World of Warcraft went mainstream because it didn't require a gaming PC to play in 2004.

There are more than 10x as many active Steam accounts (125m) vs active WoW accounts at it's peak (12m) in 2010.

Sure, a mid to low end PC could play WoW in 2004, but it only broke 2.5 million subscribers in late 2005. http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/wow-sub... And 10m in 2008.

Give it 4 years and a GTX 970 will be a very low end graphics card.

Comparing the number of Steam accounts to WoW accounts is comparing apples to oranges. (And also makes an implicit assumption that everyone who has a Steam account has a gaming PC, which is not a good assumption.)

In 2004, Steam had no noteworthy buzz and its only purpose was Half-Life 2 DRM.

Steam survey actually provides good hardware numbers.

The important thing is with the number of Steam Users each 1% is more than 1 million people. Thus < 50% can still be a lot of people. (4.39% own a 970 GTX GPU, 0.92% own a 980 GTX GPU, 0.72% own a GTX 980 Ti ~= 7.5 million people who don't need to upgrade graphics card, now add ATI and SLI.)

PS: Active Steam account = bought something from steam AND logged on in the last 2 weeks. Which IMO is a much higher hurdle than most website tracking. And clearly not all gaming PC's are on Steam.

Steam often logs in on boot. I don't see this as a very interesting metric and certainly not related to the popularity of the first generation of a VR device.

How else are you going to estimate the number of PC's used for games that don't need to upgrade? Or even the number of PC gamers?

My 4-year-old GTX660 is a mid-range card even today. Give it five or six years.

A GTX 660 is a low end card. A GTX 950 is 150$ and ~5-10% faster than a GTX 660.

It is an old card that was fairly high-end when it came out. It matches the graphical capabilities of the PS4 today.

It's not low end, it's mid-range. HD at 60fps (often higher) on med-high settings on everything but the very most recent games (without MSAA).

Again, you'll probably need to wait more than 4 years for a high-end card to become "very low end". I'd give it five or six years.

IMO, sub 150 = low end, 150-320 = mid range, 320+ = high end. The 660 GTX is worse than a 150$ graphics card (GTX 950).

Granted, in terms of hardware people are currently using the GTX 660 might still be mid range.

Right. I was basing my comparison on performance rather than price. But in terms of price, you're absolutely correct, the GTX 660 isn't worth much.

> Is ~50 million people "mainstream"?

Where is this number coming from? Even the people I know interested in VR aren't exactly leaping to buy this first generation, and that's exactly what the review should (and does) reveal—you should continue waiting unless you want to deal with typical early adopter issues.

Yep, pretty big gamer here, have three of the current gen consoles, even bought a simple Google Cardboard peripheral to get a feel for VR, but I'm probably not going to drop serious cash on anything that's out there for at least a year, and until I see which way the wind is blowing. I'm excited for it, but it's too much money for me to spend right now.

If any go mainstream it will be the PS VR. Sony has 30m consoles out there, and it only costs $500 to get setup with PS VR. Total price is about $800-900.

Plug and play, games work great because they're designed for the system.

On the other hand with the Rift and the Vive you need a PC which has to be up to spec, the hardware is more expensive, etc.

I was looking though the Steam Survey and on the nVidia side ~7.5 million people have a nVidia GPU fast enough for the Rift. Add ATI and people upgrading this year and I think the market may be similar sized.

The real question IMO, is if you own both which do you add VR to?

For me the answer is easy. I don't have a good PC (just a 5 year old laptop that I don't use much) so going with a Rift or a Vive is a huge investment and requires me getting back into keeping a PC setup just for VR.

The PS VR is cheaper and I already keep that equipment setup. I don't need to worry about specs/etc. Plug and play. Plus the PS VR is cheaper.

For me I'd go with PS VR and see how that goes. If I really liked it then I might buy a Vive for my (we'll pretend I own a) gaming PC. I could sell the PS VR to offset the cost.

Don't own a console? Already hard-core into PC? Then just going straight to Vive/Rift makes plenty of sense if you're willing to buy in.

"Which is not free but hardly going to break most people" - most people make ~$4500 a month or less (pre taxes). $1550 is a big chunk of cash for most people.

Depends on context.

You can get a reliable used car for ~12k. Look at how many people spend 2+K more than that.

Owning a VR headset does not (yet) act as a prerequisite to get most jobs.

Spending more than ~12k stops being about basic transportation.

AKA if you buy a car for 20k vs 12k the extra 8k was not needed.