Even Most Core Gamers Don't Seem Very Interested in VR

Hardcore gamers will be virtual reality's first main market -- that's an underlying assumption shared by just about everyone in the VR industry. (Which would explain the countless VR talks and VR demos happening right now at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.) They take it as a given that the tens of millions (mostly young men) who spend a lot of money to play next gen console games and games on Steam will eagerly spend their money on Oculus Rift and HTC-Vive (from Valve).

One small problem: I can't find much evidence that most hardcore gamers are actually interested in buying either one of them. Or to put it another way, I see worrying signs that there's much less enthusiasm than generally assumed. To take a couple points:

Reddit is absolutely the number one online destination for gamers, so it's no surprise that the /Gaming subreddit has nearly 10 million subscribers. What is surprising is how small the /oculus subreddit is by contrast: less than 70,000 total. (Further surprise: /Vive has far less: about 18,000.) This strikes me as a strong indication that VR's top product doesn't have a huge base of supporters among gamers -- more like a niche of a niche.

Don't believe me? Oculus Rift started taking pre-orders in January, so let's look how it did in Google Trends versus a recent top game:

Yes: Last January, there were more gamers searching for content related to Fallout 4 than there were for Oculus Rift. Which, yes, isn't even an apples-to-apples comparison, since Fallout 4 is just one game and the Rift is a platform for games like Fallout 4 and beyond -- but that only emphasizes the fact that more people should be searching for the Rift, not less. The Rift is more like a game console, and any time a new console is about to drop, Google goes crazy with people searching for the latest news about it. I'm not seeing that either.

Maybe I'm missing something; maybe there's a data point I need to know about. And yes, I've seen the surveys where young man especially express interest in VR, but that general interest doesn't seem to be translating into specific motivation to buy. And until I see that data point, we shouldn't assume games are going to be first to flock to VR. And if they don't, who will?

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Comments

[John Branch]

Hard to figure what accounts for the apparent low interest in the Oculus Rift. One possibility: until gamers can get a Rift or a Vive in their hands and use it with a game that exploits it well, they aren't going to be very excited. And non-gamers have even less reason to be excited at this point: we can't yet try a VR headset at a store, many of us have computers that can't drive the headset, and if we did there's still not much we could do with it.

This situation reminds me of the dilemma around advanced televisions in the 90s: they had few buyers because there was little programming, and the programming wasn't likely to come until there were more HDTV owners. Obviously that didn't last. Wait two and a half to five years and the VR headset situation will pretty certainly look different—it's just hard to tell how.

[Ezra]

Another hot take from one of VR's leading enthusiast blog.

What does it mean that the iPhone sub-reddit only has 154k users? https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone

Does that strike you as a strong indication mobile's top product doesn't have a huge base of supporters among gamers? More like a niche of a niche?

[Gattz Gilman]

Personally, I would consider myself a mostly hardcore gamer, and I am very interested in VR. Only thing that is holding me back is the cost of it. My current PC can play most current games quite well, but would not be powerful enough to run most of the VR games that are currently out as you need to run them at 90fps. So the cost of the headset itself plus the cost of upgrading my PC pushes it outside of what I can afford, so I have to sit on the sidelines until it becomes more attainable. Now to just make friends with people that have it already that live near me...

[melponeme_k]

This technology is only good for theme parks. Places that can build a big room.

A Rubber room so that the VR heads can wander around and think they are in a real place.

How many seconds until one of these theme park workers films this rubber room filled with blind, headset wearing dorks flailing around and uploads it to his/her social media?

I guarantee you the minute it happens is the minute this technology dies.

But it will be a laugh riot. Funnier than that photo of Suckerface walking past drooling village idiots wearing VR glasses.

[JohnC]

The price is so obviously the reason for the currant lack of interest. If it was cheap everyone who cared would pick one up just to take a look. Also they are trying to run before they can walk again. It's like when they release games in which the selling point is the amazing graphics, and yet 75% of those who buy the game will never be able to see those graphics today because of the limitations of hardware. I have spent the best part of the last 20 years designing games and spending most of my life in one kind of virtual world or another, and yet these headsets seem little more than a money making gimmick to me, maybe game buyers are not dumb as the industry believes them to be. Of course when you try one out you are blown away by the experience. Like when you experience anything completely new and exhilarating for the first time. The backers and hype sellers though seem to mistake this obvious human reaction to the extraordinary as an indication of universal desirability. This IMHO is incredibly naive in some cases, but is mostly driven at present by a money making exercise on the part of the games industry, who will now attempt to force VR onto their community by making their favourite games, and eventually all games, available only on this platform. When the dust settles though this will just be another side show entertainment machine owned by everyone, if you own an Xbox or a Playstation now, you will own one of these de rigueur. And it will mean just about as much.

[melponeme_k]

Gamers not interested in Oculus?

What will Zuckerberg do? How will he fund his 740 Acre property in Kuai?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3484234/Richard-Branson-s-Moroccan-paradise-Mark-Zuckerberg-s-Hawaiian-escape-jaw-dropping-holiday-retreats-world-s-billionaires.html

Someone should tell him it would environmentally better and give him equal happiness if he had this property only in VR. Then watch as he laughs his ass off at that advice. But he is certainly willing to peddle that line to us. WAKE UP everyone!

[metacam oh]

this is kinda like saying telephone users have no interest in smart phones before people even tried a smart phone. Silly conclusion

[sirhc deSantis]

Plus, being long enough in the tooth to have tried these things out back in the dawn-o'-time (Leicester square about - ooh, early 90's maybe?) and seeing it all fizzle out before, plus its still strap on a divers rig, have to say even if the cash was there its still wait and see. 5 bucks price point, sure why not but not a gamer so not really even the current target audience anyway.

(Side point - is reddit really the 'go-to' place for anything? Genuine question as never really caught my attention long enough to engage me.)