Steam Hardware Survey - January 2021 results included

[RuneSR2]

Latest results:



These results are compared, at least for the Rift, to August when Rift peaked at 0.35 %. Since August 2018 Rift has decreased about 6 % (from 0.35 to 0.33). Vive also decreased.  

Compared to other HMDs we see from April to September (note that this image hasn't been updated to October yet):



When updated to October I'd expect:

Rift = 45 %
Vive = 42 %
WMR = 8 %
Vive Pro = 3 %
Rift DK2 = 1 %

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

BTW - some history:

April 2018:

Oculus Rift 0.20%

HTC Vive 0.18%

Windows Mixed Reality 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK2 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK1 0.00%

Unknown 0.00%

July 2018:

Oculus Rift 0.32%

HTC Vive 0.31%

Windows Mixed Reality 0.05%
HTC Vive Pro 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK2 0.01%

Oculus Rift DK1 0.00%

I guess it's more or less a stand still since July for Rift and the original Vive... I don't think the Odyssey+ has had any impact on the WMR results above, the Odyssey+ is much too new - if it'll have any impact, it won't be before the Steam Hardware Survey November 2018 results. 

[jayhawk]

I don't ever put credence in Steam surveys. Too many variables. It's useless info

[RuneSR2]

According to Tom's Hardware, The Steam Hardware Survey should be reliable since April 2018. But of course it only shows Steam users.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/steam-hardware-survey-cpu-gpu,37007.html

[ShocksVR]

Sounds like only entry level users and higher end enthusiasts are still buying headsets. Us "mainstream" VR peons are content, and we're not recruiting enough of our kind.

I will note, there is a segment of WMR purchasers that initially buy a WMR headset thinking it has all the advantages of a Rift/Vive but for half the price. Then they learn otherwise after buying it and later upgrade to a Rift/Vive system for the full VR experience.

[pyroth309]

RuneSR2 said:

Latest results:

I guess it's more or less a stand still since July for Rift and the original Vive... I don't think the Odyssey+ has had any impact on the WMR results above, the Odyssey+ is much too new - if it'll have any impact, it won't be before the Steam Hardware Survey November 2018 results. 

There was a big sale for WMR headsets in october and a big one for the old Odyssey which may have had impact. It got bumped down to 350. But yea, I doubt the + contributed to much yet or if it will since the fit issues are a big deterrence.

[RuneSR2]

pyroth309 said:

RuneSR2 said:

Latest results:

I guess it's more or less a stand still since July for Rift and the original Vive... I don't think the Odyssey+ has had any impact on the WMR results above, the Odyssey+ is much too new - if it'll have any impact, it won't be before the Steam Hardware Survey November 2018 results. 

There was a big sale for WMR headsets in october and a big one for the old Odyssey which may have had impact. It got bumped down to 350. But yea, I doubt the + contributed to much yet or if it will since the fit issues are a big deterrence.

I guess the WMR does have several advantages like being inexpensive, having no need the external sensors (=easy to take with you when visiting friends etc), nice semi-high-res HMDs and the power of several giant companies to drive the sales (Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer - and Microsoft). 

BTW, the April - October chart just arrived:

 

It does look like WMR has doubled its presence since April. DK2 is slowly leaving while Oculus and HTC seem to have unchanged market shares. Note this picture only shows the development of HMD market shares (based on Steam users) - these numbers will always add up to 100% and say nothing about the exact number of sold HMDs. So if WMR grows, something else have to shrink in this chart... I don't think Pimax is even present in this chart. 

Fun thing, last evening I started Steam and was again invited to submit my data to the Steam Hardware Survey, which I did. So my Rift is included in next month's Survey. Also I've been doing statistics for many years, it's impressive how small the variation seems to be in the Steam Hardware Survey numbers, typically that would require a massive amount of measurements. I have no idea how many users participate in the Survey each months, but I'd suspect a number *much* higher than a thousand.

For the last many months it seems that about 0.70 - 0.75 % of Steam users have a VR HMD connected to their PC. Would be great to see that number reach just 1% (which would then correspond to something like 1 million active users)... More Steam VR math here:

https://www.roadtovr.com/new-valve-data-suggests-648000-active-vr-headsets-on-steam/

Like Pimax, Nvidia RTX is not present at all in the October 2018 Survey - but only 1.5% of Steam users have 1080 Tis and only 2.7% have  1080s, so I'd expect RTX to be much smaller than 1080 Ti due to the prices and availability. The most popular video cards were 1060, 1050 Ti, 1050 and 750 Ti - and these video cards all increased their presence in the October 2018 Survey (for tethered VR to grow a lot, owners of such video cards should be the main target - not RTX owners 😉

[LuluViBritannia]

for tethered VR to grow a lot, owners of such video cards should be the main target - not RTX owners 😉

Exactly. Oculus and HTC already made that mistake for their first headset (back when they were released, the 10's generation wasn't even out).

[OmegaM4N]

Price will no doubt be a factor here, i have seen quite a lot of the WMR headsets on sale of late, even here in the UK which has been almost a arid desert VR market wise, but of late you could get a new one for £199 over the last few months, even cheaper than the PSVR which is the £220 mark, so that might be the price point joe public likes that will make them dip their toes in, that and the fact you don't need a silly price video card into the bargain, a GTX1050 and a WMR are very well priced for joe public to get into VR.

[RuneSR2]

OmegaM4N said:

Price will no doubt be a factor here, i have seen quite a lot of the WMR headsets on sale of late, even here in the UK which has been almost a arid desert VR market wise, but of late you could get a new one for £199 over the last few months, even cheaper than the PSVR which is the £220 mark, so that might be the price point joe public likes that will make them dip their toes in, that and the fact you don't need a silly price video card into the bargain, a GTX1050 and a WMR are very well priced for joe public to get into VR.

You're probably quite right regarding the price and WMR popularity - I think the massive Rift bump in summer/autumn 2017 was caused by the major reduction in price:

[OmegaM4N]

^^Yeah you are spot on as i was one of many that grabbed the rift last summer at that price. 😉