If you have an old (1st gen) Oculus, is it somehow bricked if you don't register a Facebook account to it? If you just want to use apps not through the Oculus store (either self-developed, sideloaded or through Steam)?
I believe if you already have an oculus account you don’t need Facebook, but I think if you are starting fresh you need a Facebook account.
I have one not hooked up to Facebook, but I’ve had it for a while. There are a few “social features” that don’t work, but it still browses the web and plays oculus store content. With the link cable you can play steam games too. It won’t stay that way forever - 2022 I think.
You’re better off looking for something else if you don’t want Facebook. I am hoping Valve has something by then.
Mine is bricked, and my facebook account was attached. Tried to reinstall a mod I was using for over a year that a system update broke, and now whenever I turn it on it just shows a loading spinner and then hangs on a black screen.
It feels like Facebook is taking a deliberately hostile stance to modding because they can't get their cut.
I've had a CV1 Rift and Oculus account since a few months after it came out and all that's changed for me is that I have to connect a Facebook account to access some social features of the Oculus Home platform like messaging and adding friends. I abhor Facebook is in control of the Oculus ecosystem. Literally the worst company of all big tech imo to have this responsibility. I'd prefer Valve and next Apple. Unfortunately Facebook has too good of a market position for me to see them losing.
And it's still barely enough to sustain a studio without Facebook's cash injections. The consumer base is growing but it's still not big enough to be sustainable.
I was just starting to come around to the idea of buying a Quest 2 :(
I had a CV1, but sold it some years ago, I found the usb-attached lighthouses too messy for my setup. Ideally I would like to get rid of the headset cable as well. I pretty much only played Beat Saber so Quest 2 would have been perfect!
I would not recommend Quest 2 for BeatSaber unless you'll be content without using any mods or custom songs. If you decide to go this route, I'd suggest deleting Wifi connection information once you get it working the way you like and only changing songs via Sidequest, because system updates have broken custom song functionality multiple times.
You may need to download a "pirated" copy of an older beatsaber version, because afaik, the most recent update broke it again.
If they are already using a CV1, I suspect they have a gaming PC capable of driving beatsaber. With a quest 2 you can wirelessly stream from your PC to the headset to play any game including beatsaber custom songs.
I've had Good experience with the latency on this setup, but I do have my PC connected to a 5 GHz router via ethernet and play in an area next to my router.
I also have the CV1 and am looking to upgrade. The Index has better tracking (using lighthouse) and a larger FOV than the Quest 2 but much worse resolution. If you want the inside-out tracking and higher resolution of the Quest 2 but don't want to deal with Facebook, check out the HP Reverb G2. It's pricier than the Quest 2 but still much cheaper than the Index.
I've used my Quest 2 more in the last month, than the Rift S in the 2 years I've had it. With the Q2 there are no cables to get in the way, and I can put it on and play Beat Saber instantly - no steamvr to fiddle with. It's a more realistic Wii Sports at this point, but a fun purchase.
I have a Quest 1. The game selection is alright but expensive for what it is, but never found an unmodded game that kept my attention for more than ~5 hours - they are mostly VR demos without staying power. Modding is a huge pain in the ass, and every update breaks it again.
I used to use it regularly for BeatSaber + Custom Songs (though its underpowered so can't play all custom songs). For a while I was able to limp along by avoiding updates, but it eventually was broken by one of them, so I could no longer change custom songs. Finally I tried to fix it, failed, and tried to uninstall and just get unmodded BeatSaber working again. Quest decided to update, and now it doesn't even load the home screen - just a loading icon and then infinite black. I guess I'll try a factory reset, but I'm so frustrated with it I'm not sure it's worth trying to salvage.
It feels like Facebook is deliberately hostile to modding because they want to fortify their walled garden.
I will never buy oculus again. Steam's VR is higher quality, has much better game selection, and is much easier to mod as you want. My friend has an Index and I prefer it in every respect - the only downside is that it's wired and more expensive.
I've used Vive and rift. I now own the Quest 2 ($299). You can play any steamVR content on it without a cable using the free Air Link or the $20 Virtual Desktop. Better deal than anything else out there.
The best way to use airlink is to have a hardwired connection to the PC and a wifi 6 router close to your Oculus. I use a 5g router in the basement though and my gaming is fine.
You will still need a FB account for the initial setup. Although FB does sell a corporate FB accountless version for $699. I dont know much about that one.
I'm curious about the economics of this. Does that mean Facebook thinks it can get $400 worth of personal data for each regular VR headset it sells? I think I read that they make roughly $50 per user a year from their regular website, so that seems like it's too high for my explanation to be plausible.
I'm speculating, but it might be a number designed to discourage purchase rather than reflect actual value. IE, we don't want personal users to buy these so we will price it higher than their data is worth but low enough that we won't completely alienate potential corporate clients. They don't want regular users getting the idea that they can opt out by paying extra because it messes with their whole business model. FB is just dark patterns all the way down.
Facebook will delete/suspend accounts that they don't believe are connected to a real identity, so you could lose your purchases if you don't use your real name.
I think you have to log in and post once every 6 months (or something like that) to keep it active. It can be a silly post. I had one when I was job searching, though they had a surprising amount of data on me anyway. I used an obviously Vietnamese name (I'm white) and they suggested college classmates as my friends.... though my wife does have an account and uses the same IP =/
Remember when FB bought oculus and evangelists insisted that people were overreacting?
Can we officially admit that the naysayers were right and that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?
"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."
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
"objectively"? no. What has become clear to all unbiased parties is that all FB has done is invest billions of dollars in developing a new ad revenue stream.
it's amazing to me how often someone on HN defending FB...turns out to be a FB employee.
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).
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People have concern that such a thing won't exist, or will be the tiniest margin of games.
Personally, I respect that fear but I think it's going to be alright. If we're talking about an ecosystem with hundreds / thousands of games and 90% have ads as opposed to one with fifty games with no ads that cost $10+ each, I'm in favor of the more diverse experience space.
There's not much difference, and that's the problem. Mobile games are notorious for being asset flips and shovelware because being funded by ads means they don't have to worry about making something worth paying for. I imagine people who were excited about AAA VR games are disappointed that it looks like VR technology is turning into a race to the bottom with ads subsidizing hardware costs.
Using your headset requires linking a Facebook profile (with your real info if you don't want to risk its deletion), and this will use information from it to target ads.
VR ads have a lot of invasive potential which I don't think people trust Facebook to stay away from. Ads on the dashboard, ads that stick to your vision, ads that pause when you take the headset off, ads you have to look at to proceed, etc. There's not much of a limit when it's Facebook's hardware on your head.
Because a few developers will choose to place ads inside their apps? There will soon be cross-platform ad plugins like this in PCVR software, too.
The only reason you don't see it more already is that advertisers haven't figured out how to value what exactly they'd be buying; There's so many more factors regarding visibility/readability/placement in a 3D virtual environment, and there's a big difference between a real-life billboard that moves slowly past every driver on the interstate vs a canvas in a VR game where players might teleport right by in a hurry. Even with Facebook solving the technical aspects of measuring impressions/"engagement" in virtual worlds, I don't think the platform will attract many advertisers outside of the gaming/VR industry itself.
I honestly don't understand the doom and gloom from this announcement, which essentially amounts to "leading VR platform tests new way for developers to monetize applications with personalized ad service". People seem to think this is Facebook injecting ads into games all willy nilly, when in fact it's just a platform for developers to add ads to their VR apps/games. If a developer can't make ends meet with a full up-front purchase price for their app/game, I'm totally supportive of them trying the ad-supported route. At the end of the day, I'm glad that Facebook/Oculus is giving developers access to this so that they can make their own choices regarding the monetization of their software.
That's a totally fair point, but the argument to that is "don't support this developer" not "sell your Oculus Quest". Getting mad at Oculus for this is basically like getting mad at Apple because developers are including ads in their paid apps.
So who should you get mad at then? Every single app developer?
That developer can probably hardly care less that I don't support them. Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one) or the app is not good enough in which case people will stay away on their own.
The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
No, just the ones who do the thing you don't like.
> The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
Google and Apple pays devs show ads. Therefore all games have ads, right? No.
I don't buy games with ads. I have plenty of options.
> Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one)
Again you're arguing that all games that can have ads, do have ads. This is proven wrong by the world. We have two gigantic app stores with 5 million apps between them. None of the apps on my phone have ads.
I think this is the bigger issue. It's the double-dipping from both ends — getting money from the consumer and getting more money from advertisers. It's like cable television all over.
Why can't they:
1. Be less greedy
2. Raise the price so I can be guaranteed to see no ads
It would be even better if they didn't leverage their success in one industry (advertising) by publicly posing solely as another kind of company (social media) in order to buy up other companies (Oculus) to make a lateral entrance into VR, an industry unrelated from advertising, just to pollute it with more advertising.
This whole thing is shady IMO from top to bottom and just another aspect of 2021 tech which makes me think we really collectively failed to prevent the wonder of computing from just being another instrument to extract capital from the people and give it to the powerful
Based on the accounts in The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality[1], I don’t get the feeling Facebook had to “pose solely as another kind of company”. By the point Oculus was in conversations to sell to Facebook, their shadiness was already a concern.
I totally agree with you, though it's important to remember that ship sailed long ago.
You pay for a TV, and it shows you ads. You pay for a train ticket, and the walls and platforms are plastered with ads. You buy the fancy surround sound option in your car, and it plays ads. You buy a magazine, and it's mostly ads. And so on and so on.
Our entire world has been taken over by ads.
I think it's important to recognize this not so we let FB / Oculus off the hook, but so we can see it's an enormous problem overall that needs to be addressed.
They're also basically captive eyeballs. We've never had an ad you literally could not look away from. You can't even look at something else while the ad plays; you'd need to take off the headset and put it back on a minute later, repeat for every ad.
Really? You buy an expensive VR headset to... not use it?
Also, not sure, but isn't there eye-tracking built-in? If yes, the headset could actually detect that you're closing your eyes and keep the ad there until you open them again.
> People seem to think this is Facebook injecting ads into games all willy nilly
Based on previous behavior, this isn't an unfounded line of thinking. Many of the statements made by FB in regards to Occulus, while true at the time of the statement, have been completely reversed.
It is completely fair to expect that, at some point in the future, FB will inject ads into any VR app on Occulus at will.
That's about as likely as Nintendo or Sony indiscriminately rendering ads on top of the viewport while a game is running on their consoles. It's never gonna happen.
I disagree. Nintendo and Sony don't earn the majority of their profits by selling ads. Facebook does. Nintendo and Sony customer base is people buying games while FB's customer base is advertisers. At the end of the day, each company will do what it must to retain/acquire customers.
Nintendo I agree with whole-heartedly. Sony, not so much. They sell consoles at a loss [0], and make up the difference with licensing and percentage-of-game sales from publishers.
Meaning I am Nintendo's customer, Epic Games (I... think(?) they make PS5 games) is Sony's customer, and assorted advertisers are FaceBook's.
> It is completely fair to expect that, at some point in the future, FB will inject ads into any VR app on Occulus at will.
"Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures [...]"
That book/movie was such a missed opportunity to say something meaningful about a VR future, but it just kinda doesn’t follow through. In part, it is what I noted before. It lacks any meaningful humanity. There is a narrative acknowledgment that poverty, personal reinvention, and power exist, but it’s paint on the wall. No choices were contingent on them. No sacrifices made in response to them. None of it matters.
Then also - there is little future in it. Immersive VR is almost entirely where the future starts and stops. Everything else is mined from pop culture.
> this announcement, which essentially amounts to "leading VR platform tests new way for developers to monetize applications with personalized ad service". People seem to think this is Facebook injecting ads into games all willy nilly, when in fact it's just a platform for developers to add ads to their VR apps/games.
This piece (along with others I've read) attributes the action only to Facebook and not to game developers, so readers are likely to miss that part.
Why isn't there a bigger push to regulate the pernicious injection of ads into every aspect of society? There is regularly discussion about the dominance of big tech and often suggestions that we enshrine big tech as permanent fixtures into our life by designating them as necessary utilities that we pump into every home like running water, yet we rarely if ever hear any discussion of cracking down on ads, which are actually the primary source of power for big tech and also the source of all the things we hate most about them (tracking, behavior and demographic analysis, data collection, advertiser driven content agendas that result in bans etc). I wish this were more of a concern to the public.
I think society needs to have a reckoning around advertisement and decide what kinds of ads are moral and societally good. There are lots of categories I'd love to ban if king:
- All advertisements to children
- Advertisements for prescription drugs
- Advertisements that intend to evoke emotional responses rather than inform:
--- Many ads are designed to make the viewer feel inferior so they want to buy the product to remedy the negative emotions the ads caused
--- Many ads seek to irrationally associate a brand with a positive feeling, which overrides consumers ability to make rational purchasing decisions
--- Many ads seek vague 'brand awareness' without any informational content
I think there is a narrow case around informative advertisements "Hey this product or service exists, it might be something you want" that can be societally useful, but the vast majority of video and print ads are not doing that.
I'd ban all ads that were intrusive, so that advertising was only allowed if you had to go looking for it, rather than having it come looking for you. With a bit of an allowance for stuff like sandwich boards directly in front of shops or "so-and-so's bed+breakfast 3 miles ->" kinds of signs.
As a society we’ve mostly regulated away the truly dangerous threats to a safe and healthy life. Now the wealthy among us have too much anxious energy that gets spent decrying things that merely bother them. Without a realistic frame of reference, these annoyances balloon into huge threats in their mind’s eye.
I think rich people have always thought this way, but nowadays there’s more people who live a rich life thanks to technological developments.
Every faction across the political spectrum has interest in using authority to impose their will on others, that's the only purpose of politics. What I'm asking is why so much attention is given to impositions that would do nothing to diminish big tech dominance rather than addressing aspects that would not only curtail their dominance, but also move us away from the ad riddled dystopia that is unanimously reviled.
I live in a downtown of a medium-size city and right now when I look out of my window I don't see a single ad. This is because the advertizing is banned. Unregulated capitalism would NEVER allow that. A view without ads is not for sale without regulations. Same for 'a clean air', 'a clear water' and million other things where an unregulated enterprise would happily shit its externalities all over the commons to make an extra cent.
That is why advertising should be regulated far more heavily than it is right now.
As for why 'default response of so many adults today is to demand that an authority figure blah blah blah', as you have asked -- it's not, stop building strawmen.
It's a fair point, I should have been more precise in my response. What I meant to say was, "what does regulation do, other than prevent an undesirable class of actions?"
I think, like with the square, the question is: "What are the characteristics that make the set of actions which should be prevented by regulation narrower than the set of all undesirable actions."
We know there are a huge number of undesirable actions which we don't think should be regulated. Some of them are minor things, like petty insults or inconsequential dishonesty. Others are major, but are protected by other ideals. For example, choosing to spend a million dollars on gold to bury in a private crypt. Those are some examples that come to mind when I hear that the purpose of regulation is not simply to prevent undesirable actions. It's not that regulation does things other than that. It's that it must have some other attributes in addition to that. Determining those attributes is what makes it not simple.
It could be argued that ads are inherently attention diluting and therefore can only be harmful. Some research might help but this is a difficult subject to study.
> Why isn't there a bigger push to regulate the pernicious injection of ads into every aspect of society?
The starting off point for ads was signs in shop windows and billboards or bundled with important information like nespapers, these are the most invasive of all because you can't avoid them. Everything since is at least something you can opt out of.
The worst thing about ads is that not only are they convincing you to spend money on something you otherwise wouldn't have, but you indirectly pay for the advertising that convinces you was well. Companies that spend less to assault your senses have cheaper products, so to combat it spend less on cheaper alternatives that don't advertise.
>Why isn't there a bigger push to regulate the pernicious injection of ads into every aspect of society?
Because between digital and print its a 3/4 Trillion dollar market and growing.
I personally think all advertising should be illegal, but it's basically one of the most important pieces of how the modern economy works unfortunately.
I'm pretty fine with this, though I won't be interested in paying $20 for a game that also has ads in it. Blaston is $10, which... Enh, that's pushing my personal threshold.
But if it allows developers to build a free ecosystem that's ad-supported, that'll lower the activation cost to new VR ideas, increase iteration, and generally could increase the health of the whole ecosystem in terms of experience diversity.
At this moment of the VR craze/wave/hype if you buy an Oculus and you get burned by Facebook you kinda deserve it. They have demonstrated time and time again how shitty they are.
Step 1 - drive competitors from the market by selling massively subsidised hardware below cost.
Step 2 - announce advertising is necessary because the "ecosystem" is unsustainable.
I don't know how this is not attracting the attention of competition regulators. Coming in 10 years from now after the damage is done will be way too late.
You're missing something here - they're also simply selling a product that nobody else on the market is selling. The Quest is on it's 2nd generation, yet I can't go out and buy an equivalent standalone, wireless VR headset from e.g. HTC, HP or Sony.
For me, this is a reason to hold off on VR despite being eager to use it - for others, it may not be.
edit: huh, this disucssion prompted me to look at HTC's website again and it seems they do have a wireless headset: Vive Focus for Business. Even though it's aimed at business, I wonder if you could get it to work with SteamVR?
re: HTC - yep. And if you look even harder, you will find they are not selling it to consumers at all, and somewhere there is an interview where they actually explicitly saying they are specifically not selling it in the consumer market because of Facebook subsidising the Quest.
interesting - it looks like their website will let me add the Focus to my cart, but not the Focus Plus (the difference seemingly being the controllers?). It allows me to add a pre-order for the Focus 3 to my cart, but that's €1451 - a bit expensive!
Someone else in this thread said that Facebook will sell businesses an accountless Quest for $699 - I wonder if you could buy that one as a consumer (I'm guessing not).
A service is always subject to change. Consider it a lease or a rent, rather than something you can always count on. Be prepared to drop any given service you have, and ready to seek alternatives.
177 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] threadI have one not hooked up to Facebook, but I’ve had it for a while. There are a few “social features” that don’t work, but it still browses the web and plays oculus store content. With the link cable you can play steam games too. It won’t stay that way forever - 2022 I think.
You’re better off looking for something else if you don’t want Facebook. I am hoping Valve has something by then.
It feels like Facebook is taking a deliberately hostile stance to modding because they can't get their cut.
I pay for the VR apps, that is not self-sustaining? This is like ads in the movie Minority Report - yuck.
They will most certainly try to put it in immersive games if they can get away with it...
I had a CV1, but sold it some years ago, I found the usb-attached lighthouses too messy for my setup. Ideally I would like to get rid of the headset cable as well. I pretty much only played Beat Saber so Quest 2 would have been perfect!
I guess it's time to order a Valve Index?
You may need to download a "pirated" copy of an older beatsaber version, because afaik, the most recent update broke it again.
I've had Good experience with the latency on this setup, but I do have my PC connected to a 5 GHz router via ethernet and play in an area next to my router.
Resolution comparison between Index, Quest 2, and Reverb G2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny_OPsxHQmU
Resolution comparison between CV1, Vive, and Quest 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTaYQNghAxI
I have a Quest 1. The game selection is alright but expensive for what it is, but never found an unmodded game that kept my attention for more than ~5 hours - they are mostly VR demos without staying power. Modding is a huge pain in the ass, and every update breaks it again.
I used to use it regularly for BeatSaber + Custom Songs (though its underpowered so can't play all custom songs). For a while I was able to limp along by avoiding updates, but it eventually was broken by one of them, so I could no longer change custom songs. Finally I tried to fix it, failed, and tried to uninstall and just get unmodded BeatSaber working again. Quest decided to update, and now it doesn't even load the home screen - just a loading icon and then infinite black. I guess I'll try a factory reset, but I'm so frustrated with it I'm not sure it's worth trying to salvage.
It feels like Facebook is deliberately hostile to modding because they want to fortify their walled garden.
I will never buy oculus again. Steam's VR is higher quality, has much better game selection, and is much easier to mod as you want. My friend has an Index and I prefer it in every respect - the only downside is that it's wired and more expensive.
Quest2 will also use ASW for helping overcome lag as well. https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-asw-2-point-0-better...
But Virtual Desktop just released a new version that uses SSW, and it might even be better. https://uploadvr.com/virtual-desktop-synchronous-spacewarp/
Add me to the list of people who will never buy an Oculus.
Edit- I don’t know how I missed this:
> Developers will get a share of the revenue from ads in their apps, but Facebook isn’t publicly revealing the percentage.
Can we officially admit that the naysayers were right and that fb not only killed the oculus brand but perhaps even tarnished public opinion of this generation of VR?
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."
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
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)?
They heavily subsidize their VR devices…nothing unusual though, all game consoles are subsidized
I think that's only true for Playstation and Xbox. Pretty sure Nintendo makes a profit on every console.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
More revenue streams to support it is better than fewer, at least at this stage of its development.
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.
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'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.
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.
it's amazing to me how often someone on HN defending FB...turns out to be a FB employee.
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.
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).
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 $45. Except that is over 9 months, not 5 years. This is where the money is.
This isn’t 4 year olds mindlessly watching YouTube, these are the ideal demographic to sell stuff. At even 3.5x your ultra low estimate FB is at 1/2 the retail price of the device. Massive subsides are an easy choice for FB assuming VR doesn’t die off quickly.
Still even using your numbers a drop from 350$ to 300$ is a big deal before considering other revenue from app sales etc.
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)
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.
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.
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.
... so they can show ads on 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.
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...
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.
>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.
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.
Personally, I respect that fear but I think it's going to be alright. If we're talking about an ecosystem with hundreds / thousands of games and 90% have ads as opposed to one with fifty games with no ads that cost $10+ each, I'm in favor of the more diverse experience space.
VR ads have a lot of invasive potential which I don't think people trust Facebook to stay away from. Ads on the dashboard, ads that stick to your vision, ads that pause when you take the headset off, ads you have to look at to proceed, etc. There's not much of a limit when it's Facebook's hardware on your head.
The only reason you don't see it more already is that advertisers haven't figured out how to value what exactly they'd be buying; There's so many more factors regarding visibility/readability/placement in a 3D virtual environment, and there's a big difference between a real-life billboard that moves slowly past every driver on the interstate vs a canvas in a VR game where players might teleport right by in a hurry. Even with Facebook solving the technical aspects of measuring impressions/"engagement" in virtual worlds, I don't think the platform will attract many advertisers outside of the gaming/VR industry itself.
That developer can probably hardly care less that I don't support them. Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one) or the app is not good enough in which case people will stay away on their own.
The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
Developers who do the thing you don't like.
> Every single app developer?
No, just the ones who do the thing you don't like.
> The incentive alignment is pretty clear: if Facebook and users let them, devs will show ads.
Google and Apple pays devs show ads. Therefore all games have ads, right? No.
I don't buy games with ads. I have plenty of options.
> Either the app is good enough that people will endure the ads (in which case they will always preser two revenue streams to one)
Again you're arguing that all games that can have ads, do have ads. This is proven wrong by the world. We have two gigantic app stores with 5 million apps between them. None of the apps on my phone have ads.
Why can't they: 1. Be less greedy 2. Raise the price so I can be guaranteed to see no ads
This whole thing is shady IMO from top to bottom and just another aspect of 2021 tech which makes me think we really collectively failed to prevent the wonder of computing from just being another instrument to extract capital from the people and give it to the powerful
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34017056-the-history-...
You pay for a TV, and it shows you ads. You pay for a train ticket, and the walls and platforms are plastered with ads. You buy the fancy surround sound option in your car, and it plays ads. You buy a magazine, and it's mostly ads. And so on and so on. Our entire world has been taken over by ads.
I think it's important to recognize this not so we let FB / Oculus off the hook, but so we can see it's an enormous problem overall that needs to be addressed.
Also, not sure, but isn't there eye-tracking built-in? If yes, the headset could actually detect that you're closing your eyes and keep the ad there until you open them again.
Based on previous behavior, this isn't an unfounded line of thinking. Many of the statements made by FB in regards to Occulus, while true at the time of the statement, have been completely reversed.
It is completely fair to expect that, at some point in the future, FB will inject ads into any VR app on Occulus at will.
Edit: fixing typos
Meaning I am Nintendo's customer, Epic Games (I... think(?) they make PS5 games) is Sony's customer, and assorted advertisers are FaceBook's.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/sony-is-selling-th...
"Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures [...]"
Then also - there is little future in it. Immersive VR is almost entirely where the future starts and stops. Everything else is mined from pop culture.
Oculus showing ads for monetization is fine. I suspect they’ll somehow try to tap into Facebook data to target these ads though.
This piece (along with others I've read) attributes the action only to Facebook and not to game developers, so readers are likely to miss that part.
FB does not deserve the benefit of the doubt, at all.
- All advertisements to children
- Advertisements for prescription drugs
- Advertisements that intend to evoke emotional responses rather than inform:
--- Many ads are designed to make the viewer feel inferior so they want to buy the product to remedy the negative emotions the ads caused
--- Many ads seek to irrationally associate a brand with a positive feeling, which overrides consumers ability to make rational purchasing decisions
--- Many ads seek vague 'brand awareness' without any informational content
I think there is a narrow case around informative advertisements "Hey this product or service exists, it might be something you want" that can be societally useful, but the vast majority of video and print ads are not doing that.
Why is it that the default response of so many adults today is to demand that an authority figure impose their own will on someone else?
I think rich people have always thought this way, but nowadays there’s more people who live a rich life thanks to technological developments.
Huxley was right, we have come to love the world we live in
That is why advertising should be regulated far more heavily than it is right now.
As for why 'default response of so many adults today is to demand that an authority figure blah blah blah', as you have asked -- it's not, stop building strawmen.
Of course it is. What does regulation do if not prevent an undesirable class of actions?
A: A square is not simply "a quadrilateral whose every angle is 90 degrees."
B: Of course it is. What is a square if not a four-sided figure with all right angles?
We know there are a huge number of undesirable actions which we don't think should be regulated. Some of them are minor things, like petty insults or inconsequential dishonesty. Others are major, but are protected by other ideals. For example, choosing to spend a million dollars on gold to bury in a private crypt. Those are some examples that come to mind when I hear that the purpose of regulation is not simply to prevent undesirable actions. It's not that regulation does things other than that. It's that it must have some other attributes in addition to that. Determining those attributes is what makes it not simple.
The starting off point for ads was signs in shop windows and billboards or bundled with important information like nespapers, these are the most invasive of all because you can't avoid them. Everything since is at least something you can opt out of.
The worst thing about ads is that not only are they convincing you to spend money on something you otherwise wouldn't have, but you indirectly pay for the advertising that convinces you was well. Companies that spend less to assault your senses have cheaper products, so to combat it spend less on cheaper alternatives that don't advertise.
Because between digital and print its a 3/4 Trillion dollar market and growing.
I personally think all advertising should be illegal, but it's basically one of the most important pieces of how the modern economy works unfortunately.
But if it allows developers to build a free ecosystem that's ad-supported, that'll lower the activation cost to new VR ideas, increase iteration, and generally could increase the health of the whole ecosystem in terms of experience diversity.
When will we ever learn?
Step 2 - announce advertising is necessary because the "ecosystem" is unsustainable.
I don't know how this is not attracting the attention of competition regulators. Coming in 10 years from now after the damage is done will be way too late.
For me, this is a reason to hold off on VR despite being eager to use it - for others, it may not be.
edit: huh, this disucssion prompted me to look at HTC's website again and it seems they do have a wireless headset: Vive Focus for Business. Even though it's aimed at business, I wonder if you could get it to work with SteamVR?
Someone else in this thread said that Facebook will sell businesses an accountless Quest for $699 - I wonder if you could buy that one as a consumer (I'm guessing not).
1) growth at any cost, even if you're burning money left and right
2) find clever ways to "monetize" your product and strip everything that made your product attractive in the process.