As Sansar Launches Let's Look at Social VR's Small, Ungrowing User Numbers

Here's a handy link for tracking nine social VR apps on Steam, which are now Sansar's leading competitors with the departure of Altspace VR. As you can see, usage is tiny -- yesterday, there were not even 500 daily users combined. That includes Philip Rosedale's High Fidelity, with less than 15 daily users, and Altspace VR, with less than 20.

When I referenced VR stats for Steam last week during my conversation with Palmer Luckey, many VR evangelists pointed out that not all Steam users allow their activity to be tracked, and that not all Vive and Oculus users are logged into Steam. That's fair to a certain extent, but only goes so far: Even if total usage were 2X, 3x, even 10X the number tracked by Steam, these would still be tiny numbers -- not even compared to Facebook or mobile games, but to other virtual reality platforms. Second Life was touted as the metaverse 10 years ago, and then written off by Silicon Valley as a failed platform, but it still gets concurrency rates in the mid-five figures -- far, far greater usage than any new social VR product.

There's an bigger problem for this new wave of social VR:

Growth rates have plateaued even as more and more VR devices have hit the market. Look at the chart above: Usage remains in the low three figures or even smaller over the last twelve months and haven't budged. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Oculus and Vive's have been sold since the Summer of 2016. Despite the fact that Altspace and some of these other social VR apps are compatible with Gear VR, and millions more of those have hit the market since last year.

So this is the market Sansar is playing in. I would not be surprised if Linden Lab starts promoting the PC-based, non-VR client of Sansar over the VR offering -- if they don't, in fact, I'd start to worry.

Hat tip: Joshua Corvinus (a VR dev who probably disagrees with my assessment, but that's cool).

Comments

[DrFran]

I'm no scientist, but steady, slow growth of High Fidelity seems to make it the most steadfast. That's what happens when leadership is visionary, and not just about making money, or jumping on the VR hype wagon.

[Shockwave]

Fantasy and business are the killer app for VR. Do you live in a repressive country like the US? Have fun in VR and you dont have to worry about the law. Want to have a business? Do it. Want to be a fairie in a fairy forest? Do it. Want to have an orgy youd never dream of in real life? Do it. Want to build and code and create games for playing but you arent experienced in making pc games? Just do it.

The vr killer app is that it allows anyone anywhere to be utterly free, with only the rules of SL to worry about. What LL needs to realize is that the more restrictive they make vr, the less reason it has to exist in the first place.