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HTC-Vive

Today, HTC announced that it would slash the price on the Vive by $200, cut it from $800 to $600. This is the offset cost cutting the Vive has seen, and information technology's undoubtedly a move to compete with Oculus, which has been selling the Rift + Bear upon for $400 this year. Matthew Gepp, writing for Vive, notes:

Starting today (8/21), we are reducing the price of Vive past $200. The high-end, PC-based consumer Vive that is in market today, and will be for the foreseeable future, will now be available for $599. All Vive purchases come with a free trial to Viveport Subscription, where consumers can cull upwards to 5 titles per month to experience, and copies of some of the most popular pieces of VR in Google's Tilt Castor, EverestVR, and Richie'southward Plank Experience.

The company also notes that both Doom VR and Fallout VR are coming. I haven't played the VR version of either title, but if I had to bet, I'd bet on Doom being the vastly superior game. Bethesda's Creation Engine is 6 years quondam and yet has some roots in the even older Gamebryo code. That's not to say there's something incorrect with information technology, but Doom runs beautifully, even on midrange hardware. Fallout four, at least when I played through it, had a singled-out trend to chug in certain spots, even with tiptop-stop hardware.

Viveport

What's more than significant nigh this blog post is what it doesn't mention: Steam. Oculus has some explanation for why they play upwardly their own Oculus Store as opposed to Steam — they're trying to build a platform for their own hardware, and every client that uses Steam is a client that isn't buying games from/through Oculus. Vive's conclusion to try and push their own Viveport solution as opposed to emphasizing Steam is a calculated one. Nosotros spot-checked multiple titles offered through Viveport and every single ane of them was available on Valve'southward platform already. That doesn't make Viveport a bad deal if you adopt to test 5 games per month (monthly fee: $5.99) equally opposed to buying them outright, but it implies Vive is trying to raise money on subscriptions that it isn't bringing in from hardware sales.

We've been charting the growth of HTC and Oculus on Steam since terminal year. Here's how the things wait today:

VRMarketShare

In the past six months, Oculus has grown its market share from 0.11% of Steam users to 0.14%. That's a proceeds of 1.27x, and while it's absolutely tiny in real terms, information technology still shows signs of growth, even so tepid. HTC, on the other hand, has been stalled since Feb. And to be clear, while Oculus could be gathering its own customers primarily to its own store forepart, at that place's no reason to think the same thing is happening with HTC. Steam is the all-time place to encounter any shift in user figures, since that'south where Vive owners are going to go.

At all-time this suggests that gamers are setting the Vive aside subsequently purchase and no longer using it, with their attrition rate roughly equal to the new purchase rate. I say "all-time," because while this upshot isn't great, it does have a solution. Add some killer VR games, and gamers will come back. At worse, it suggests that Vive sales fell off a cliff once Oculus launched its own touch on controllers.

Hopefully this price cut stirs some interest in VR. At this rate, it's going to exist decades before it catches on.