure this is a helpful thought experiment because a couple of the numbers seem like they are pulled from thin air.
But OK: let's say for the sake of argument that every Best Buy in the US has 1 GearVR, and each GearVR gets 1 person per hour. Unless Oculus is sending out surveys, I'm going with each of those headsets gets counted once.
Are you now suggesting that Oculus has a way to measure who is using the headset? I find it far more likely that Oculus simply has a way of tracking how much each headset gets used. This is particularly true because Oculus included the average duration of use per session.
What on Earth drives you to suggest that Oculus is, more or less, making these numbers up? If this really was hand-wavium, as another poster pointed out early in this thread, Oculus could have fabricated a far more impressive number.
I think you're hitting the nail on the head. You're right... I pulled educated numbers out and worded it in a way that makes it seem doubtful of Oculuses numbers. You accused me of doing the same thing that Oculus is doing to the public.
The fact is -- we don't KNOW where they're getting their numbers from. I don't know there are Gear VR sets in every cell store and every best buy. I know at my nearest best buy they have 2 sets. I know at the frys electronics by my house they have 1 set. I could stand to reason that best buys around the country have a minimum of 1 set.
But why do you think they didn't say 1 Million People Used Their Own Gear VR Headsets? Or Bought Used VR Headsets. Here are a couple quotes that brought me to doubt the numbers. *****************************************************************************************************************
"At a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oculus’s mobile head Max Cohen said the “one million people” number takes in account anyone who has seen a virtual reality video game, movie, or other related VR media on a Samsung Gear headset. "
"He did not specify how Oculus tracks the number of people using the Gear VR"
"Cohen was vague on many of the details behind the one million figure, and said the company did not know statistics like each person’s age or gender."
"He also acknowledged that in comparison to the mobile device market in general, the one million-user number is relatively small. Google’s Android operating system that powers millions of smartphones worldwide, for example, counts over 1.4 billion monthly active users."
"Technology analysts and investors will get a better picture of how the virtual reality market is growing if Samsung or Oculus eventually release how many Gear VR devices have been sold since it was releasedlast November. It’s one thing for a person to be merely astonished by a friend’s virtual reality headset, and another thing for that person to want to actually buy one."
Again, I'm not just pulling out Bias and attacking wildly. I don't just magically come up with numbers or question things without cause. If they release data tomorrow and say "800K Gear VR units sold, not counting what Samsung gave away for free" y'know what? Thats not a knock out of the park but I do consider that a substantial amount. I wouldn't declare it a success, but hell, at least it would be real.
All right, well, I'll have to concede that point to you. I still think you're being a bit overly pessimistic, but it could be my own enthusiasm for the tech getting in the way.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I think you're hitting the nail on the head. You're right... I pulled educated numbers out and worded it in a way that makes it seem doubtful of Oculuses numbers. You accused me of doing the same thing that Oculus is doing to the public.
The fact is -- we don't KNOW where they're getting their numbers from. I don't know there are Gear VR sets in every cell store and every best buy. I know at my nearest best buy they have 2 sets. I know at the frys electronics by my house they have 1 set. I could stand to reason that best buys around the country have a minimum of 1 set.
But why do you think they didn't say 1 Million People Used Their Own Gear VR Headsets? Or Bought Used VR Headsets. Here are a couple quotes that brought me to doubt the numbers. *****************************************************************************************************************
"At a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oculus’s mobile head Max Cohen said the “one million people” number takes in account anyone who has seen a virtual reality video game, movie, or other related VR media on a Samsung Gear headset. "
"He did not specify how Oculus tracks the number of people using the Gear VR"
"Cohen was vague on many of the details behind the one million figure, and said the company did not know statistics like each person’s age or gender."
"He also acknowledged that in comparison to the mobile device market in general, the one million-user number is relatively small. Google’s Android operating system that powers millions of smartphones worldwide, for example, counts over 1.4 billion monthly active users."
"Technology analysts and investors will get a better picture of how the virtual reality market is growing if Samsung or Oculus eventually release how many Gear VR devices have been sold since it was releasedlast November. It’s one thing for a person to be merely astonished by a friend’s virtual reality headset, and another thing for that person to want to actually buy one."
Again, I'm not just pulling out Bias and attacking wildly. I don't just magically come up with numbers or question things without cause. If they release data tomorrow and say "800K Gear VR units sold, not counting what Samsung gave away for free" y'know what? Thats not a knock out of the park but I do consider that a substantial amount. I wouldn't declare it a success, but hell, at least it would be real.
All right, well, I'll have to concede that point to you. I still think you're being a bit overly pessimistic, but it could be my own enthusiasm for the tech getting in the way.
no I dont agree Phaserlight I think given what he just posted from Oculus its resonable and I understood it as such before I ever finished reading the article. No surprise, still relevant.
Just because they didnt want to tell the reporter exactly HOW they know this magical information that really doesnt seem to be at all mysterious to anyone who has been around this decade of information gathering doesnt in my mind suggest they are just making up shit.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Just to reiterate.. if it were any other piece of hardware, software, car, sandwich or ceiling fan - most people would question it.
People generally want to believe in that which they have a vested interest in. As I haven't yet "picked a pony" no headset has my favor, nor does VR in general.
If Tesla released numbers saying.. "100,000 people have driven in our cars" that doesn't allude to anything more than various people sat in a seat and drove around a block. Not that they sold 100,000 cars, or that those that test drove them were capable of purchasing one or even that they drove them. Someone could have just been in one as a passenger.
While the information is a very obtuse metric, the only thing information like that can truly prove is there is a general growth of interest from the past 6 months. Next month we likely won't hear "People that tried Gear VR grew from 1 Million to 1.2 Millions" or "Numbers dropped from 1 Million Gear VR users to 800K users"
The past two numbers they've given are ... 1) Number of hours "spent in VR" and 2) How many people have tried the headsets. They want to bring support in, they want it to seem fast paced and high profile to get development rolling, they want everyone else that doesn't know about VR to think "wow 1 million people have one, it must be good" but it's premature. The data is premature. I hope to see some real numbers within the next few months.
Considering that GearVR has a much lower barrier to entry, 1 million seems a suspiciously low number, how many smart phones for example support GearVR, the numbers would have to be really low to only have 1 million using it in a 30 day period, considering just how many smartphones there are out there. The other thing is, having 1 million people using it in a 30 day period, with average use at around 25 minutes? and most common use is to watch films etc. which, bearing in mind the average length of a film is 90 minutes, kind of suggests only a small proportion of those 1 million users tried it for more than 5 minutes. Other reports say that Samsung shipped over 80 million smartphones, how many of them support GearVR i don't know, but, from that 1 million seems a particularly low number, more so when you factor in the average use. Is this report really a positive thing, it might be, but it would depend on whether that users/month figure increases dramatically or not. Early adoption figures would be fairly low, and this might well be the case with GearVR, trouble is, its relying on a smartphone, and they tend to get replaced fairly often, and while some will perhaps stick with Samsung, there is no guarantee that they will, so GearVR's future is probably also tied to Samsungs smartphone popularity.
USE and OWN are two entirely different things nice try Occ Rift
This seems as though it's enough to pass 'the tipping point'. However many given people are using it beyond this is more or less unimportant to me. It's a thing. 50,000 people is still uncertain territory. One million isn't.
/2c
The number who OWN does matter at this point in time - probably to you as well.
EA, UbiSoft, Activision etc. will invest in making "VR" games up to a point. If it becomes clear that the adoption rate is slow and as a result they are not making much if any money they will scale back; put developments on hold etc. And so there will be less VR titles. And take up will slow.
I'm actually really not interested in EA, Activision, or Ubisoft; my tastes veer more toward Double Fine, Amanita Design, Polytron, and Guild Software. 10 years ago my answer would have been different.
And no, it really doesn't matter to me, a humble consumer, whether or not GearVR has enough users to attract the eye of software giants. Let it be indie, I say; so long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem, I'm happy: so long as this doesn't become another Ouya (which I own), a product that only had a user base around 100,000 or so.
I'd also like to see someone address @maskedweasel 's theory that there are closer to 10 million GearVR owners, not 1 million.
agreed.
I rarely ever buy AAA games anymore, so I couldnt care less what those companies are doing or not doing with VR. In fact, I think if they do something with VR I would likely not like the games anyway
Not about whether you like EA, Activision etc. it is - as you say - all about "as long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem". And there will be some people in that ecosystem - I am sure - who play EA games or whatever. Not you but some. So if those companies pull back on development it will become less likely that the indies etc. that you prefer will prevail. So you may not care but you will be impacted - positively if the market as a whole grows, negatively if not.
So they already have a generic VR headset for the pc. This means they used universal code or the generic headsets come with adaptive software. Either way this is getting interesting. I would also like to mention that steam has about 240 VR games right now.
USE and OWN are two entirely different things nice try Occ Rift
This seems as though it's enough to pass 'the tipping point'. However many given people are using it beyond this is more or less unimportant to me. It's a thing. 50,000 people is still uncertain territory. One million isn't.
/2c
The number who OWN does matter at this point in time - probably to you as well.
EA, UbiSoft, Activision etc. will invest in making "VR" games up to a point. If it becomes clear that the adoption rate is slow and as a result they are not making much if any money they will scale back; put developments on hold etc. And so there will be less VR titles. And take up will slow.
I'm actually really not interested in EA, Activision, or Ubisoft; my tastes veer more toward Double Fine, Amanita Design, Polytron, and Guild Software. 10 years ago my answer would have been different.
And no, it really doesn't matter to me, a humble consumer, whether or not GearVR has enough users to attract the eye of software giants. Let it be indie, I say; so long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem, I'm happy: so long as this doesn't become another Ouya (which I own), a product that only had a user base around 100,000 or so.
I'd also like to see someone address @maskedweasel 's theory that there are closer to 10 million GearVR owners, not 1 million.
agreed.
I rarely ever buy AAA games anymore, so I couldnt care less what those companies are doing or not doing with VR. In fact, I think if they do something with VR I would likely not like the games anyway
Not about whether you like EA, Activision etc. it is - as you say - all about "as long as it has enough users to sustain a dynamically stable ecosystem". And there will be some people in that ecosystem - I am sure - who play EA games or whatever. Not you but some. So if those companies pull back on development it will become less likely that the indies etc. that you prefer will prevail. So you may not care but you will be impacted - positively if the market as a whole grows, negatively if not.
again to stress the point even more. that is intresting information and thank you for sharing however at least speaking for this VR nutcase fan boy
no
fucks
given
I dont care about attracting that segment of the gaming population at all, whatesoever, peroid
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Considering that GearVR has a much lower barrier to entry, 1 million seems a suspiciously low number,
The OP link is about 1M trying the Rift in a month. Your comment holds though.
As far as Gear VR goes wasn't one of the links c. 1M sales + c. 10M "given away / bought" as part of a new - S7? - phone.
And if the article that SEANMCAD linked has it right then mobile adoption could be crucial component to wider take up..
and who cares either way? why does it matter? why are no fucks given on this interesting insight? does not matter. who cares not importatn, boring info
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
and who cares either way? why does it matter? why are no fucks given on this interesting insight? does not matter. who cares not importatn, boring info
It starts with arguing... then bargaining. Now dismissal. People that want VR to succeed first argued the numbers, and the data. Then they tried to bargain.. saying that it was still a great number no matter what. Now its just pure dismissal that it doesn't matter what the data says.
Point being people like this should just skip straight to dismissal... even in 2020 when half of these VR headsets no longer exist.. or even after they spend their money on a set that doesn't prevail as a contender to the systems with the most games and broadest appeal. Just go straight to dismissal... no data is going to change the outlook of a fanboy.
Comments
Sure, right now Samsung is the only contender in the mobile space really, with all other headsets really being wired, but that won't stick around for long. Cardboards are also available, but other mobile handset makers like Huwei are making comparable sets for comparable phones.
PS VR has so far said they are not just going to be for consoles and that there is "no reason" why PS VR can't work on PC as well, meaning their set may be PC compatible.
Oculus is not happy with the way PC VR is turning out for them
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-04/14/oculus-rift-games-on-htc-vive
And they wanted to keep their rift store like steam, it's own ecosystem. Yet as you mentioned, it is a format war at this point. To keep the Rift Viable they need to lock down who gets to use their software or else HTC's Vive, or Sonys PS VR would be able to access their "exclusives". It's like.. what if Nintendo allowed everyone to play Mario Kart and Zelda? Nobody would buy a NIntendo system.
Too many companies are jumping into the headset market, not enough are jumping into the software market.
One of my predictions has been that the Rift will no longer sell hardware within the next 5 years and move to be more software focused. Will facebook let it stop hardware creation? I think when it realizes where the vast amount of VR users are (which will be either the PS or a Cell Phone) they'll turn into a content maker and not a hardware maker.
I think HTC will stop producing sets as well. They may go the way of Samsung and create a mobile device similar to the Vive.
PS VR is slated to be the top set by end of year and it hasn't launched yet. In fact it's supposed to be the top set by the end of the year and PS VR will only have been launched 3 months prior to years end.
It's just too much hardware with no reason to buy the hardware. I believe they've had ample time to prepare for this. 250 VR apps they say on the Rift Market.... out of the top 10, 7 are videos... that should be pretty telling.
http://9to5google.com/2016/05/13/android-vr-launch-confirmed/
"According to Rojas, Android VR will be a standalone unit that’s not as powerful as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, but offers a noticeably better experience than both Cardboard and Gear VR."
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
about 1 MILLION VR "units" have been sold between the Rift and Samsung VR, Gear VR accounting for the vast majority. These are sales numbers - not giveaway numbers. Samsung confirmed that they were giving away many more sets than the 300K they originally were quoted on giving away http://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-is-giving-away-far-more-gear-vr-units-than-we-expected/ to the tune of upwards of 1 million.
We know that Samsung is STILL SHIPPING free gear VR sets to people that used the promotion but didn't receive their set in-store at the time, or via the preorder site.
We do know that Samsung does give out thousands of units in other ways too -- just last month they handed out over 3K at a conference.
We won't know the exact numbers, but we can make an educated guess that the numbers are well over 1 Million units, at the very least it would be in the realm of 2 - 3 Million units.
It still doesn't account really for "people used" though, as several could use a single device, and as stated a single display could get 2 - 6 people an hour with the average 10 minute demo. (the demo is more like 5 or 6 minutes, kind of short)
But you do have to ask... with all the "information" available, why such secrecy over the real numbers.
Exact numbers sold on Rift and Gear VR. Exact amounts of Retail sales, and Specific Numbers on non-commercial entities that are utilizing the sets. In most cases when you toot your own horn, you give very specific numbers on what is going right, not generalizing and muddying the data with unsubstantiated claims of usage.
I can't begin to imagine what Oculus (or GearVR) did to you? Are you... are you a shareholder, or something?
You've got a serious negative spin going, here. I don't think there's any reason to be quite so existentially morose.
One million users in April is great news.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
many VR critics that started off saying VR will never ever in a million years even get passed the Crowdfunding stage are really starting to grasp for straws
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
For example, lets say you were choosing between 2 very similar MMOs. They are both Buy to Play.
1 MMO releases statistics after 6 months of launch. "1 MILLION PLAYERS LOGGED IN DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL" after they've given away over 2 Million Free Copies just the month before.
So you ask yourself... how long did they play? Who logged in? Is it the same people on multiple accounts? How many were just curious because they received a free game in comparison to those that would have actually bought the game?
The 2nd MMO releases and 2 months later they announce - "We're Spending 500 MILLION DOLLARS on NEW Cash Shop Items you can buy. No details on when or what will be released. Stay tuned"
So.. @phaserlight you say that population doesn't matter... but it does. Popularity breeds support which breeds growth which breeds expansion.
This is a hardware war -- plain and simple. It isn't "OH is VR going to stick around or not?" The truth is, it will stick around for the near future, there are too many companies invested in it. The question is.. in what form? And what horse will you be backing? You can back every horse -- but those of us taking a skeptical approach and looking at the market as a whole are hedging our bets.
Do you want to buy a Rift today, just to see them discontinue the hardware in a couple years? Do you want to buy an HTC Vive when PS VR comes out and the majority of high profile gaming titles are available there instead? Do you want to use the Rift today when you can do more than 80% of it on a cell phone you might already own?
You can try to fight it, you can ignore it like Sean does, but VR in its current form isn't "catching on" so much as just existing. There are no leaders here. There is saturation and marketing to edge out competition and garner support.
That is the truth of the situation. It isn't just one guy on a forums take on it.. from the links I've posted it's been shared across other analysts as well.
Everyone expects growth from VR in the next 4 years. Everyone is just unsure where it's going to come from and what system is going to prevail.
I'm enough of an informed consumer to decide without having to bring in what "everyone expects".
Further, it seems like you want to be viewed as having a balanced, moderate outlook, but words like "muddying" and "unsubstantiated" are value statements. It might be muddied and unsubstantiated to you, but to me it's a simple word of encouragement.
We are using different rulers to measure Oculus' PR.
I also never said that population doesn't matter; I said it doesn't matter to me beyond a certain point (that of sustaining a dynamically stable ecosystem). We can argue about where that point is until the cows come home, but according to the OP's link Oculus views the number they've shared as 'better than expected'.
You can choose to dismiss it as PR (you wouldn't be alone), but I stand by my initial statement that one million is a very encouraging number. See my examples regarding WoW, Star Citizen, and Ouya. Yes, conversion rates are important, but right now it's all just guesswork; the only "firm" number released is one million users in April.
I was interested in how @maskedweasel arrived at his estimates of 10 million owners (I'm willing to buy that there are over a million), but I see that he is more interested in this figure as a didactic effort to paint GearVR as a failure because of a low engagement rate. So there are around 120 million GearVR capable smartphones in the wild; is there anything at all to suggest how many of these have a GearVR to go with? Any numbers regarding the volume of preorders that chose GearVR as an extra?
@maskedweasel could be right for all I know, however, that's not the message coming from the article. If anything, it's "be cautiously optimistic".
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
As a basis for comparison lets play a quick game -- Lets take the number of Best Buy Stores currently in the US. 1,055. This isn't counting cell phone stores - just Best Buy. Lets say that each best buy store has 1 Gear VR set (mine has 2 BTW) to test. Lets say the gear VR set averages 1 person per hour, and the store is open 8 hours a day. That's 240 users in a single store for the month of April. Multiply that by the 1055 stores for the month of april you have 253,200 people that tried the Gear VR set for the month of april.
Understand that, it doesn't count cell stores, multiple people per hour, users of gear VR at home, or in general. How do we know what numbers we are expecting and what we can trust. If you had 4 people per hour, you've pretty much reached over a million users across the US.
Are we encouraged by curiosity of VR or are we encouraged by the penetration of VR in the retail market sales as a whole? I bought the gear VR set, I, my girlfriend and her 2 kids have used it in the month of April... how do they quantify that? Where are the statistics there?
As per my links we know units sold are almost a million gear VR sets, and that units given away were nearing a million as well, with shipments still going out throughout this month.
Samsung is even giving people the option to *sell back* their gear VR headsets for a 100 dollar credit. I would likely say partially because they've been giving away too many, and it's brought the cost down substantially for the gear sets across the board. You can buy a 99 dollar gear VR set new in box, from someone who received a free one but didn't want it for 50 - 70 bucks. I bought mine for 50 bucks, and received 100 dollars in FREE gear when I got the S7.
@phaserlight It's okay to view this information however you want. We can go back and look at SWTOR on launch when they were expecting 5 - 6 million players the first month yet talked about how great the 1 million in the first month milestone is and realize that a facade to garner more attention and support is how marketing works.
Everything is great. Carry On. Make Money.
I'm actually rooting for Gear VR over all other sets (aside from PS VR) simply because I feel Gear VR is the only viable option for gamers that want a complete uninhibited experience. I think it needs work, but it's truly the best we have out today for daily usage and market saturation. That doesn't mean I'll let things slide. If they wanted to impress me - give me exact, factual, real world data and tell me how you got there.
I'm all for solid numbers. The difference between you and me is that I don't take it as obfuscation that Oculus isn't sharing more than the "1 million" number at this point. If it were me, I'd be playing with my cards pretty close to the chest, too, with so many new players entering the market. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
This is more guesswork; what measurements have you taken to suggest that there is a GearVR in every Best Buy across the US? Where does the 1 person per hour figure come from?
You are waving your hands around in the air, figuratively speaking. This is ironic, because it's the very thing you are accusing Oculus of doing. Sometimes too much information can be a form of obfuscation, too. At any rate, I'm not sure this is a helpful thought experiment because a couple of the numbers seem like they are pulled from thin air.
But OK: let's say for the sake of argument that every Best Buy in the US has 1 GearVR, and each GearVR gets 1 person per hour. Unless Oculus is sending out surveys, I'm going with each of those headsets gets counted once.
Are you now suggesting that Oculus has a way to measure who is using the headset? I find it far more likely that Oculus simply has a way of tracking how much each headset gets used. This is particularly true because Oculus included the average duration of use per session.
What on Earth drives you to suggest that Oculus is, more or less, making these numbers up? If this really was hand-wavium, as another poster pointed out early in this thread, Oculus could have fabricated a far more impressive number.
(edit: before anyone asks 'well, why didn't they say headsets if that's what they were counting?' The reason is that using the word "people" is better PR).
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
The fact is -- we don't KNOW where they're getting their numbers from. I don't know there are Gear VR sets in every cell store and every best buy. I know at my nearest best buy they have 2 sets. I know at the frys electronics by my house they have 1 set. I could stand to reason that best buys around the country have a minimum of 1 set.
But why do you think they didn't say 1 Million People Used Their Own Gear VR Headsets? Or Bought Used VR Headsets. Here are a couple quotes that brought me to doubt the numbers.
*****************************************************************************************************************
http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/oculus-samsung-gear-1-million-users/
"At a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oculus’s mobile head Max Cohen said the “one million people” number takes in account anyone who has seen a virtual reality video game, movie, or other related VR media on a Samsung Gear headset. "
"He did not specify how Oculus tracks the number of people using the Gear VR"
"Cohen was vague on many of the details behind the one million figure, and said the company did not know statistics like each person’s age or gender."
"He also acknowledged that in comparison to the mobile device market in general, the one million-user number is relatively small. Google’s Android operating system that powers millions of smartphones worldwide, for example, counts over 1.4 billion monthly active users."
"Technology analysts and investors will get a better picture of how the virtual reality market is growing if Samsung or Oculus eventually release how many Gear VR devices have been sold since it was releasedlast November. It’s one thing for a person to be merely astonished by a friend’s virtual reality headset, and another thing for that person to want to actually buy one."
************************************************************************************************************
Again, I'm not just pulling out Bias and attacking wildly. I don't just magically come up with numbers or question things without cause. If they release data tomorrow and say "800K Gear VR units sold, not counting what Samsung gave away for free" y'know what? Thats not a knock out of the park but I do consider that a substantial amount. I wouldn't declare it a success, but hell, at least it would be real.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Just because they didnt want to tell the reporter exactly HOW they know this magical information that really doesnt seem to be at all mysterious to anyone who has been around this decade of information gathering doesnt in my mind suggest they are just making up shit.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
People generally want to believe in that which they have a vested interest in. As I haven't yet "picked a pony" no headset has my favor, nor does VR in general.
If Tesla released numbers saying.. "100,000 people have driven in our cars" that doesn't allude to anything more than various people sat in a seat and drove around a block. Not that they sold 100,000 cars, or that those that test drove them were capable of purchasing one or even that they drove them. Someone could have just been in one as a passenger.
While the information is a very obtuse metric, the only thing information like that can truly prove is there is a general growth of interest from the past 6 months. Next month we likely won't hear "People that tried Gear VR grew from 1 Million to 1.2 Millions" or "Numbers dropped from 1 Million Gear VR users to 800K users"
The past two numbers they've given are ... 1) Number of hours "spent in VR" and 2) How many people have tried the headsets. They want to bring support in, they want it to seem fast paced and high profile to get development rolling, they want everyone else that doesn't know about VR to think "wow 1 million people have one, it must be good" but it's premature. The data is premature. I hope to see some real numbers within the next few months.
Guess "2016 is the year of VR" would have the same fun attached to it as "2015 is the year of the linux desktop!" and all the years before that
The other thing is, having 1 million people using it in a 30 day period, with average use at around 25 minutes? and most common use is to watch films etc. which, bearing in mind the average length of a film is 90 minutes, kind of suggests only a small proportion of those 1 million users tried it for more than 5 minutes.
Other reports say that Samsung shipped over 80 million smartphones, how many of them support GearVR i don't know, but, from that 1 million seems a particularly low number, more so when you factor in the average use.
Is this report really a positive thing, it might be, but it would depend on whether that users/month figure increases dramatically or not. Early adoption figures would be fairly low, and this might well be the case with GearVR, trouble is, its relying on a smartphone, and they tend to get replaced fairly often, and while some will perhaps stick with Samsung, there is no guarantee that they will, so GearVR's future is probably also tied to Samsungs smartphone popularity.
Welcome back to 1988. I've still got hair, sweet. Ooh, Rick Astley on the first run.
"Never gonna give you up..."
As far as Gear VR goes wasn't one of the links c. 1M sales + c. 10M "given away / bought" as part of a new - S7? - phone.
And if the article that SEANMCAD linked has it right then mobile adoption could be crucial component to wider take up..
that is intresting information and thank you for sharing however at least speaking for this VR nutcase fan boy
no
fucks
given
I dont care about attracting that segment of the gaming population at all, whatesoever, peroid
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Point being people like this should just skip straight to dismissal... even in 2020 when half of these VR headsets no longer exist.. or even after they spend their money on a set that doesn't prevail as a contender to the systems with the most games and broadest appeal. Just go straight to dismissal... no data is going to change the outlook of a fanboy.