The latest data from Valve’s Steam Survey shows the Rift and Windows VR headsets continuing growth streaks in their share of monthly-connected headsets on Steam, snatching share mostly from the Vive and Vive Pro.

Each month Valve collects info from Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population, and to see how things are changing over time; that includes which VR headsets are connected to users’ computers. Participation in the survey is optional, and headsets aren’t counted if they aren’t powered on and recognized by the user’s PC at the moment that the data is collected. Data is captured over the course of the month which tells us how many unique headsets were connected to users’ PCs over that time period; we call the resulting figure ‘monthly-connected headsets’ for clarity.

Compared to January’s record-setting movements, monthly-connected headsets on the platform fell slightly in February, from 0.91% of the total Steam population to 0.89%. This discrepancy could be related to January being three days longer than February, but it’s tough to say with certainty without exactly how Valve calculates the figures behind the scenes.

In terms of the market share among different headsets on the platform, the Rift and Windows VR headsets came out ahead in February.

Image courtesy Valve

The Rift saw its third month of continuous growth, reaching 48.21% (+1.18%) which is just below its all-time high of 48.92% set back in March 2018. The Rift was likely helped in recent weeks by its price reduction to $350 which happened back in January.

Windows VR headsets are now on their tenth month of continuous growth, reaching 9.96% (+1.02%) share of headsets on the platform, which is also the new all-time high for the headsets. Windows VR headsets seem to be continuously discounted, including some big sales on the Samsung Odyssey last month, which likely contributed to the ongoing growth.

Those gains came primarily at the expense of the Vive and Vive Pro. The Vive dropped to 39.36% (-1.26%) share, while the Vive Pro dropped to 1.82% (-0.78%). When looking at the share of the two headsets together, HTC’s overall share of headsets on Steam has been steadily decreasing, down to 41.18% in February from 45.38% a year prior.

The Vive headsets don’t go on sale as often as other headsets; during the 2018 holiday shopping season HTC didn’t offer any official discounts on the original Vive, and presently the headset’s $500 MSRP is $150 more than its most direct competitor, the Rift. The Vive Pro, meanwhile, is positioned in a price class of its own (compared to other consumer headsets), with an $800 asking price for the headset alone, or $1,100 for the ‘starter kit’ (which includes the tracking beacons and controllers needed to use the headset).

SEE ALSO
Analysis: Monthly Connected VR Headsets on Steam Have Grown Exponentially

Beyond the price differences, HTC also has a new PC headset on the way, the Vive Cosmos, which was announced in January. The looming presence of a new headset set to launch in “early 2019” may be suppressing sales of the Vive and Vive Pro in recent weeks, and could have knock-on effects for the usage of current Vive headsets on Steam. HTC has also continued to aggressively expand its Viveport platform, which itself directly competes Steam; if HTC succeeds in attracting users to Viveport, it would likely be directly contributing to a reduced market share of Vive headsets on Steam.

Taken together, the above means that reductions in the share of the Vive and Vive Pro on Steam aren’t unexpected, but things are likely to come to a head when HTC launches Vive Cosmos. While technically SteamVR compatible, Cosmos will likely feature Viveport as the primary content platform and the ‘Vive Reality System’ as the headset’s operating environment out of the box, leaving SteamVR as a secondary option.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Proof XR Lab

    Currently in the UK – PC VR headsets

    -Rift is £349, but out of stock at all retail partners apart from Amazon, and Oculus direct.

    Rumours that “Rift S” is in production to hit retail stores sooner than many thought?

    -Vive is £499 plus £99 for DAS, but stock levels are inconsistent with many retailers out of stock

    -Vive Pro is available as “starter kit” with 1.0 wands and base stations £1199

    -Vive Pro with 2.0 “full kit” has been hard to find, £1299

    Windows Mixed Reality pricing and stock is all over the place. Lenovo now seem to have sold out of their WMR which was selling at £199 recently, and bumped back to £349 before going out of stock.

    • Rogue Transfer

      The Rift was previously out-of-stock a month before Xmas – it didn’t result in a Rift S then or at CES. This is more likely due to the increased demand since January’s RRP reducing the price permanently to £349 – depleting stock again, as they likely haven’t increased production rates yet, waiting for demand to settle in with the price change.

      Rift S won’t be talked about or released prior to Quest’s launch or before F8 in April. Facebook will wait for their own conferences(more like next year, as this is the year for Quest and they won’t want to detract from that). Plus, the Rift CV1 is selling well(to the point, they can’t keep stock up with demand) and it’s increasing its market share significantly every month. All reasons why no refresh will happen for a long time – until, there is competition that impacts its sales and market share(neither the case, at present).

      • Proof XR Lab

        The Rift wasn’t out of stock in the UK before Christmas ( i know because i bought 5 Rift+Touch bundles between mid November and mid January.

        The difference here is the retail partners i have spoken to when i tried to get another Rift last week have no “stock in date” which is different to previous out of stock delays where they’ve had stock in dates. Amazon increased their price above the new RRP to reflect this stock storage.

        • MosBen

          Well that’s pretty interesting. I have to say that I’m more or less a subscriber to the same theories that Rogue Transfer explained, that Oculus won’t step on the Quest’s toes by talking about a Rift 2, but the fact that a major retailer doesn’t appear to be getting any new Rift stock is certainly worth considering. Even if they were going to talk about the Rift 2 at the F8 conference you’d think that it’d be in development form, in much the way that Santa Cruz appeared at a few conferences before being announced as the Quest last year, meaning that the Rift 2 wouldn’t be out until 2020. If that were the case, they’d still have a year of Rift sales before then, so it’d be weird to cut off supply.

          • Bob

            Don’t think it’s Rift 2 but just an updated model of the first generation device. I’m with the others; they’ll announce the Quest first followed by the Rift S where they’d emphasize that the product is specifically for the more “hardcore” group of consumers.

          • Proof XR Lab

            We might see a new SKU called “Rift S” as a running update (refresh), in the same way a new SKU was introduced for the Marvel Bundle.

            As they are producing the Touch insight hand controllers for Quest, very easy to incorporate into Rift S or whatever it might be called, from a manufacturing POV then its one hand controller to produce rather than Touch Constellation and Touch Insight.

            Who knows, perhaps you are both right!

          • MosBen

            That’s a good insight, particularly into the tension that led to Iribe leaving Oculus. Of course, as an enthusiast that’s willing to upgrade my PC for a new, awesome HMD, I want a Rift 2 that really pushes the hardware forward, which appears to be what Iribe wanted. But you’re right that it makes sense to consolidate manufacturing between the Rift and the Quest lines, at least for the time being. And it’s not just consolidating controllers. Eliminating the need to manufacture tracking stations and use the same inside-out tracking parts from the Quest in the Rift S simplifies a lot of their manufacturing as well as potentially saving on bulk parts ordering from their suppliers.

            The Rift S would have the same tracking parts, same screens, and potentially the same enclosure as the Quest, just without the onboard hardware or battery. According to RTVR’s reporting from last year’s Oculus Connect, the Quest is about 100g heavier than the current Rift, which would mean that without that onboard hardware the Rift S would potentially be significantly lighter than the current Rift. And if the Quest is coming in at $400, then the Rift S, which would essentially be the Quest but without the Snapdragon hardware and battery, might be in for a price drop.

            I’ve been wondering about Oculus’ product line strategy for a while now. In a world where the Quest offers inside out, 6DOF tracking in an all-in-one package, the Oculus Go doesn’t really make a ton of sense any more as an option. Sure, it’s cheaper, but in not too long the Quest will drop in price enough that the Go doesn’t make much sense. But what would make sense is an all-in-one system like the Quest, an entry level tethered system, like the Rift S, and a high end system, like the Rift 2.

          • Proof XR Lab

            Yesterday, I called three Oculus retail partners here in the UK to try and get to the bottom of this “stock shortage”, two could not give me any dates for new stock and could not do anything but setup email alerts in case any stock arrives.

            one retail partner (Scan.co.uk) said they were expecting a limited supply of Rift on 29th March but had back orders for this stock already and were not taking further orders – their website says “Call for best price” which is what I did, the customer service team said “keep trying our website” in case anything changed.

            Noticed on amazon.co.uk there are 3rd party resellers now offering Rift+Touch for £599 (should be £349 in UK) as Amazon have no stock themselves.

            Other UK retail partners just show “out of stock” on their websites and you cannot place pre-order, which is very unusual. Even during the RTX graphics card shortage at launch, many retailers were taking pre-orders?

            You are right that a “Rift S” like a Quest but without SOC and battery would make huge sense, and potentially hit a very attractive price point!

      • Mei Ling

        There will be a refresh this year because HTC Cosmos (an updated take on the HTC Vive for 2019) is set to be released in the spring/summer but it is not designed to compete directly with the Quest as it requires a connection to a PC. Instead it appears to be an effort from HTC to pull in potentially newer PC VR users who want the “latest and greatest” that virtual reality has to offer and absorb some of Facebook’s marketshare from behind their backs while they are fixated on the mass market.

        It would be three years since the launch of Rift in 2016 so now is roughly the right time to update the hardware and obviously business sense means Facebook have absolutely no intention of losing any of their marketshare in the PC VR space between now and the following year therefore to minimize this problem they are set to release a newer Rift design with updated core specifications (lens and resolution) and inside-out tracking.

        Finally the Rift has not been in stock at most retail partners for sometime now as others have already highlighted and there is still no clear-cut answer from Oculus in regards to replenishing this shortage. This means they are prepared to roll-out a newer iteration of the device within the year.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Why not buy directly from Oculus? here the brick and mortar retailers are more expensive than just buying directly.

      • Proof XR Lab

        Buying direct is an option, but my recent ‘direct’ experience with Lenovo has put me off. Explorer WMR arrived with stuck pixels in display, took 3 weeks of me chasing them to get a return arranged, total of 5 weeks from purchase to refund.

        Before this had 5 Rift’s all with the “glue smear in the lens” issue, thankfully from local retail partner so could swap out same day (by visiting different branches to chase down remaining stock), after number 5 got a refund.

        The manager doing my refund at the retailer admitted they had a large number of Rift returns over the Christmas vacation period due to glue in lens and controllers developing trigger faults after a few play sessions.

        If I’d bought these direct, it would have been a long waiting game with no guarantee that replacements would have been any better, and many trips to local parcel drop-off points. Bought a 3rd sensor direct and that took over 8 days from placing the order to actually arrive.

  • Blaexe

    “This discrepancy could be related to January being three days longer than February”

    This shouldn’t be a factor at all when looking at relative numbers. It’s more likely that after Christmas, more people were active in January.

    • benz145

      You’re right, and your suggestion is a strong possibility too. My thinking on the three extra days is that, since VR headset ownership is much smaller compared to overall number of Steam users, VR headset data coming in through the steam survey is likely to be ‘more spikey’ (less consistent) in day-to-day accumulations of headset counts than the general Steam population. Thus a few extra days helps refine the average. Hard to say how much impact this might have though.

      Could also depend on what days of the week fall in the month and player habits — for instance, if VR players are more likely to play on weekends and less likely to play on weekdays than compared to typical gaming, then it would matter how many weekend days fall into each month.

      • Tommy

        We have to also take into consideration that even if VR increased on Steam during that time, how many non VR gamers got PCs or new games over the holidays. The only way to know that would be to see Steam’s overall numbers including VR and flat games.

    • gamechanger

      My guess is people connected their HMDs to showcase VR to their friends and families during Christmas. It had to be still plugged in in January, but put back in shelves in February.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    Whats better about wmr and oculus is you can buy and return in store at bestbuy.Not having to do mail orders.It in itself is so affordable for the customer too.Not just targeted to generate revenue for the consumer.

  • Oneben

    When I bought my Samsung Odyssey, WMR headsets were reported around 5%, so the fact they’ve nearly doubled their market share in that time makes me slightly happy. Slightly because Microsoft has a habit of abandoning products they don’t feel are selling enough(kinect and mobile, for example), and I can see them doing that with WMR.

    • Rosko

      They would do even better still if they made it available to europe.

      • Lashawnda

        On-line job opportunities have become a trend in all over world nowadays. A recent survey demonstrates over 73% of the people are doing work in web-based job opportunities from a home office without the difficulties. The Internet is booming regularly and therefore we are having an ocean of money making opportunities using the internet to generate an income. Everyone wants to spend more time with his/her buddies by going any wonderful place in the country or any other country. So internet based income enables you to do the work at any time you want and enjoy your life. But determining the best way moreover setting the proper target is our ambition towards financial success. Already plenty of people are earning such a great revenue of $14000 each and every week with the use of suggested and efficient methods of making money on the internet. You can begin to get paid from the first day after you visit our web site. RESPOND BY TODAY >>>>> http://cummins.pt/ey

      • Kristy

        Internet job opportunities are increasingly becoming a emerging trend all over the over world these days. Latest study tells us higher than 76% of people are doing work in online jobs from a home office with no issues. The Affiliate marketing world is booming every day and people are having an ocean of new opportunities on the net to generate an income. Every person really wants to hang out with his/her relatives by going to any wonderful place in the world. So internet based earning allows you to complete the work at any time you want and enjoy your life. Although choosing the best direction moreover establishing the right aim is our milestone toward success. Already most of the people are generating such a solid pay check of $25000 every single week through suggested as well as outstanding techniques for generating income online. You can start to earn from the 1st day after you see our web-site. START NOW >>>>> https://mig.gs/ABnA

    • Hivemind9000

      I think the good thing is that WMR is a platform (like SteamVR), and the hardware is developed by other brands/manufacturers. It would be very difficult for them to “drop” it – more likely they would open source it if they wanted to wash their hands of it but not piss their partners off. Seems unlikely given that WMR locks headsets into their Windows platform.

      • daveinpublic

        And that it’s a future platform that they’re trying to beat the rest to. Even if it’s not taking off right now, they don’t want to cede ground to a possible future territory, like they did with Mobile.

  • Trump sure is dumb

    The Rift and Windows VR headsets are cheap entrees into the market. While I may consider a Windows headset in the future I will not let Palmer Lucky get a penny in royalties. Once his politics was known the Rift was dead to me. I am waiting for the 5G 3rd generation headsets before upgrading my regular Vive. Feel free to buy all those cheap knockoffs as long as the VR market is still growing. Personally, if I was buying a VR headset right now, I would go the PSVR route. It is cheap and a decent experience. Plus, it has better produced games/ experiences that aren’t available elsewhere.

    • Tommy

      I love my PSVR but the amount of really good exclusives can be counted on one hand. I would need a rather large list to show the good PC exclusives that are not available to PSVR.
      Cheap entries? There is very little differences between Rift and Vive.

    • Tesla

      So you support the crooked mummy Hillary ? Shame on you.

      • MosBen

        He didn’t say that he supports or supported Hillary Clinton. That said, there’s not even any comparison between Clinton and Trump. Clinton would have been a flawed, mediocre president, but that’s a world better than what we’re having to deal with.

    • brandon9271

      Oh no! Palmer didn’t like the candidate of your choice!! He’s therefore an “evil” person along with 50% of the population! I’d bet money you’re from the left coast..

      • MosBen

        He didn’t say that Luckey was evil, let alone “50% of the population”, which is definitely not how many people voted for Trump. Being disinclined to support a product which profits someone that you disagree with politically is perfectly reasonable.

    • RJH

      I bet high street shopping is a pain for you having to vet each product’s provenance to ensure the owner adheres to your political voting preference :)

    • Steven Bennett

      You do take realize that Luckey is no longer with Oculus, right? Mainly because of that very reason. Facebook didn’t like it and ousted him.

      • MosBen

        He did say “royalties”. I’m not sure how Luckey’s separation from Oculus went, or whether he still gets money from Oculus sales. At the very least he probably got a bunch of Facebook stock when they purchased Oculus, so big Oculus sales numbers probably increase Luckey’s net worth?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Oh please go away with your nonsense politics. You should get your head out of your ass..

    • daveinpublic

      People from the left have thinner skin. People on the right have to see people promoting the left all the time and know how to understand it, listen to their criticism and negativity, and still deal with them in a normal way.. all the time. I saw your username and immediately was like, whatever, and just read your comment as though you were a normal person, and wasn’t going to factor it in to your comment till I saw what it was about.

    • MosBen

      Great handle. I’d totally get a PSVR, except that I don’t have a PS4 and can’t really justify it with an Xbox One and Switch. And with the rumblings of a new Playstation console starting to brew it seems like we may hear about a new PSVR headset before hearing about the Rift 2 or Vive 2.

    • Varis Agrippa

      As a far right wing nationalist I didn’t know this about Palmer, I’ll be buying a Rift now. Thanks!

  • chaos_in_ashland

    I am a supporter of VR. I bought a Vive back when it first came out, built a great gaming rig with a 1070, and a bunch of games. I wanted to buy a 1080ti but they were over 800$ at the time and I figured I’d wait a couple years and then buy a 1080ti or something similar in performance for hopefully around half the price.

    Not so.

    To get the same performance as a 1080ti you have to buy a RTX 2080 for – 800$. So I’ve waited over 2 years, the price for the same gpu performance has shifted laterally, not dropped.

    I was an early adopter because VR is awesome and I want it to take off. Considering how ridiculously expensive everything still is, from a decent gpu to something as simple as a wireless addition to my current Vive (300$), the only thing I see taking off are these companies with my wallet.

    F – Nvidia for stringing gamers along with their nonsense RTX nothing.

    F – HTC for not putting out a cheaper wireless Vive 2.0 option.

    In closing, F – them, I’m going back to my pancake video games.

    • Tesla

      1050 Ti and Pentium 4560 is enough to play games with Odyssey+ or other WMR headset. If you want 250-300% subsampling, an extra quality, you can buy MSI 2080 RTX 8G like I did, for 700 USD. The PC does not need to be expensive to play VR games. Depends what visual quality you can stand.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Sorry, but RTX is not nothing, maybe you don’t care about it, but I really think it adds extra impressive visuals.

    • Pablo C

      Worst of all, if you really want to take advantage of your new GPU, you´ll have to switch your CPU as well, and then also your motherboard, and then also your RAM. VR is getting ridicoulusly expensive for us, PC gamers. How things are going, and i.e. if PSVR gets a decent next generation, for the first time in my life I see myself playing in a console.

    • MosBen

      I’m eagerly awaiting the point at which Oculus or Valve start discussing what the recommended specs are going to be for the second generation of HMDs. I’m betting that the 1070, or something equivalent, is the recommended spec. When the Rift and Vive were released you needed a PC that cost over $1,000 in addition to the several hundreds of dollars for the HMD itself. I’m betting that they’re so sensitive to cost issues for VR that that never happens again, and the next generation will see no more than a modest bump in the recommended specs. That also probably means that the VR hardware will also only have a modest bump in specs, with a wider FOV, but not approaching 200 degrees, and sharper screens, but not 4k per eye. And that’s fine with me. The worst thing for VR is having people give up on trying it because they’re confused as to whether their PC is up to the task, or they can’t afford the latest and greatest graphics card.

    • WyrdestGeek

      Graphics card prices have been kept high, at least in part, by bitcoin miners.

      • Ardra Diva

        that situation seems to be waning, though. the miners are starting to realize it takes a server farm to turn a profit.

  • Tesla

    I have Odyssey+ and it is super fantastic, especially with custom face pad.

  • Hivemind9000

    Not surprising given how expensive Vive and Vive Pro are. HTC really need to get competitive on pricing vs specs fast or die.

  • Thunk

    The Rift is just the best all round value for money PC VR headset, right now. Even with 2 sensors, you can achieve a 360 degree tracking solution, that works very well, and tracks perfectly fine for games like Pavlov, etc. On top of that, Oculus Dash is by far the best VR interface for using your Windows desktop in VR.

    • Pablo C

      Yeah, but it might be less future proof for us (I have a Rift by the way): Valve is investing more in higher tech systems (knuckles, eye tracking) while Oculus is focusing on a broader public, yet lower tech. This is a problem for us because Oculus is a closed platform, and if we want the best tech for the next generation for ourselves, we might want to get a system other than oculus, where our current Oculus software will not work. SteamVR on the other hand, is open.

      • daveinpublic

        Oculus allows Steam, as well. And is Steam technically open? It’s open in the way that Netflix is open. And the benefits of Oculus are that they are pioneers in the field and make VR affordable. It’s the cheapest outside-in system, touch controllers are much better than the wands, and seems to be more comfortable overall. When they release Rift 2 the prices will go down even more, probably see sales for $250 or $199 in the year it’s released. So, for an open system with a better future, Steam sure seems behind and expensive.

        • Pablo C

          I mean futureproof: If we buy an Vive for next gen, we will not be able to play our current Oculus games with that better tech. i.e. I have XRebirth VR on Oculus, it would play much better with eye tracking. If the next Vive has it, and I get it, I´ll have to buy the game again. On contrary, if I would have bought the game on Steam, I could play it on next gen Oculus, because Steam is open, but Oculus is not.

          • JustNiz

            This is exactly why you’re much better off buying games for your Rift though Steam than Oculus home.

          • Pablo C

            Yes, I do. Now, don´t you think that running both SteamVR and Oculus is harder on the system?

          • Thunk

            https://gitlab.com/znixian/OpenOVR/blob/master/README.md

            Let’s you play SteamVR games without SteamVR also running.

            However, a lot of SteamVR games also have native Oculus mode or a command line option that opens the game through Oculus, without opening SteamVR as well.

          • Pablo C

            Thank you very much! A lot of my Steam games appear in the Oculus store as if they would be native. But if I open them, they still call Steam VR. Can this be avoided then? Thanks again.

          • JustNiz

            Yep. Shame you bought a rift.

        • Baldrickk

          OpenVR is open. It’s why you can play those games without resorting to third party ‘hacks’ like revive.

          Don’t mistake the cost of the hardware as being cost of the platform.
          Farcebook are selling the Occulus H/W at cost, or as a loss leader to try and get you locked into their platform, much as consoles do.

          Occulus sure isn’t an open ecosystem.

          • daveinpublic

            OpenVR isn’t really open. It’s called open in the name, but it isn’t open source. You’re required to download Steam to use it.

          • sebrk

            Oculus are commited to OpenXR.

      • Thunk

        So you’re unaware of all the new things Oculus are working on, as seen in this video from their press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoQHOx6XS-E

        The Oculus Store is a closed platform, but what you can run on the Rift is entirely open. You can run any external VR Windows program on the Rift, without hacks, from Steam VR games to random obscure VR games you downloaded from some student’s github page, etc.

        • Pablo C

          Yeah, but it´s the same point: you cannot run Rift games on WVR or on the Vive (While you can run Steam games on the Rift). Buying games from the Oculus store, mean all my future devices need to be Oculus. And in any sense, that’s a tough binding. It’s a future defined by Oculus, not by the next best device. May be Oculus develops well in the next generation, or may be not. We don’t know which other brands will appear, but we know that those brands will be Steam compatible, and we know they won’t be Oculus compatible. Also, I have a feeling: Oculus is weird, because they give us a console environment, within a PC environment. That might work on the first generations, but in time, tendencies gets fixed: There are console gamers and there are PC gamers. The later are used to spend more money, and are used to open systems. The former will get PSVR.

          • Thunk

            Your argument doesn’t make any sense. The Rift is a Steam compatible headset, so you don’t have to only invest in Oculus Store games.

            If anything, the headsets that aren’t Oculus compatible are the ones missing out, since with the Rift, you have access to virtually every VR game on PC.

            And the Rift isn’t a console environment; it’s no different to a Steam VR headset that by default pushes Steam VR to the user. With both headsets, you can run outside VR applications.

            The Quest is more the console-style headset, but has a large advantage over PS4 being that it’s $399 all-inclusive; you don’t have to buy an additional console, and hook it with wires and sensors, etc.

          • Pablo C

            I just have an opinion, but I think is shared among many PC gamers. Only the Rift is compatible with the Oculus store, so in time, Oculus will be a niche market (sort of like Apple), and all other systems will use Steam, including Oculus, so guess which platform will sell way more software. Losing the software market, will increase that niche feeling. That niche kind is typical of consoles, it doesn’t happen on PC, so they will drift away from that market as well. Overall because this is Facebook, their market is social interaction, not high-end gaming. Plus, you said where this is going with the Quest. And come on, they won’t be able to win against the PSVR. They already have 4 times the market than oculus have, with a crappy VR system. Imagine what it would be with a decent PSVR system, that probably will come with the next console. $399 is a temporary number, it means something only now.

          • Thunk

            Well, the fact of the matter is that the Oculus Rift is slowly becoming the no. 1 PC VR headset, so it’s going to be supported by all developers, regardless, because there’s a large userbase there. It’s also pretty easy to port from Steam VR to Oculus, so it’s not a big deal.

          • Pablo C

            Remember the time PS2 was rulling the console world, and the xbox and the cube were almost a niche product? And then came the PS3, which was trashed by the sales of the Wii and the xbox360. After that, the wiiU was garbage. Now it is the time of the Switch and PS4, and microsoft has even talked of retiring from the console battle. So yeah, what happens in a given generation sais nothing of what will happen on the next.

          • Thunk

            Yeah, exactly, Vive was once on top, winning the PC VR generation. But with the recent price drops of the Rift, and the general consensus that Oculus are way more committed to VR in the long run than HTC or Valve – because Oculus is a company whose literal core focus is VR and the others are not – the tides have turned, and now Oculus are now the ones on top. And with Valve’s firing of multiple employees on the VR team and HTC releasing too many confusing products and making their own Viveport platform that’s separate from SteamVR, it’s hard to have confidence in those companies; it just seems like Oculus are the only ones doing things coherently. With the Rift, Go and Quest, they outlined their future plans clearly: have 3 sets of headsets for the enthusiast PC, casual mobile and enthusiast mobile market, respectively; people know what Oculus are doing, because what they’re doing is logical and makes sense.

          • Pablo C

            I fully agree Oculus has won the PC VR battle on this generation. I´m just saying that that tells you nothing of what will happen on the next.

          • Thunk

            Well, ultimately, you buy what ever headset offers the best value price to performance, wise, and then buy the games on the software platform of your choice. It’s important to not confuse headset sales with software platform sales.

  • Mythos88

    That shows WMR having about a quarter of the use of Vive now. And that is with WMR being unreported due to the Steam Hardware Survey often not detecting them.

  • MosBen

    I, and my Rift, were part of the survey this month! Also, man I want Oculus/Valve to make some concrete announcements about the recommended specs for the second generation of HMDs, because I built my PC in 2014 (graphics card upgraded to a 1070 a couple years ago), and I’m itching for an upgrade, but I don’t want to commit to anything until I know what they’re going to be recommending for the next stage in PC VR.

  • oompah

    If WMR becomes standalone in next iteration(similar to hololens) , it may become the new PC. And I urge MS to do development in this direction. Also I urge cloud based computing considering that WMR may not do everything onboard (except games). Therefore other things should also be added to it(like printer/printing, wifi). And it should have USB-C data cable that does everything instead of current HDMI+USB pair, why not add 2 or 3 so that u can save data on external drive or even connect to an external monitor for everyone to see. Also it should be compatible with current bluetooth keyboard & mice(as well as cable based). Can even add latest cell phone capabilities.
    WMR has so much potential if MS transforms it into the next platform that supports ALL other previous compatibilities of Windows , so why not load windows 10 flat & be done with it (enhanced for VR & gaming).

  • Balzar

    Personally i think that all of the HMD developers need to combine efforts if they want VR to succeed.
    I pre-ordered the original VIVE due to Oculus going down the exclusives route which i didn’t agree wih. PSVR has follwed suite with this and unfortunatley now it seems that HTC are doing the same thing with there VIVEport platform.
    What they should be doing is investing in content rather than fighting over the market before the market is even really established. Most people I talk to about VR who have either bought an HMD and then sold it or are on the fence about getting one have said that the lack of content is the biggest issue.
    I have played some great games in VR but they are few and far between and most games are expensive for the very small amount of playable content that they are released with.

  • JustNiz

    Yet another article on this website with heavy pro-Oculus bias. Look at the graph. Rift is about the same now as it was in April 2018. There’s no actual growth there.

  • mirak

    I think the Vive and Vive pro have less chances of being surveyed, because most people unplug the plug from the wall socket adapter, while the rift is powered with usb and you would tend to not unplug usb powered stuff.

    The only time I was asked for a survey it was a pop up on my Linux media computer where there is steam, but no headset is plugged in that computer, I don’t run games on it, I use steam only for the chat.

  • Ardra Diva

    Hardware matters, but software is really king. After careful analysis of Rift and Vive, it was software that made me choose Rift. Oculus is months ahead of HTC/Steam in the slick presentation of their store and apps. GearVR was actually the best, its app store dwarfs the Rift’s, Samsung really pumped a lot of content into that solution, it makes me sad to see it on the decline. Point being that SteamVR support alone isn’t enough to sway me. Oculus can give you both.