The Oculus Rift has overtaken the HTC VIVE in Steam usage for the first time. We saw the writing on the wall last month, when the December Steam hardware survey results came out, showing the Rift with a better growth percentage. Now two months later, the Vive has officially been overtaken.
In December, the Oculus Rift had 46.14 percent of the SteamVR market, meanwhile the Vive had 47.26 percent. This was the smallest gap between the two headsets since their respective launches in 2016. Now, the tables have turned for the first time, with February's Steam hardware survey results showing the Rift at 47.31 percent and the Vive at 45.38 percent.
We expected the Rift to break some ground over the holiday season, as the headset and its Touch controllers began selling for their lowest price ever. This gave the Rift a significant price advantage over the Vive and even now, the Rift can still be found cheaper than HTC's offering.
Of course, at CES this year HTC did announce the Vive Pro, which will feature a higher resolution display. It is possible that some users have begun selling their older Vive HMDs in anticipation for this, so there are plenty of factors at play here that could influence the results.
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KitGuru Says: The Oculus Rift didn't do too well over the course of 2016, but the headset has come a long way since then. Have many of you picked up a VR headset over the last few months? Did you end up going for a Rift or a Vive?