Im not a FB fan, But they didn't really kill the oculus brand... its now the most popular VR headset on SteamVR.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/78089/oculus-quest-2-is-now-t...

"According to Valve's data, Quest 2 owners comprise 22.91% of all SteamVR users, while another 21.58% use a Rift S headset. Oculus also owns another 13.49%, with the original Rift, and Quest headsets added. All told, Oculus is responsible for 57.98% of all VR headsets used on Valve's platform."

I actively discourage anyone in my social circles to remain clear from Oculus. I wouldn't say that VR has taken off yet and Oculus could've been the needed impetus had Facebook kept their fingers out of it. I mean, if Facebook just owned the brand and didn't try to force Facebook down the throats of its' users, it would've been quite a viable option.

This doesn't tell you how big VR might have been if Oculus remained independent, or tied to a less controversial parent company and profit model.

I would have one if it weren't for the fb requirement and this outcome is exactly why I don't.

Are people actually shocked that a company with such a pristine reputation for carrying about their produ..um..Users now wants to jam ads directly into their eyes?

imo the FB requirement wouldn't be there if they didn't subsidize the system by about $300. The subsidy is just as important as the Quest being stand alone and self contained as opposed to requiring a PC.

They would have had at least one more sale (I still want it but not the Facebook part).

Facebook is tied to Facebook and is possibly the most viewed website/app in the world.

Also, Palmer Luckey is a weird libertarian/asshole, so who knows.. FB acquisition might have been a net benefit.

Does facebook make profit on each quest sold? I was under the impression it was a loss leader subsidized by their advertising income and justified by projected future monetization.

Another commenter mentioned that the corporate no-account-required model costs $699, so that may be a more fair comparison. Is facebook subsidizing each Quest 2 by $400 (and assuming they'll be able to extract roughly that amount from each user)?

I don't think it's safe to assume the $699 price tag is the same as the unit cost to Facebook. They'll charge whatever they can get people to pay for it, plus they have a vested interest in portraying ad-free prices as unreasonably high.

Yep, that’s correct!

They heavily subsidize their VR devices…nothing unusual though, all game consoles are subsidized

> all game consoles are subsidized

I think that's only true for Playstation and Xbox. Pretty sure Nintendo makes a profit on every console.

It's not even really true for PlayStation or Xbox. They often launch consoles at a loss (or even just a break even price), but manufacturing costs quickly come down while MSRP stays the same. The PS5 has already hit this threshold if Sony is to be believed.

You can check Steam's hardware survey for more up to date stats. Quest 2 is now up to 29.33%

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

That’s just for people that have it plugged it when they take the stats, too. Considering you can use it wirelessly and standalone it has a commanding lead of the market.

Its the most affordable one, so that must have something to do with its popularity. I think the term is captive audience?

FB probably sells near-cost and makes all their money on the backend from taking 30% or so of sales of apps, much like consoles (and iOS minus making money on the front end as well).

They are selling us the Brave New World

Most popular doesn't necessarily mean best, since Android is arguably more "popular" but Apple is clearly making the bulk of the money (and thus delivering the bulk of the value). But Oculus also right now is also probably one of the easier to use headsets. Keep in mind some of those Rift/Quest numbers might be overlapping users who've upgraded.

> Apple is clearly making the bulk of the money (and thus delivering the bulk of the value)

I have to disagree with your implicit assertion that making more money = delivering more value. curl/libcurl earns $0, but delivers more value than a 2-year old *aaS that makes $2,000 in annual revenue.

You're valuing curl incorrectly. For example, an engineer isn't valued based on what he enables at the company. S/he's valued based on what they can deliver that others can't. Maybe I manage the database at my company and the database is arguably one of the most important pieces of infrastructure but that doesn't mean I have unlimited salary. I can only negotiate as high as someone else is willing to undercut me to perform the same duties. If you apply that to curl, how much of it is irreplaceable?

Google didn't just openly license Android out of the goodness of their hearts. It was a business decision and the Android business does deliver them value, but not as much as Apple's business.

I don’t think the argument was about which is more popular. Simply whether FB has “killed the Oculus brand”, and it seems these numbers suggest that it at least hasn’t been “killed” (though personally, I’m against most of the choices FB has made).

Yes, but Facebook didn't kill Oculus either. imo it's stronger because Facebook is much more aggressive in the VR space than anyone else. Their approximate $300 subsidy is a pretty generous one by console standards.

How? Facebook invests billions of dollars into advancing the tech behind Oculus, reducing the form factor and making it economically viable, and the conclusion is that FB killed the Oculus brand and tarnished VR?

I don’t understand why people are not capable of separating the good from the bad. Of course you can shit on FB regarding many things but this is objectively not one of those things.

I think people are not happy about _how_ FB made it "economically viable" (by locking the system to tie in with an FB account and now by running ads).

Most people probably want to see a VR platform that can stand on its own profit mechanisms. Not something that is parasitically dependent on another platform's ad revenue (either directly with internal ads or indirectly via FB accounts). Instead of taking time to explore that (which is what many believed would happen after the acquisition), FB took the easy way out by bolting existing revenue systems on, which then in turn kills any motivation to explore options.

Similar kinds of worries always play out for technologies/platforms that are good but aren't profitable yet which then get acquired. Will the new owners help the technology stand on its own, or will they take the easy way out and treat it as a mechanism to bring new users onto their existing revenue stream.

I've been following VR technology's development for over two decades now, and the concern that those profit mechanisms don't exist at the margins necessary to sustain the business is real. I think people underestimate how fragile this technology space is; we're talking a system that only a percentage of the population can use without experiencing motion sickness, requiring a dedicated usage space that is hard to share with other uses in a family setting, which (up until the most recent iterations) sold at a price point that was uncomfortable to most people for a luxury product.

More revenue streams to support it is better than fewer, at least at this stage of its development.

Theoretically, the point of venture capital investment was exactly to give such a "no-strings-attached" period of buffer time to discover what revenue models might work for a new piece of technology with promise. (In reality there are many other confounds...)

It's why many people wished to see that rather than an acquisition (where the new owners can do what they want) for Oculus. Back in the day, FB tried to placate these worries by suggesting that even with an acquisition they would try to behave like a VC and keep Oculus more-or-less independent. At this point it is clear that that dream is over.

People aren't angry, just disappointed. Eventually we will all lose hope on these things. Heck, many already have.

Agree and have. It is now a world for the F.....s of the world to buy and sell or buy and kill. I would never give FB a dime after the behavior and false statements of the last several years. Sure the downvotes might be high, well HN has an agenda as well.

>I think people underestimate how fragile this technology space is; we're talking a system that only a percentage of the population can use without experiencing motion sickness

FWIW the Quest and Index have largely solved this problem. There are still certain experiences in VR which require more motion-sickness acclimation, such as roller coasters or fast-moving shooters. However, 1:1 motion experiences no longer cause problems for even the most sensitive players, in my experience.

I've demoed current VR hardware to highly sensitive friends and family members without issue. The same friends and family couldn't tolerate earlier generations of VR for more than a few minutes.

I completely agree that the latest generation is much better than previous tech.

I'm referring to the fact that 3D will always inherently have a floor of non-acclimatable users that TV doesn't. People experience motion sickness from TV also, but it can be mitigated by sitting further back. There's fundamentally no similar option in VR if the immersion alone is disorienting; the immersion is the point.

100% anecdotal, but: my elderly mother can't watch kids play console games on TV without rapidly experiencing motion sickness. She does just fine in VR (mini-golf is her favorite game on the Quest).

I'd love to see actual data on the issue. Until then, I'm optimistic that VR's floor of non-acclimatable users is similar to or smaller than the same for regular video game consoles.

I know people, including me and my kid, who absolutely refuse to buy a VR system that requires a Facebook login. Of course I don't have numbers to back this, but I suspect there are quite a lot of people who feel the same way.

Here's a worst-case hypothetical reason why: people will watch porn on VR. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. Even people who wouldn't want to watch it regularly are likely to get curious and check it out at least once to see what it's like. Now, raise your hand: who wants Facebook having access to their porn habits?

Oculus-the-tech is cool. Oculus-the-Facebook-client is completely dead to me. No way, no thanks.

That's a good point. I never thought of it because I don't watch porn, which is probably unbelievable to the masses of addicts out there reading this right now. I had a Quest1 for a while (they hurt your face after a while from the pressure), and never tried porn. I enjoyed Beat Saber a lot though. But I can say I probably would try porn on one at some point, and correct- I really don't want Facebook logging that.

The worst part about VR is that it's so intoxicating with its immersion that once you take it off you feel sad that this is where you really live, not a nice place. It gave me joy and took me away, but it also made me sad about my real life. It gives you a fantasy and more people should realize that multimillionaires and billionaires don't need virtual reality, they're living what you're putting on your face. I'm sure that includes the porn too.

It's currently impossible to tell how Facebook has damaged the Oculus brand, simply due to the lack of a credible mobile (aka "untethered") VR competitor. Once someone like Valve, HTC, Sony, or Apple finally release untethered hardware at a competitive price point, we'll see whether customers are really willing to tolerate forced Facebok account integration and ads in VR.

Personally, I absolutely love the Quest's price point, form factor, and overall software quality. At the same time, I despise Oculus as a brand and Facebook as a company for all of the above. I'm prepared to jump ship the split second an alternative is available.

Except that FB acquired oculus after they were already shipping their prototype as a devkit.

Considering HTC was able to launch what is arguably a better product within the same year as oculus I fail to see what facebook brought to the table besides dark patterns and forced privacy violations.

Facebook made a standalone $300 device that just works. The other players in the market are making $1000 devices that require me to be wired to a $1000 gaming PC.

The Quest 2 is an incredibly attractive device, and I basically can't imagine ever getting a wired VR headset at this point. From my perspective, Facebook made both the most attractive device and the best software ecosystem. I suspect Oculus as a standalone company could not have managed that.

That said, introducing ads to paid apps is a really bad idea. It's going to totally undermine consumer trust, and kneecap the ecosystem they built.

(And yes, I also had a visceral distaste when having to finally make a Facebook account to be able to use the Quest 2. But I can recognize that unifying the account infrastructure is the correct engineering choice, there's no need to assume malice).

FB didn’t make a 300$ headset, they heavily subsidized a headset. So, their going to need to make a lot of money from users to break even.

I doubt that. The Quest 2 is probably being sold at a tiny loss at launch, just like most gaming consoles are, and will at the end of its lifespan be sold at a small profit.

But where they're looking to make the money is from getting a cut from software sales, again just like consoles. Advertising is a garbage business compared to owning a popular software platform like that.

Let's do some back of the envelope calculations. Let's say you can show 10 ads per hour, the average VR user uses 30 minutes of VR per day, a CPM of $10, a 50% platform vs. app cut of ad revenue, and a device lifetime of 5 years. I think these are all generous estimates.

10 ads / hour * 0.5 hours / day * 365 days / year * $10 / 1000 ads * 50% * 5 years = $45.60 total ad revenue for the lifetime of the device.

They cannot be subsidizing this for $400 and expecting to make it up on ads. The numbers just don't add up. (But I don't think they're selling it for a multi-hundred dollar loss at all.)

On the other hand, in 9 months of using the device I've bought about $150 in software, with Facebook's cut probably being about $45. Except that is over 9 months, not 5 years. This is where the money is.

That’s some very low estimates for lifetime VR advertising revenue based on just 900 hours usage per device and 10 ads per hour. By comparison FB makes 32$/user as a global average in a world of ad blockers. The kind of users buying VR headsets are worth significantly more than average, they can’t block ads, and they practically need to take the device off to skip them.

This isn’t 4 year olds mindlessly watching YouTube, these are the ideal demographic to sell stuff. At even 3.5x your ultra low estimate FB is at 1/2 the retail price of the device. Massive subsides are an easy choice for FB assuming VR doesn’t die off quickly.

Still even using your numbers a drop from 350$ to 300$ is a big deal before considering other revenue from app sales etc.

> By comparison FB makes 32$/user as a global average in a world of ad blockers

Isn't the vast majority of FB usage on mobile, where ad blockers aren't even close to being as popular as on desktop ( and they still are probably used by a minority of people)

> Facebook invests billions of dollars into advancing the tech behind Oculus, reducing the form factor and making it economically viable

... so they can show ads on it.

I thought VR was a goofy gimmick until I bought an Oculus Quest and played with it.

From my point of view they drastically improved both the Oculus brand and the overall opinion of VR as a usable technology.

Oculus may have done that without Facebook or it may have stayed tethered to a PC and continued to be awkward to use. I don't really know.

I don't feel that Oculus could have done it alone with the Quest 2. Facebook's big contribution is the $300 price discount that they're eating with every Quest 2 unit sold.

And their ml competencies. They were the first to market with high quality inside out tracking. That was the game changer for low friction vr. Even now they're a distant first place there.

Seriously asking, is there any other inside out system that works well? From my experience, WMR is terrible at that.

I really like the Quest 2 as a standalone (non-tethered) device, I hope FB doesn't end up killing it...!

Such strong statements on this website with no facts presented whatsoever never ceases to amaze me. “I hate FB therefore you gotta agree everyone else does as well”.

Outside of our little bubble most of the people really don’t care even if we’re talking about VR. As another commenter said it’s actually the most popular VR and that could’ve been found through a quick search but then the feeling to impose our own reality to others seem to be sometimes stronger. And this is the top comment at the time of writing...

Are you arguing with a particular part of my post or was your goal merely to be insulting?

The set of early VR adopters naturally intersects heavily with the set of facebook skeptics. This website is composed mostly of relatively young, high earning men with interests in technology, which is to say almost the exact target demographic of VR. Do you see the general sentiment here about Facebook and this move in particular?

BTW if you're going to complain about people not doing adequate research to back their points you shouldn't follow it with misinformation you copied from another comment. Sony has by far the largest market share in VR, not oculus.

I didn't feel it'd be necessary to specify to what I'm referring to from your short comment but to answer your question yes, I'm arguing with this particular part of your post:

>Can we officially admit that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?

This is just simply not true. There's absolutely no proof whatsoever that the Oculus brand is dead. In fact, it's one of the most popular if not the most in some platforms. And I also don't see how FB has "tarnished public opinion" of this generation of VR since again it's one of the most popular which is rather incompatible with that. Perhaps you have data that I don't have, in such case please share it so I can learn.

What you wanted to say, perhaps, is: "can we agree that in our small bubble, the Oculus brand is dead" which would argueably be not true either as I anecdotically now many HN readers who own them and are very happy but it'd perhaps be a bit closer to the current situation.

My whole point is, here there's a lot of hate towards certain companies. I share it to some extent as well but I'm definitely going to point out when nonsense is being spread in comments like yours. Your comment was simply not true and got upvotes of people who dislike FB which is a very respectable position but I thought we could do better and not promote fake facts just because it harms some company we (in general) dislike.

And no, not meant to be insulting. I don't see how can I be insulting by pointing out your comment isn't correct or to be precise, in fact, I'm answering your stated question: "Can we officially admit that ..." - no, we can't. The data shows otherwise.

And a finishing disclaimer: I don't have hidden interests towards FB or work for them in some indirect way. The only thing I have is WhatsApp, the rest I stopped using very long time ago. I won't buy Oculus for the reasons you and others state. But I'm not blind and I know that most of the people don't care at all and will buy. In other words, the majority of the people won't stop buying it because FB owns it or it requires FB login or they do data harvesting or all of those things combined.

A lot of the comments are focused on the headset subsidizing but it seems most people overlook the drawback of this: it kills competition.

Now you are either a FAANG company capable of monetizing your users to the extent FB can, or you can't even start thinking of entering the standalone headset market with a price tag twice of FB. This is very bad for VR in my opinion.

To be honest as soon as the Occulus brand fell under the Facebook umbrella I stopped caring about it. For now I'd only consider the HTC Vive or go towards a PS5 for VR.

Totally. I won't go near it.

I feel mostly for John Carmack. It's a tragedy his genious is leveraged by Facebook