All that really means is you have enough disposable income that it's actually a decision worth even considering. For most people it's aimed at that's not the case.
This isn't Gmail for free vs some paid service for $5/mo, this is more than three times the cost for something that already costs multiple hundreds of dollars.
I'm sure many people in hackernews value their privacy above $700, me included, but that's clearly not the point here. We're just a blip in facebook's radar.
46% for all Oculus types 36% for Vive+Index
Well, Oculus does seem to be more popular and perhaps that is what the parent meant by Facebook "winning" VR segment. To me "winning" sounds more like total domination, where any competition is near a statistical error. This doesn't seem to be the case here (though I admit Steam statistics may be skewed towards Vive/Index).
When I see people talking about Oculus dominination technology-wise, they mostly talk about the Oculus Quest. More specifically, a wireless standalone headset that doesn't require static captors to have 6 degrees of freedom.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, as I only started looking into VR recently.
Oculus desktop software gives you a yellow mark, but games still work.
Besides, knowing Facebook's hunger for data, I certainly don't trust them enough to install any piece of their software on my PC. Nor do I trust them enough to use a device which could potentially identify some unique traits of the way I move in VR (akin to gait analysis).
It may also be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but in a world where even seemingly innocuous data is used to find unexpected correlations and identify people, I certainly prefer to keep a safe margin of error and steer away from companies which live on our data.
And comparing a 1000 dollar headset which requires a 1200 dollar computer to drive it, to a 300 dollar all in one unit.
It's akin to suggesting that Toyota haven't done well in the car market because they don't make Bugattis.
Facebook absolutely have won this generation in terms of market adoption. They've strategically withdrawn from competing at the higher end of the market. Which, at least today is a relatively tiny luxury segment.
As someone already pointed out, that's a nice problem to have! For me, I considered the Index but the cost of upgrading my PC + the Rift S still came out a couple hundred £ cheaper plus I don't have to dedicate space to it.
Eh, it doesn't look clear at all to me. It looks like its main advantage is slightly higher resolution than Valve Index and wirelessness. On the other hand from what I read Quest 2 only now will finally get 90Hz - this is what even old Vive provided. And Index goes beyond that - up to 120 and 144Hz. Also I wonder how Quest's screen quality compares to Index, besides resolution and refresh rate - couldn't find any information about Quest's field of view, pixel persistence or fill factor. And with Facebook behind Quest, I consider Index to be cheaper - I'll take $999 any day over $299 + my data.
I'd say it's hardly a clear "win".