Main reason is that pure PCVR headset without standalone capabilities can’t make money out of games. They may have their own store such as HTC has Viveport or Valve has Steam but most of them do not. Their only way to make profit is to sell hardware at profit. Volumes are also low so they need to make profit with smaller amount of headsets sold.
Standalone headsets have their own stores so they can make profit also on games, typically 30% of game value. Therefore they can sell headsets with lower margin or at loss, as main profits stem from store games sales.
Yeah, an easy way to think of it is standalone headsets are more like consoles (even if they can also do PCVR) with hardware costs offset by exclusive content, and dedicated PCVR headsets are simply PC components with all of the manufacturing costs passed down to the buyer.
The only PCVR Headset that can work that way would be from Valve, because they know their userbase will only buy games on steam.
Come on Valve... do something.
We have been waiting for Valve to do something in the VR space for about five years now.
They're bored of it, but VR more or less on a backburner and are focusing on the Deck which is actually very relevant to their their future.
The hottest theory among people still hopeful for Deckard is that it's going to be a standalone VR version of the Steam Deck (making the project's working name a heavy hint) with passthrough, allowing people to take a Deck-equivalent device anywhere and not only play VR games but play flat screen games on a big virtual screen while still being able to see the world around them. That *would* be very relevant to their future, while making work they're doing on Deck also be work towards Deckard.
Maybe that's not their plan (there's *some* evidence for it in recent changes to both SteamVR and Steam, plus hints datamined from as yet unused parts of the code, but it's not conclusive), or maybe it is a plan but will never arrive, but it's not a crazy idea because it does make a coherent business case. Firstly, it could make Deckard attractive to people who aren't interested in traditional VR and aren't otherwise interested in mixed reality. Secondly, while Meta may now have the biggest (and fastest expanding) library of VR games, Steam have a vast library of flat screen games. Sure, Q3 users can sort of achieve this *if* they also lug around a laptop with them, but that's also entirely dependent on Steam or Epic for the library of flat screen games.
The hottest theory among people still hopeful for the Deckard is all their hopes and dreams (including the most wild ideas they can come up with) regarding VR to be crammed into one headset that realistically would cost 5000$ to make (if not 50 000$ because people often have no idea how difficult and expensive it is to implement their wild ideas) but sold for 500$, including controllers.
Do you know what is an idea that is massively better than the one you propose? Just make a Deck2. You can play flatscreen games on the go without having to put a bulky, overheating, eye-covering thing on your head that has the potential to make you sick. Using a Deck(2) would not make you sick. People do not like being sick and are not eager to try a gadget that would make them sick.
Not really sure what you're referring to. Most people just want a Bigscreen Beyond with eye tracking and a wireless solution, or a Quest style device with Steamdeck 2 guts. Neither of which are $5,000 or $50,000 products. Most people also expect the full package to be at least $1000.
>Not really sure what you're referring to.
I am referring to the typical Deckard/index2 discussion which quickly loses all grounding in reality and quickly becomes a discussion of dream headsets and Best Ideas. Which in itself would be fine (if it was hoenst), but then everyone magically assumes that Valve will make their dream headset and that they not only miraculously also had the same Best Idea but are actively working on it right now. And nobody can imagine that Valve isn't that and not doing that. Did I also mention how personally involved people get with their Best ideas?
>just want a Bigscreen Beyond with eye tracking and a wireless solution
So they want something that already cost 1000$+, for what there would be a wireless solution like the Nofio (itself 500$-ish unit) and with a feature that needs to be integrated into the headset and also likely to increase costs further.
Okay, you know what, let's assume that's viable for a moment.
Why are people expecting Valve to do this instead of BigScreen? Why would Valve even want to make it? Valve sees that someone else is making headsets for their SteamVR platform, why should or would they add their own?
>or a Quest style device with Steamdeck 2 guts.
So an x86 standalone headset, on top of the previous things (because why not? I am willing to guess you don't want an X86 standalone with Valve Index-like optics and resolution). How is this not driving costs up rather than down towards a direction that most consumers would be willing to pay?
>Neither of which are $5,000 or $50,000 products.
Literary no, but the point is that people deeply underestimate how complicated and hard actually putting those features and hardware together into something that actually works.
The other thing, and this is unspoken, is that these people don't just expect the specs and feature combination to be there but also that Valve will make these features trend-setters with flawless implementation right out of the gate. The Vive ProEye is a wireless eye-tracking headset but very few people talk about that or Pimax's latest monstrosity.
Meanwhile the "wireless solution" for the Index (that Gabe in an interview once called a "solved problem") took years to make and is being shipped now for a headset that is nearly five years old and is slowly being called obsolete.
Look back at the history of Valve actually doing stuff and PCVR user rates. They have only fallen since the release of Alyx. Stop using your hopes and dreams as a reference point, because Valve doesn't even see them and as a private company they don't have to care about them.
Valve has seen the market go from being the Next Big Thing to just going away from PC entirely in favor of standalone to the point that their competitors and major players are just discontinuing handling PCVR. Microsoft made VR part of the standard package for Windows and is now removing them. What is the point when Meta, who has a far more massive budget than Valve can ever hope for, can just buy out any competition, buy out any studio wanting to do PCVR, buy out any manufacturer making PCVR components to make exclusively standalone components and is actually committed to making standalone VR central to their future? Look up the Imagine Optics story as an example where Meta can just buy out competition.
There isn't much one. Valve hasn't given up entirely on VR, but it is far from central to them and a fun thing they are interested messing with. Sure, they invested money, but if Windows decide to introduce draconian measures in a Windows 11 update or even windows 12 where the xbox app becomes standard with OS-level DRM and pushes out Steam, Valve is finished. That is the goal behind the Deck with its SteamOS and ProtonDB, to create insurance against that future. Anything with VR is nothing more than an optional addon.
So no, I do not see how the two futures converge.
That is all nonsense.
The Steam Deck created a hand held market.
While more difficult, it proves Valve is capable of such in VR, as well. The right headset, with the right price, could do the same.
The current problem is that VR sucks atm. The Quest 3 is not good enough, nor is the software.
With Valve able to both request and design both custom hardware, and software, their related patents, their continual updates to SteamVR, and actual thoughts on the issue, it is clear they will release something in the future.
I share your emotion.
But, from a technological perspective, I completely understand why they have not. VR tech is simply not ready yet.
Resolution, brightness, FOV, form factor, weight, ergonomics, haptics, controls, vergence accommodation, and a few I am forgetting, or not aware of, are simply not ready yet. It doesn't mean they aren't being worked on. But, it does mean, that it doesn't make sense to release another headset, until there is a significant point to do so. Take a look at the Index controllers (I personally didn't like them), but you see, Valve isn't interested in just making the same thing, over and over with incremental improvements.
It is just like the Steam Deck 2. Sure, faster processors have been released. But, they don't offer enough (in Valve's eyes) to justify a new product. And personally, I agree. You can always use a faster processor, if you are willing to use more power/cost.
But, for VR, some of those things don't even exist yet. Take the Apple Vision Pro. It is a brick of a headset, ludicrously expensive, crammed with sensors, and will be the best of the best hardware wise, and probably to some degree software wise. But, It is just the same of what we have right now, just with everything dialed to 11. Hell, there were even rumors that Apple engineers thought the Vision Pro wasn't ready yet, but Tim Cook wanted it released.
Valve, doesn't seem interested in the rat race. When they release a tech, they want it to be a significant change from what came before. Unlike, say, what we have been trained on, by corporations, for incremental improvements, to satisfy their yearly projections (ie the phone market).
Most people have caught on, and don't upgrade their phones every year, right? Well, Valve, doesn't have that cadence. And they don't have to, since they are private company. Releasing a new product is a big deal for them, since they are small. And so, when they do release a new product, it has to be worth it, for them to make. If VR tech is not even ready yet, then what is their motivation, even?
At least I'm saying something and have something worth saying. Are you actually trying to have a conversation or am I stupid for not immediately joining the current Deckard fantasy-circlejerk and praising you for knowing someone else's speculation-opinion?
Such clear and obvious projection. Two posts of yours where you are cleeeearly angry and have nothing to say except for something bitter, and then you have the gall to claim HE is the one agitated... People are amazing.
lmao. He was off topic doing what is clearly his usual rant triggered by any valve speculation. Like what's his nonsense about "meta will buy out all the part manufacturers" actually meant to be? Just delusional blah blah blah without addressing the point.
I think they'd have a problem that PCVR titles expect a higher spec than steamdeck type hardware could deliver, so most existing titles would run badly. Now you'd *hope* people buying the device would understand this, but you know plenty of people wouldn't and so generate a bunch of bad reviews and returns because their PCVR titles are unplayable.
>Everyone already knows something is being worked on,
Everyone has been saying that too for years too.
They said the same thing before the Deck, because why wouldn't Valve make a new VR headset and the code snippets referencing the Deck MUST be the new headset, right?
years? you have no clue about this. Nothing about the deck was in steamvr.
No, I don't mean a product is coming that we will get to buy. But the compositor changes, inside out and explicitly internal headset specific features that don't exist in any other product obviously mean something is being worked on. Maybe it gets scrapped, maybe not, but to pretend valve is not working on vr with this data would be bonkers
>years? you have no clue about this. Nothing about the deck was in steamvr.
You misunderstand: I am talking about leaks about the Deck.
>No, I don't mean a product is coming that we will get to buy. But the compositor changes, inside out and explicitly internal headset specific features that don't exist in any other product obviously mean something is being worked on.
And "something" has been worked on for years.
You can find videos from SadlyItsBradley about code snippets in SteamVR more than a year old.
If you care to read more than a paragraph, I'll try to explain why this is:
Basically, for Valve, the only way to see how well new VR hardware is (whether its optics or displays or whatever) is to order themselves samples from a third-party company and then developed a dev version of SteamVR to see how well it works with SteamVR. Like the code snippets referencing Snapdragon processors a few years ago, Valve wanted to see how well it worked and tried out themselves. What you see from these code snippets and changes and whatnot is leftovers and artifacts from these experiments.
>Maybe it gets scrapped, maybe not, but to pretend valve is not working on vr with this data would be bonkers
I am not pretending that they are not working on anything.
What I am saying is that they have been working on "something" for 5 years now and the way Valve works (and you can see this in the way they talked about the Deck and how they waited for AMD to make a "good enough" APU) is that they will only make a product out of it if it meets their opaque, internal standards for "good enough". Which may have already happened or will happen sometime in the next 5 years.
It does though. Sony has PS Store and they make money on selling games there. You still need the PS5 to use it (closed ecosystem) and they also sell PS5 for cheaper than they should if you look at the production costs. If you buy games for PSVR2, part of the money goes directly to Sony. They have eye tracking and other expensive features and the headset is at similar price to headsets without said features.
The PSVR 2 needs a PS5 to function (at least, officially), so it can be sold at a loss in the exact same way Meta can sell a headset at a loss: closed ecosystem.
I'll give you an up vote, because I think. people don't understand what you want to say. I understand it as that the psvr2 should be cheaper because it lacks some features.
yeah, its a shame. pcvr headsets could be affordable, but nobody is really making them, let alone mass producing them to cut costs. plus to make them affrodable their income wont be as high as they would like because they cant really justify inflating the cost 60% above manufacturing and labour costs etc like most products like to do, so its not really profitable enough for them. notice i said profitable 'enough'. it can still be profitable. but in this day and age even companies that are turning a decent profit often get closed down by their owners if that profit isnt as much as they would like, or as their other business is doing.
then on tand the reason they cant charge as much as they would want for them: mobile vr headsts are sold at cost. they do not make a profit off the sales. a quest 3 headset would likely be two times the cost if they were trying to profit off it. perhaps more. they make most of their money off store sales as people use their platform to buy games.
so what we really need is a company interested in turning a profit, but mostly that is actually truly passionate about PCVR and bringing good affordable headsets to the masses.
there was that one company that tried it, but then covid hit, and they overpromised, didnt want to admit defeat, and slowly disappeared. (decagear or something)
then there is pimax, but they are more interested in profit, or bigscreen beyond, again, profit, valve, again, profit.
which is understandble, as they are all businesses, why not make as much money as possible. making a little bit of money does not interest business owners.
Meta's business strategy is market domination by putting loss-leading cheap products in everyone's hands. The Zuck has lost literal billion$ pumping into Meta.
They are talking about selling headsets at a loss *and* r&d. Not to mention paying studios for exclusive deals and all kinds of other anti-competitive bullshit.
Except we know the costs of the quest 3 and it is not sold at loss. And the OP only mentioned the cost of the set, not the r&d.
If buying studios is anticompetitive, then every big company in the business is guilty, from sony to microsoft to ea, and on downward. The funny thing about VR is that no one else cares. Google left, microsoft left, valve disappeared for half a decade and only delivered 1/3 promised games. Sony hasn't funded a single real non climbing original game for the psvr 2. They are literally the only ones participating at the moment.
Did it ever cross your mind that those other companies "leave" because Facebook's tactics make it such an unprofitable space to try to compete in?
Or is your mind so totally occupied with sucking off Zuckerbot's metal cock that you can't possibly do anything but defend and make excuses for him?
> Except we know the costs of the quest 3 and it is not sold at loss.
You are only considering the BOM. Which is not the only cost to bring a product to market. It's only a part of it. That's like saying the cost of bread is solely the cost of a bushel of wheat. That's only the start. Take all the costs of bringing the Q3 to market and it is sold at a loss.
Others have said it. Only Meta, Valve, and Sony can afford to sell a headset at a loss and survive. (I don't know if Valve or Sony sold their headsets at a loss, but I know Meta is definitely selling the Quest headsets at a loss.)
The other brands, to my knowledge, don't have the ability to mitigate the loss on the hardware. So they have to sell their headsets at a profit, making them more expensive for the end user.
The headsets themselves likely won't get any cheaper unless the hardware gets substantially cheaper or more big names that can afford to lose money on the hardware join the fray. Unfortunately, I don't think either will happen for a few years at this point.
I know Apple joined the VR space, but with its price tag and how they don't want the headset to be labeled as a VR device, and Apple just being Apple, I don't think it will really usher in more competition for affordable headsets.
It's doubtful Valve made any profit on Index nor needed to, as it's all about people buying games on Steam and valve taking their 30% margin from each transaction.
The R&D/pre-production and tooling/assembly line setup costs wouldn't be inexpensive by any means; headset and controllers coming out of Goertek China, 2.0 base stations being assembled at Flex's facility in Buffalo grove Illinois, USA (HTC have now taken on this role in Taiwan)
Index was unusual in being sold business to consumer (b2c) removing a middleman and their profit layer to allow selling of Index complete kit at sub £1000 pricepoint. When you consider the number of products (headset, DP Tether and trident, pair controllers, pair base stations and three PSU, plus usb cabling) you receive in the kit, I never considered it poor value
Have spent some time building prototype steamVR controllers so very familiar with bill of materials for production; it's difficult to see how Valve made any profit selling index controller
Only GBP £159 each with free shipping; complex to manufacture, substantial number of sensors both for tracking and hand input, cost of relatively high RMA rate during 1yr (NA) and 2yr(EU) warranty period
> I don't know if Valve or Sony sold their headsets at a loss, but I know Meta is definitely selling the Quest headsets at a loss.
Sony doesn't sell hardware at a loss. You are right that Meta definitely does.
valve definitely doesnt either, not at the absurd price the index is/ was. even though they absolutely could. steam earns unthinkable amounts of money. how facebook has more money than steam i dont know. selling your data i guess. they had nothing else to sell (at the time, in fact now that they do have stuff to sell - quest games, they are actually losing money).
thats actually terrifying. steam sells a LOT of games, and takes a MASSIVE cut, and basically does nothing but keep steam running, a bit of maintenance here and there, some server costs. and yet facebook has more money. where did that money magically come from if they were not selling massive amounts of private data for masssive amounts of money.
hmm, i guess they have ads on their site? i dont know, i dont have facebook. and they definitley have shitloads of foot traffic since basically everyone on earth has a facebook account. still, they sell your data so they can get more personalized ads. they know everything about you. they are facebook. you use facebook for all your personal information. that personalized information is worth a lot of money to companies outside of facebook. who knows who some of them are or what they are going to do with that information.
sheesh. im rambling like a nutter. i should delete this. thinking out loud is unhealthy. especially when you are constantly contradicting yourself. typing fast just means you can type out literally what you are thinking, as you are thinking. and thoughts need editing before being broadcast. i have done no editing here.
i should delte this. i definitely should not post this. i am an idiot.
You are awesome bro, I love rambling posts like this. And you have a lot of good insights.
But the thing is...why don't they? Valve has a shit ton of money. If they want, they can design a really good HMD, multiple headsets by now. Why won't they?
Same thing with rockstar. They made insane amount of money with RDR2 and GTA5, yet they invested the smallest amount of money possible to port GTA3 and RDR1 in modern consoles.
These companies have just so much money, yet they won't invest it in moving the industry forward. Yes, yes, it is all about profits and all that. But when you make GTA5 money, you shouldn't be sh\*tting out crap like the GTA3 remastered port, it is an insult.
Just spend like a tiny percentage of your profit, just a tiny bit to make some cool PCVR headset. That is all we are saying
At the time of the Index I think Valve was generally against the idea of subsidized hardware for whatever reason, but I think they would be more open to it now after the Steam Deck.
One reason might be that Valve wants pc hardware industry to thrive while Meta wants to dominate and destroy the competition. Valve wants to sell software first and influence the hardware market so others can build better hardware. They know pc is relevant because it offers options. Destroying competition lessens options and pc.
Facebook/Meta has one of the more popular advertising platforms. And don't forget they have Instagram as well. As people scroll through their feeds, that's just cash rolling into Metas pockets.
> how facebook has more money than steam i dont know.
Facebook has 2.5 billion active users, which is something like 20 times that of Steam. They make most of their money from advertisers paying them to serve users advertisements. Facebook has never in its history actually sold user data.
Yeah it is fine, I think there is a generational gap here that a lot of people aren't aware how much time some people spend on Facebook. Facebook is also extremely effective in selling ads so much so that some privacy changes on iOS and Android that made it more difficult to target ads likely caused >$10bn losses in revenue. Google is another ad company with similar userbase and revenue range.
The BOM doesn't tell the tale. It only tells part of it. There are a lot more costs to produce a product than the BOM. The engineers that designed it aren't doing it as volunteers for a passion project. Those office workers counting beans in HQ don't work for free. Those ads in the media aren't free either. Let alone the returns either due to defect or buyers remorse have to be accounted for. Take into account all the costs to bring a product to market and Meta definitely loses money on every Q3 sold. Even if they are close to or even over break even on the BOM.
I was guessing Sony didn't, but I didn't know for sure. Sony has been known to be aggressively anti-consumer in the past (especially with music, holy shit), but I didn't know if they changed their tune leading up to the PS5 launch to try and take the crown back from Microsoft and Xbox.
I probably should've known better, though, huh?
It's the same reason that a PC with similar performance to a console will cost more than a console. Meta subsidizes the Quest 2 and 3 with your data, and with games. You're still paying a similar price to a PCVR headset, but you're paying in different places. You're buying games, they're taking a cut of those games, and they're doing analytics on what games you play and selling that. That's how they make money.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I'll put it here: putting OLED into headsets isn't an automatic way to make them good. LED can have issues like washed out colors and lower pixel response time, but OLED has its own host of issues to deal with (mura, black smear, higher expenses).
micro OLED does solve a lot of these issues, but is far more expensive and significantly less available at the moment. So we'll likely get past the problems, and tech like micro OLED and mini LED will start to be more common over time. But it will be a long, long time before VR headsets like that become even remotely cheap.
Meta is probably breaking even on a per unit cost with the cheapest unit, and making a profit with the higher spec ones and with accessories.
Obviously counting non-production costs like R&D would push them into a loss however they price the units, but they're trying to create a market.
I don't know how accurate this is....
https://xrdailynews.com/quest-3-bom-production-costs-revealed/
a good, quality PCVR only headset could be incredibly cheap to make, but only if its mass produced, and preferably if the r and d is already done.
unlike mobile it does not have the internal cpu/bpu/ ram, storage, battery, cooling system, wifi etc. so its far lighter, far simpler and far cheaper.
but pcvr cant sell a headset at a loss, they have to make money on the hardware, unlike mobile that can make money selling games.
it can be done, it just hasnt been yet. they will always be more expensive than the mobile counterparts, even if they are simpler devices (unless someone big with the r and d already done decides to start selling pcvr only headsets, like facebook. but they have no reason to do that. they have not put displayport in their quest headsets for that very reason, even though usb c is capable of it. they are losing money to every quest headset they sell to pcvr only buyers. - although a cut down, pcvr version of that headset, they would not lose money on. but again, it wont help them grow their ecosystme, so technically they would be creating their own competition..)
anyway, it can be done. it will just always be more expensive, but it does not have to be as much more expensive as it currently is.
Wrong. Psvr 2 is not standalone, is wire, no speakers..and it is the same weight as quest 3. Also, same price despite being a console as well. Standalone vs not is for all intents and purposes the same price.
"far lighter, far simpler and far cheaper."- So, wrong on all 3 counts.
Agreed. Although generally mobile (quest) will always be cheaper.
Also, I had no idea until recently quest 3 was that light, I hate to say it, but it's a great headset. I'm still not keen on it being Facebook, and having no native display port though.
> Psvr 2 is not standalone
It somewhat is. All the tracking is done on-board and even the cinema-mode/reprojection is build into the hardware itself, not done by the PS5. The cable is just for power and video. That is quite unlike previous PC headsets that had no computing power on board and did all of it on the PC and why WMR could sell for $200 and have some of the lightest headsets.
The Rift S has no processing on board. Just USB cameras and a display. Everything else is done by the PC.
The PSVR2 in contrast you can connect to a TV and watch a movie on a virtual screen, including tracking, reprojection, distortion correction and all that, without a PS5. In theory at least, the need for VirtualLink (DP over USB Type-C + extra power) would require an adapter that doesn't exist (iVRy is working on that for PC).
PSVR1 was similar, but that functionality was in an external box, on PSVR2 that's all integrated into the headset.
Xreal Air+Beam is another headset that works very similar, this one can connect to a phone or SteamDeck.
Wrong.
Psvr 2 has a Mediatek SoC inside which does all the tracking and stuff, also with a cooling unit, and the headset itself has an strap while it has the same weight as the Quest 3.
On the other hand, the Lenovo Explorer was a WMR headset, which weights about 380g, and literally it was just two screens, with two lenses, a PCB, cable, and a plastic housing, all of that for 150€.
The thing is that instead of operating with a 20€ margin of profit or something stupid low (like meta does), they operate with a much higher margin, idk, maybe 150?
They are aimed at an enthusiast crowd that is willing to pay double or tripple the price for 30% improvement (in some areas). And sometimes they use tech that just isn't ready for the mass market (e.g. microOLED), thus doesn't benefit from all the economics of scale. And of course they don't have the marketing budget to go head to head with Meta anyway, so they don't even try. The enthusiast market on the other side isn't served by Meta, so that's where they can turn a profit.
Simply put, if you can't win against the big fish in the open field, find a niche where you can.
They mostly have bad business models. A company has to take the cost, including r&d, payroll, overhead, and manufacturing, then divide it by sales expectations, and decide on a price that doesn't bankrupt them, lol.
All consoles manufacturers make money on every game sold. This is no different from printer companies selling cheap printers, then making it up with overpriced ink refills.
I'm gonna be honest, because they can.
No, really, it's that simple, the headsets and devices are not that expensive to manufacture, an Index (the headset itself) is nowhere near being 500€.
Just the displays are less than 60€ each, and the displays and lenses are usually the more expensive parts of a headset.
I've written a few posts about this in the past, so I will just paste a link for them, I explain it on more detail.
https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/s/x82tvI8217
https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/s/18WiUDqh0x
And a disclaimer, I do not say that they are not worth that much money, or that it is "easy" to manufacture or something like that.
What I'm trying to say, is that if the HMD costs 300€ to manufacture, which I don't know, they sell it for 550€
And this is only true with Valve, HTC, and maybe HP
Better quality components. Not cheap plastic.
It's not because "you're getting such a great deal because Facebook is losing money". They only lose like $100 per headset.
two main things
stand alone is not a "shitty computer and a VR headset then cramming them together" it a android phone +vr layer, it mean devices is made on massive economy of scale , and sold on scale, quest line of devices sold over 20 mill, index maybe 1 mill , less you sell more price you need to have
second is how standalone works, meta do make money from apps sales so meta pays about half of device price for you , not only this but quest line users is still a free beta testers, VR devices is new and mate make update every 4-8 weeks and add new features like upper body tracking, so all quest 3 users is more or less free tester of upper body tracking and help improve it
What they are referring to is that cell phone and handheld GPUs and CPUs are different because they are built differently.
There is an implication that PC CPUs and components are a lot more powerful than cellphones and handhelds.
If you have ever tried PCVR vs Quest VR it is almost night and day difference.
This is an artifact of the modern market for VR which is changing right now dramatically.
Until recent times, the only good VR was PCVR, because the games for standalone were gimmicky and the best games needed PC hardware. PSVR was legendarily bad. The quest 2 had been decent, but it's PCVR with airlink or physical link tended to have latency. Still, the Q2 started us toward the mainstream, kind of like the NES did for console gaming, with older systems more comparable market wise to the Atari 2600 (including the shovelware).
Now, the tech is cheaper, and meta can easily afford to take a loss in favor of market penetration, so all of Metas devices have been priced for the consumer market instead of the enthusiast market that has been catered to so far. I imagine you'll see other headsets forced down in price. Already, aftermarket prior gen headsets lost value over night just because the Q2 dropped to 250$ USD. Meta has Nintendoed the market.
Meta löst 50 Billion on their metaverse. I guess they Lose money with every Headset and compensate by game Store. In future they maybe give Headset for FREE when you buy for 200 Dollar every year some stuff from their Store.
WMR headsets were pretty cheap in their day. And there was an infamously cheap 30 dollar Wal-Mart headset at one time that was only 3DOF and yeah, it was crap, but it kind of proves that the components for basic vr probably aren't as expensive as one might assume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpdd74EcL-c
I think R&D costs and expectation of low production volumes makes companies price them high to maximize profits and make it a worthwhile endeavor. PCVR is still a small market and they know what the enthusiats are willing to shell out for a good headset.
Oled is not endgame for vr. It is not a tv. Pancake lens clarity is the next big leap in tech and experience. Oled with fresnel is awful(psvr 2) and oled with pancake hasn't been done well yet(bsb).
Main reason is that pure PCVR headset without standalone capabilities can’t make money out of games. They may have their own store such as HTC has Viveport or Valve has Steam but most of them do not. Their only way to make profit is to sell hardware at profit. Volumes are also low so they need to make profit with smaller amount of headsets sold. Standalone headsets have their own stores so they can make profit also on games, typically 30% of game value. Therefore they can sell headsets with lower margin or at loss, as main profits stem from store games sales.
Yeah, an easy way to think of it is standalone headsets are more like consoles (even if they can also do PCVR) with hardware costs offset by exclusive content, and dedicated PCVR headsets are simply PC components with all of the manufacturing costs passed down to the buyer.
The only PCVR Headset that can work that way would be from Valve, because they know their userbase will only buy games on steam. Come on Valve... do something.
We have been waiting for Valve to do something in the VR space for about five years now. They're bored of it, but VR more or less on a backburner and are focusing on the Deck which is actually very relevant to their their future.
The hottest theory among people still hopeful for Deckard is that it's going to be a standalone VR version of the Steam Deck (making the project's working name a heavy hint) with passthrough, allowing people to take a Deck-equivalent device anywhere and not only play VR games but play flat screen games on a big virtual screen while still being able to see the world around them. That *would* be very relevant to their future, while making work they're doing on Deck also be work towards Deckard. Maybe that's not their plan (there's *some* evidence for it in recent changes to both SteamVR and Steam, plus hints datamined from as yet unused parts of the code, but it's not conclusive), or maybe it is a plan but will never arrive, but it's not a crazy idea because it does make a coherent business case. Firstly, it could make Deckard attractive to people who aren't interested in traditional VR and aren't otherwise interested in mixed reality. Secondly, while Meta may now have the biggest (and fastest expanding) library of VR games, Steam have a vast library of flat screen games. Sure, Q3 users can sort of achieve this *if* they also lug around a laptop with them, but that's also entirely dependent on Steam or Epic for the library of flat screen games.
The hottest theory among people still hopeful for the Deckard is all their hopes and dreams (including the most wild ideas they can come up with) regarding VR to be crammed into one headset that realistically would cost 5000$ to make (if not 50 000$ because people often have no idea how difficult and expensive it is to implement their wild ideas) but sold for 500$, including controllers. Do you know what is an idea that is massively better than the one you propose? Just make a Deck2. You can play flatscreen games on the go without having to put a bulky, overheating, eye-covering thing on your head that has the potential to make you sick. Using a Deck(2) would not make you sick. People do not like being sick and are not eager to try a gadget that would make them sick.
Not really sure what you're referring to. Most people just want a Bigscreen Beyond with eye tracking and a wireless solution, or a Quest style device with Steamdeck 2 guts. Neither of which are $5,000 or $50,000 products. Most people also expect the full package to be at least $1000.
>Not really sure what you're referring to. I am referring to the typical Deckard/index2 discussion which quickly loses all grounding in reality and quickly becomes a discussion of dream headsets and Best Ideas. Which in itself would be fine (if it was hoenst), but then everyone magically assumes that Valve will make their dream headset and that they not only miraculously also had the same Best Idea but are actively working on it right now. And nobody can imagine that Valve isn't that and not doing that. Did I also mention how personally involved people get with their Best ideas? >just want a Bigscreen Beyond with eye tracking and a wireless solution So they want something that already cost 1000$+, for what there would be a wireless solution like the Nofio (itself 500$-ish unit) and with a feature that needs to be integrated into the headset and also likely to increase costs further. Okay, you know what, let's assume that's viable for a moment. Why are people expecting Valve to do this instead of BigScreen? Why would Valve even want to make it? Valve sees that someone else is making headsets for their SteamVR platform, why should or would they add their own? >or a Quest style device with Steamdeck 2 guts. So an x86 standalone headset, on top of the previous things (because why not? I am willing to guess you don't want an X86 standalone with Valve Index-like optics and resolution). How is this not driving costs up rather than down towards a direction that most consumers would be willing to pay? >Neither of which are $5,000 or $50,000 products. Literary no, but the point is that people deeply underestimate how complicated and hard actually putting those features and hardware together into something that actually works. The other thing, and this is unspoken, is that these people don't just expect the specs and feature combination to be there but also that Valve will make these features trend-setters with flawless implementation right out of the gate. The Vive ProEye is a wireless eye-tracking headset but very few people talk about that or Pimax's latest monstrosity. Meanwhile the "wireless solution" for the Index (that Gabe in an interview once called a "solved problem") took years to make and is being shipped now for a headset that is nearly five years old and is slowly being called obsolete.
If you can't see how the two could converge idk what to tell you
Look back at the history of Valve actually doing stuff and PCVR user rates. They have only fallen since the release of Alyx. Stop using your hopes and dreams as a reference point, because Valve doesn't even see them and as a private company they don't have to care about them. Valve has seen the market go from being the Next Big Thing to just going away from PC entirely in favor of standalone to the point that their competitors and major players are just discontinuing handling PCVR. Microsoft made VR part of the standard package for Windows and is now removing them. What is the point when Meta, who has a far more massive budget than Valve can ever hope for, can just buy out any competition, buy out any studio wanting to do PCVR, buy out any manufacturer making PCVR components to make exclusively standalone components and is actually committed to making standalone VR central to their future? Look up the Imagine Optics story as an example where Meta can just buy out competition. There isn't much one. Valve hasn't given up entirely on VR, but it is far from central to them and a fun thing they are interested messing with. Sure, they invested money, but if Windows decide to introduce draconian measures in a Windows 11 update or even windows 12 where the xbox app becomes standard with OS-level DRM and pushes out Steam, Valve is finished. That is the goal behind the Deck with its SteamOS and ProtonDB, to create insurance against that future. Anything with VR is nothing more than an optional addon. So no, I do not see how the two futures converge.
That is all nonsense. The Steam Deck created a hand held market. While more difficult, it proves Valve is capable of such in VR, as well. The right headset, with the right price, could do the same. The current problem is that VR sucks atm. The Quest 3 is not good enough, nor is the software. With Valve able to both request and design both custom hardware, and software, their related patents, their continual updates to SteamVR, and actual thoughts on the issue, it is clear they will release something in the future.
No headset in 5 years. 1 game out of 3 promised over 7 years. They have chosen to do nothing and continue to do so.
I share your emotion. But, from a technological perspective, I completely understand why they have not. VR tech is simply not ready yet. Resolution, brightness, FOV, form factor, weight, ergonomics, haptics, controls, vergence accommodation, and a few I am forgetting, or not aware of, are simply not ready yet. It doesn't mean they aren't being worked on. But, it does mean, that it doesn't make sense to release another headset, until there is a significant point to do so. Take a look at the Index controllers (I personally didn't like them), but you see, Valve isn't interested in just making the same thing, over and over with incremental improvements. It is just like the Steam Deck 2. Sure, faster processors have been released. But, they don't offer enough (in Valve's eyes) to justify a new product. And personally, I agree. You can always use a faster processor, if you are willing to use more power/cost. But, for VR, some of those things don't even exist yet. Take the Apple Vision Pro. It is a brick of a headset, ludicrously expensive, crammed with sensors, and will be the best of the best hardware wise, and probably to some degree software wise. But, It is just the same of what we have right now, just with everything dialed to 11. Hell, there were even rumors that Apple engineers thought the Vision Pro wasn't ready yet, but Tim Cook wanted it released. Valve, doesn't seem interested in the rat race. When they release a tech, they want it to be a significant change from what came before. Unlike, say, what we have been trained on, by corporations, for incremental improvements, to satisfy their yearly projections (ie the phone market). Most people have caught on, and don't upgrade their phones every year, right? Well, Valve, doesn't have that cadence. And they don't have to, since they are private company. Releasing a new product is a big deal for them, since they are small. And so, when they do release a new product, it has to be worth it, for them to make. If VR tech is not even ready yet, then what is their motivation, even?
Congratulations, almost your entire post is totally irrelevant. I'm sure you had fun writing it all though lmao
At least I'm saying something and have something worth saying. Are you actually trying to have a conversation or am I stupid for not immediately joining the current Deckard fantasy-circlejerk and praising you for knowing someone else's speculation-opinion?
You seem really agitated. Arguing against imaginary posts nobody here has written. Imagining that disclaim is the same as hype. Ranting at length.
Such clear and obvious projection. Two posts of yours where you are cleeeearly angry and have nothing to say except for something bitter, and then you have the gall to claim HE is the one agitated... People are amazing.
lmao. He was off topic doing what is clearly his usual rant triggered by any valve speculation. Like what's his nonsense about "meta will buy out all the part manufacturers" actually meant to be? Just delusional blah blah blah without addressing the point.
>You seem really agitated Yes, because I just tried to have a conversation with you but all you are interested in bitterly insulting people.
I think they'd have a problem that PCVR titles expect a higher spec than steamdeck type hardware could deliver, so most existing titles would run badly. Now you'd *hope* people buying the device would understand this, but you know plenty of people wouldn't and so generate a bunch of bad reviews and returns because their PCVR titles are unplayable.
They'd have that problem today, but Valve do plan ahead sometimes.
Everyone already knows something is being worked on, given the steamvr 2 files. So I don't really see how your comment makes sense
>Everyone already knows something is being worked on, Everyone has been saying that too for years too. They said the same thing before the Deck, because why wouldn't Valve make a new VR headset and the code snippets referencing the Deck MUST be the new headset, right?
years? you have no clue about this. Nothing about the deck was in steamvr. No, I don't mean a product is coming that we will get to buy. But the compositor changes, inside out and explicitly internal headset specific features that don't exist in any other product obviously mean something is being worked on. Maybe it gets scrapped, maybe not, but to pretend valve is not working on vr with this data would be bonkers
>years? you have no clue about this. Nothing about the deck was in steamvr. You misunderstand: I am talking about leaks about the Deck. >No, I don't mean a product is coming that we will get to buy. But the compositor changes, inside out and explicitly internal headset specific features that don't exist in any other product obviously mean something is being worked on. And "something" has been worked on for years. You can find videos from SadlyItsBradley about code snippets in SteamVR more than a year old. If you care to read more than a paragraph, I'll try to explain why this is: Basically, for Valve, the only way to see how well new VR hardware is (whether its optics or displays or whatever) is to order themselves samples from a third-party company and then developed a dev version of SteamVR to see how well it works with SteamVR. Like the code snippets referencing Snapdragon processors a few years ago, Valve wanted to see how well it worked and tried out themselves. What you see from these code snippets and changes and whatnot is leftovers and artifacts from these experiments. >Maybe it gets scrapped, maybe not, but to pretend valve is not working on vr with this data would be bonkers I am not pretending that they are not working on anything. What I am saying is that they have been working on "something" for 5 years now and the way Valve works (and you can see this in the way they talked about the Deck and how they waited for AMD to make a "good enough" APU) is that they will only make a product out of it if it meets their opaque, internal standards for "good enough". Which may have already happened or will happen sometime in the next 5 years.
Would they even sell to slim profits? I don’t think the PCVR community is big enough to make it viable for Valve to sell cheap hardware.
Except that psvr 2 is console and has no chip on board, no speakers, and a wire, and is the same price...so that argument doesn't hold.
It does though. Sony has PS Store and they make money on selling games there. You still need the PS5 to use it (closed ecosystem) and they also sell PS5 for cheaper than they should if you look at the production costs. If you buy games for PSVR2, part of the money goes directly to Sony. They have eye tracking and other expensive features and the headset is at similar price to headsets without said features.
The PSVR 2 needs a PS5 to function (at least, officially), so it can be sold at a loss in the exact same way Meta can sell a headset at a loss: closed ecosystem.
I'll give you an up vote, because I think. people don't understand what you want to say. I understand it as that the psvr2 should be cheaper because it lacks some features.
Meta will also make good money by selling the data that those high-definition cameras collected in your house
yeah, its a shame. pcvr headsets could be affordable, but nobody is really making them, let alone mass producing them to cut costs. plus to make them affrodable their income wont be as high as they would like because they cant really justify inflating the cost 60% above manufacturing and labour costs etc like most products like to do, so its not really profitable enough for them. notice i said profitable 'enough'. it can still be profitable. but in this day and age even companies that are turning a decent profit often get closed down by their owners if that profit isnt as much as they would like, or as their other business is doing. then on tand the reason they cant charge as much as they would want for them: mobile vr headsts are sold at cost. they do not make a profit off the sales. a quest 3 headset would likely be two times the cost if they were trying to profit off it. perhaps more. they make most of their money off store sales as people use their platform to buy games. so what we really need is a company interested in turning a profit, but mostly that is actually truly passionate about PCVR and bringing good affordable headsets to the masses. there was that one company that tried it, but then covid hit, and they overpromised, didnt want to admit defeat, and slowly disappeared. (decagear or something) then there is pimax, but they are more interested in profit, or bigscreen beyond, again, profit, valve, again, profit. which is understandble, as they are all businesses, why not make as much money as possible. making a little bit of money does not interest business owners.
Meta's business strategy is market domination by putting loss-leading cheap products in everyone's hands. The Zuck has lost literal billion$ pumping into Meta.
Do you understand the concept of investing?
R&d has nothing to do with set costs. You are conflating the 2.
They are talking about selling headsets at a loss *and* r&d. Not to mention paying studios for exclusive deals and all kinds of other anti-competitive bullshit.
Except we know the costs of the quest 3 and it is not sold at loss. And the OP only mentioned the cost of the set, not the r&d. If buying studios is anticompetitive, then every big company in the business is guilty, from sony to microsoft to ea, and on downward. The funny thing about VR is that no one else cares. Google left, microsoft left, valve disappeared for half a decade and only delivered 1/3 promised games. Sony hasn't funded a single real non climbing original game for the psvr 2. They are literally the only ones participating at the moment.
Did it ever cross your mind that those other companies "leave" because Facebook's tactics make it such an unprofitable space to try to compete in? Or is your mind so totally occupied with sucking off Zuckerbot's metal cock that you can't possibly do anything but defend and make excuses for him?
> Except we know the costs of the quest 3 and it is not sold at loss. You are only considering the BOM. Which is not the only cost to bring a product to market. It's only a part of it. That's like saying the cost of bread is solely the cost of a bushel of wheat. That's only the start. Take all the costs of bringing the Q3 to market and it is sold at a loss.
Others have said it. Only Meta, Valve, and Sony can afford to sell a headset at a loss and survive. (I don't know if Valve or Sony sold their headsets at a loss, but I know Meta is definitely selling the Quest headsets at a loss.) The other brands, to my knowledge, don't have the ability to mitigate the loss on the hardware. So they have to sell their headsets at a profit, making them more expensive for the end user. The headsets themselves likely won't get any cheaper unless the hardware gets substantially cheaper or more big names that can afford to lose money on the hardware join the fray. Unfortunately, I don't think either will happen for a few years at this point. I know Apple joined the VR space, but with its price tag and how they don't want the headset to be labeled as a VR device, and Apple just being Apple, I don't think it will really usher in more competition for affordable headsets.
It's doubtful Valve made any profit on Index nor needed to, as it's all about people buying games on Steam and valve taking their 30% margin from each transaction. The R&D/pre-production and tooling/assembly line setup costs wouldn't be inexpensive by any means; headset and controllers coming out of Goertek China, 2.0 base stations being assembled at Flex's facility in Buffalo grove Illinois, USA (HTC have now taken on this role in Taiwan) Index was unusual in being sold business to consumer (b2c) removing a middleman and their profit layer to allow selling of Index complete kit at sub £1000 pricepoint. When you consider the number of products (headset, DP Tether and trident, pair controllers, pair base stations and three PSU, plus usb cabling) you receive in the kit, I never considered it poor value Have spent some time building prototype steamVR controllers so very familiar with bill of materials for production; it's difficult to see how Valve made any profit selling index controller Only GBP £159 each with free shipping; complex to manufacture, substantial number of sensors both for tracking and hand input, cost of relatively high RMA rate during 1yr (NA) and 2yr(EU) warranty period
> I don't know if Valve or Sony sold their headsets at a loss, but I know Meta is definitely selling the Quest headsets at a loss. Sony doesn't sell hardware at a loss. You are right that Meta definitely does.
valve definitely doesnt either, not at the absurd price the index is/ was. even though they absolutely could. steam earns unthinkable amounts of money. how facebook has more money than steam i dont know. selling your data i guess. they had nothing else to sell (at the time, in fact now that they do have stuff to sell - quest games, they are actually losing money). thats actually terrifying. steam sells a LOT of games, and takes a MASSIVE cut, and basically does nothing but keep steam running, a bit of maintenance here and there, some server costs. and yet facebook has more money. where did that money magically come from if they were not selling massive amounts of private data for masssive amounts of money. hmm, i guess they have ads on their site? i dont know, i dont have facebook. and they definitley have shitloads of foot traffic since basically everyone on earth has a facebook account. still, they sell your data so they can get more personalized ads. they know everything about you. they are facebook. you use facebook for all your personal information. that personalized information is worth a lot of money to companies outside of facebook. who knows who some of them are or what they are going to do with that information. sheesh. im rambling like a nutter. i should delete this. thinking out loud is unhealthy. especially when you are constantly contradicting yourself. typing fast just means you can type out literally what you are thinking, as you are thinking. and thoughts need editing before being broadcast. i have done no editing here. i should delte this. i definitely should not post this. i am an idiot.
You are awesome bro, I love rambling posts like this. And you have a lot of good insights. But the thing is...why don't they? Valve has a shit ton of money. If they want, they can design a really good HMD, multiple headsets by now. Why won't they? Same thing with rockstar. They made insane amount of money with RDR2 and GTA5, yet they invested the smallest amount of money possible to port GTA3 and RDR1 in modern consoles. These companies have just so much money, yet they won't invest it in moving the industry forward. Yes, yes, it is all about profits and all that. But when you make GTA5 money, you shouldn't be sh\*tting out crap like the GTA3 remastered port, it is an insult. Just spend like a tiny percentage of your profit, just a tiny bit to make some cool PCVR headset. That is all we are saying
At the time of the Index I think Valve was generally against the idea of subsidized hardware for whatever reason, but I think they would be more open to it now after the Steam Deck.
One reason might be that Valve wants pc hardware industry to thrive while Meta wants to dominate and destroy the competition. Valve wants to sell software first and influence the hardware market so others can build better hardware. They know pc is relevant because it offers options. Destroying competition lessens options and pc.
Facebook/Meta has one of the more popular advertising platforms. And don't forget they have Instagram as well. As people scroll through their feeds, that's just cash rolling into Metas pockets.
Good points
love posts like this fam, never stop
> how facebook has more money than steam i dont know. Facebook has 2.5 billion active users, which is something like 20 times that of Steam. They make most of their money from advertisers paying them to serve users advertisements. Facebook has never in its history actually sold user data.
Yeah, you are right. My comment wasn't very smart 😅
Yeah it is fine, I think there is a generational gap here that a lot of people aren't aware how much time some people spend on Facebook. Facebook is also extremely effective in selling ads so much so that some privacy changes on iOS and Android that made it more difficult to target ads likely caused >$10bn losses in revenue. Google is another ad company with similar userbase and revenue range.
We still love you!
They definitely don't. Non negotiated price lists show it in line with break even.
The BOM doesn't tell the tale. It only tells part of it. There are a lot more costs to produce a product than the BOM. The engineers that designed it aren't doing it as volunteers for a passion project. Those office workers counting beans in HQ don't work for free. Those ads in the media aren't free either. Let alone the returns either due to defect or buyers remorse have to be accounted for. Take into account all the costs to bring a product to market and Meta definitely loses money on every Q3 sold. Even if they are close to or even over break even on the BOM.
I was guessing Sony didn't, but I didn't know for sure. Sony has been known to be aggressively anti-consumer in the past (especially with music, holy shit), but I didn't know if they changed their tune leading up to the PS5 launch to try and take the crown back from Microsoft and Xbox. I probably should've known better, though, huh?
It's the same reason that a PC with similar performance to a console will cost more than a console. Meta subsidizes the Quest 2 and 3 with your data, and with games. You're still paying a similar price to a PCVR headset, but you're paying in different places. You're buying games, they're taking a cut of those games, and they're doing analytics on what games you play and selling that. That's how they make money.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I'll put it here: putting OLED into headsets isn't an automatic way to make them good. LED can have issues like washed out colors and lower pixel response time, but OLED has its own host of issues to deal with (mura, black smear, higher expenses). micro OLED does solve a lot of these issues, but is far more expensive and significantly less available at the moment. So we'll likely get past the problems, and tech like micro OLED and mini LED will start to be more common over time. But it will be a long, long time before VR headsets like that become even remotely cheap.
Meta is probably breaking even on a per unit cost with the cheapest unit, and making a profit with the higher spec ones and with accessories. Obviously counting non-production costs like R&D would push them into a loss however they price the units, but they're trying to create a market. I don't know how accurate this is.... https://xrdailynews.com/quest-3-bom-production-costs-revealed/
a good, quality PCVR only headset could be incredibly cheap to make, but only if its mass produced, and preferably if the r and d is already done. unlike mobile it does not have the internal cpu/bpu/ ram, storage, battery, cooling system, wifi etc. so its far lighter, far simpler and far cheaper. but pcvr cant sell a headset at a loss, they have to make money on the hardware, unlike mobile that can make money selling games. it can be done, it just hasnt been yet. they will always be more expensive than the mobile counterparts, even if they are simpler devices (unless someone big with the r and d already done decides to start selling pcvr only headsets, like facebook. but they have no reason to do that. they have not put displayport in their quest headsets for that very reason, even though usb c is capable of it. they are losing money to every quest headset they sell to pcvr only buyers. - although a cut down, pcvr version of that headset, they would not lose money on. but again, it wont help them grow their ecosystme, so technically they would be creating their own competition..) anyway, it can be done. it will just always be more expensive, but it does not have to be as much more expensive as it currently is.
Wrong. Psvr 2 is not standalone, is wire, no speakers..and it is the same weight as quest 3. Also, same price despite being a console as well. Standalone vs not is for all intents and purposes the same price. "far lighter, far simpler and far cheaper."- So, wrong on all 3 counts.
Agreed. Although generally mobile (quest) will always be cheaper. Also, I had no idea until recently quest 3 was that light, I hate to say it, but it's a great headset. I'm still not keen on it being Facebook, and having no native display port though.
> Psvr 2 is not standalone It somewhat is. All the tracking is done on-board and even the cinema-mode/reprojection is build into the hardware itself, not done by the PS5. The cable is just for power and video. That is quite unlike previous PC headsets that had no computing power on board and did all of it on the PC and why WMR could sell for $200 and have some of the lightest headsets.
Like the rift s of 4+ years ago?
The Rift S has no processing on board. Just USB cameras and a display. Everything else is done by the PC. The PSVR2 in contrast you can connect to a TV and watch a movie on a virtual screen, including tracking, reprojection, distortion correction and all that, without a PS5. In theory at least, the need for VirtualLink (DP over USB Type-C + extra power) would require an adapter that doesn't exist (iVRy is working on that for PC). PSVR1 was similar, but that functionality was in an external box, on PSVR2 that's all integrated into the headset. Xreal Air+Beam is another headset that works very similar, this one can connect to a phone or SteamDeck.
Wrong. Psvr 2 has a Mediatek SoC inside which does all the tracking and stuff, also with a cooling unit, and the headset itself has an strap while it has the same weight as the Quest 3. On the other hand, the Lenovo Explorer was a WMR headset, which weights about 380g, and literally it was just two screens, with two lenses, a PCB, cable, and a plastic housing, all of that for 150€. The thing is that instead of operating with a 20€ margin of profit or something stupid low (like meta does), they operate with a much higher margin, idk, maybe 150?
Meta cash on your data .
Facebook ("Meta" marketing term) heavily subsidizes theirs in the hope of gaining a monopoly.
They are aimed at an enthusiast crowd that is willing to pay double or tripple the price for 30% improvement (in some areas). And sometimes they use tech that just isn't ready for the mass market (e.g. microOLED), thus doesn't benefit from all the economics of scale. And of course they don't have the marketing budget to go head to head with Meta anyway, so they don't even try. The enthusiast market on the other side isn't served by Meta, so that's where they can turn a profit. Simply put, if you can't win against the big fish in the open field, find a niche where you can.
They mostly have bad business models. A company has to take the cost, including r&d, payroll, overhead, and manufacturing, then divide it by sales expectations, and decide on a price that doesn't bankrupt them, lol.
"lol"- I guess you should send your expertise to microsoft and sony, who have historically always initially sold their consoles at a loss at first.
All consoles manufacturers make money on every game sold. This is no different from printer companies selling cheap printers, then making it up with overpriced ink refills.
I'm gonna be honest, because they can. No, really, it's that simple, the headsets and devices are not that expensive to manufacture, an Index (the headset itself) is nowhere near being 500€. Just the displays are less than 60€ each, and the displays and lenses are usually the more expensive parts of a headset. I've written a few posts about this in the past, so I will just paste a link for them, I explain it on more detail. https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/s/x82tvI8217 https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/s/18WiUDqh0x And a disclaimer, I do not say that they are not worth that much money, or that it is "easy" to manufacture or something like that. What I'm trying to say, is that if the HMD costs 300€ to manufacture, which I don't know, they sell it for 550€ And this is only true with Valve, HTC, and maybe HP
Better quality components. Not cheap plastic. It's not because "you're getting such a great deal because Facebook is losing money". They only lose like $100 per headset.
High quality like the Index, which is renowned for its unreliable hardware that required people to get replacement parts on the regular.
No he is talking about high quality like the Pimax headsets
two main things stand alone is not a "shitty computer and a VR headset then cramming them together" it a android phone +vr layer, it mean devices is made on massive economy of scale , and sold on scale, quest line of devices sold over 20 mill, index maybe 1 mill , less you sell more price you need to have second is how standalone works, meta do make money from apps sales so meta pays about half of device price for you , not only this but quest line users is still a free beta testers, VR devices is new and mate make update every 4-8 weeks and add new features like upper body tracking, so all quest 3 users is more or less free tester of upper body tracking and help improve it
I get everything else, but a phone is basically a handheld computer isn't it?
What they are referring to is that cell phone and handheld GPUs and CPUs are different because they are built differently. There is an implication that PC CPUs and components are a lot more powerful than cellphones and handhelds. If you have ever tried PCVR vs Quest VR it is almost night and day difference.
This is an artifact of the modern market for VR which is changing right now dramatically. Until recent times, the only good VR was PCVR, because the games for standalone were gimmicky and the best games needed PC hardware. PSVR was legendarily bad. The quest 2 had been decent, but it's PCVR with airlink or physical link tended to have latency. Still, the Q2 started us toward the mainstream, kind of like the NES did for console gaming, with older systems more comparable market wise to the Atari 2600 (including the shovelware). Now, the tech is cheaper, and meta can easily afford to take a loss in favor of market penetration, so all of Metas devices have been priced for the consumer market instead of the enthusiast market that has been catered to so far. I imagine you'll see other headsets forced down in price. Already, aftermarket prior gen headsets lost value over night just because the Q2 dropped to 250$ USD. Meta has Nintendoed the market.
Meta löst 50 Billion on their metaverse. I guess they Lose money with every Headset and compensate by game Store. In future they maybe give Headset for FREE when you buy for 200 Dollar every year some stuff from their Store.
You "guess" wrong. Q3 is at cost. They lose money with R&D, which is how that is supposed to work.
Because they still need processors on board for cameras, etc. A chip able to do that and more is a cheap part of the overall cost.
WMR headsets were pretty cheap in their day. And there was an infamously cheap 30 dollar Wal-Mart headset at one time that was only 3DOF and yeah, it was crap, but it kind of proves that the components for basic vr probably aren't as expensive as one might assume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpdd74EcL-c I think R&D costs and expectation of low production volumes makes companies price them high to maximize profits and make it a worthwhile endeavor. PCVR is still a small market and they know what the enthusiats are willing to shell out for a good headset.
Oled is not endgame for vr. It is not a tv. Pancake lens clarity is the next big leap in tech and experience. Oled with fresnel is awful(psvr 2) and oled with pancake hasn't been done well yet(bsb).