Less than 0.5% of all Steam users own/use a VR headset?

poet · Oct 13, 2016

Wow, what a noisy bunch you all are!

Couple of articles looking at steam hardware surveys shows some eye-popping figures:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/steam-users-vr-virtual-reality-headsets-htc-vive-oculus-rift-psvr

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...sults-imply-vr-adoption-has-skidded-to-a-halt

Looking at the Survey itself shows only 0.19% of all users own a headset!
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

0.19% ! :O

Anyone hanging around Sim Racing forums for the last year would easily be forgiven for thinking that number would be far higher given that almost every Dev Team at one point or another seemed to come under massive pressure for VR support.

I guess that's just a very vocal minority, which is to be expected given the high costs of ownership and people seeking to justify that expense by pushing for more support in games.

But wow. That's low.

Does make you wonder if any time spent developing for the platform is worth it at all given those low figures, OR is it that the Sim Racing world has a higher proportion of uptake than average?

Would be fascinating to know what happens to that percentage when just measuring Simracers alone.... something we may never know unless some of the Devs have figures?

AndrewBo · Oct 13, 2016

As of February ! 2015 ! [update], over 4,500 games are available through Steam, which has 125 million active users. Steam has had as many as 10 million concurrent users as of June 2015 .

That said: 0,19% of that is= 237.500 ppl.

Enough customers to go 4 it. My 2 cents..

jlnprssnr · Oct 13, 2016

Plus these 250k people already were okay with paying $900 for novelty hardware. They'll also want to buy a game or two for their shiny new setup!

Insert Coin · Oct 13, 2016

Quote from Palmer Luckey on Twitter:

It makes for a snappy headline and ample concern trolling from journos, but the only thing it indicates is exactly what it measures:
The fraction of Steam users who use their headset with Steam, opt to take the survey, and have their VR headset connected when they do.
They are somewhat indicative of Steam VR market size, but barely. Vast majority of VR market never touches that survey.

Also note: Steam has no way to track Oculus Home use.
See this discussion on Reddit.

Bez · Oct 13, 2016

A couple of weeks ago Linus tech tips said sales of units had stalled since the initial early adopter rush. I'm holding off until gen 2 or 3 depending how quickly the optics improve, something I hear a lot of people saying.