Comment by whywhywhywhy

6 years ago

> I've heard that the Valve Index is a good alternative

They're not even comparable. The Quest is a headset and two controllers you put it on and pick the controllers up, draw a room boundary and you're in. Works in any room in your house, completely stand alone.

Index requires you to install multiple sensors in a specific room in your house, and requires a connection to a desktop PC tower and fiddling around with Steam to play.

I think the FB account requirement is incredibly dumb from Oculus (Don't understand why it couldn't just be a shadow account like Insta/Whatsapp which everyone seems fine with weirdly) but really the product their offering is entirely in a class of it's own for a fraction of the price a normal VR setup costs and a fraction of the hassle.

I think if the market was different and what they were offering wasn't unique I think far fewer people would care and we'd all just buy different headsets.

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whywhywhywhy

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echelon  6 years ago

Facebook might be sensing that their market is dwindling as other vendors catch up. They might be trying to extract value why they have the lead.

I honestly have no idea though. I don't get why they're in this space as it doesn't appear from the outside that they're trying very hard.

  • bigbubba  6 years ago

    Maybe they think the entire market is drying up? The AAA blockbuster everybody thought would make VR mainstream (Half Life) seems to have fizzled with great reviews but not many sales. Maybe Facebook now believes VR will prove to be a bubble and they want to juice it for all they can while they still can.

    • nvarsj  6 years ago

      Not sure this makes much sense. All the top end VR headsets are constantly sold out and require waiting months to get one (Index and soon the HP Reverb G2). People want to play Alyx but they can't.

      Also a PC only game is niche enough, no PCVR game will ever make VR mainstream. Really, the mainstream VR game is Beat Saber - that alone has probably sold more VR headsets than any other app or game combined.

      The only way to make VR mainstream imo is to offer it at console prices or less and make it standalone, which is exactly what the Quest is doing. It's really unfortunate it requires an FB account. I guess they justify it because Xbox and PS5 both require online accounts too.

      9 replies →

  • esyir  6 years ago

    Selling a loss leader to build mindshare and market share isn't my idea of value extraction as compared to building the base for future value extraction.

    If you don't think they're trying very hard though, I'm not sure if you've been following VR particularly much.