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Back in September, following on from the Oculus Rift's summer sale price cut, we noticed that the headset had received a big boost in users on Steam thanks to the monthly Steam Hardware Survey. Now, the Rift price cut has been made permanent, and the headset's share of the Steam market appears to be growing accordingly, edging even closer to the HTC VIVE's numbers.
In the past, the Oculus Rift hasn’t fared too well against the HTC Vive when it comes to Steam’s hardware survey. There are two explanations for this, the first would be lower sales but you also need to take into account the fact that Oculus Home exists, so not every single Rift owner is going to be using SteamVR. Still, the Rift is in a much better position now than it was a year ago.
According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, the HTC VIVE has fallen from 50.16 percent of the SteamVR market down to 48.76 percent. Meanwhile, the Oculus Rift has grown to 47.76 percent.
With that said, it is important to note that not every single VR headset owner will have taken part in the survey. For instance, I own an Oculus Rift and did not take part. Also, while Vive users might be down right now, the headset has a good couple of months ahead of it, with DOOM VFR, Fallout 4 VR and LA Noire: Case Files all on the way before the end of the year. With that in mind, December's Steam Hardware Survey should paint a clearer picture.
KitGuru Says: The Oculus Rift has been getting steady growth over the course of 2017. The price drop to $399 has certainly helped. However, the HTC Vive still seems to be on top and with the holiday season's triple A game push upon us, we could see the gap widen again. Do any of you own a VR headset already? Are you planning on getting one before the end of the year?
I own a Rift. Bought it because of the touch controllers. I’ve got nothing against the Vive. In fact, it was a really hard decision picking between the two. Waiting for the price of Vive to go down a bit and I’ll buy it as well. I’m in the middle of building a second VR capable computer with a GTX 1080ti specifically for it. My Intel 6850k and EVGA GTX 1080 ftw hybrid have given my Rift plenty of power to work with so I don’t think it’s necessary for a “ti” upgrade but I still neet it for 4k gaming on high settings, so might as well.
I don’t care about the bickering over which system is better. I just want to play games. They are both great systems and I dont regret dropping around $700 to have the complete 360 tracking and touch controllers. The new motion tracked tactical gun for the Vive is sick and is what prompted me to consider it as a second VR system.
Just so people know, the Rift was only buggy at first and after a few updates and a patch I had to find to fix a usb interface problem, it has had zero bugs since, and none I’ve found during gameplay, ever.
Competition between systems is good, exclusives suck.