Recently, Valve's "Steam Software & Hardware Survey" triggered a large number of analysis and comments, but there are a lot of erroneous conclusions about the overall market share of VR helmets, and they all overlook a very interesting data point.
Each month, Valve conducts a check in the Steam user to count the most basic data, such as what software and hardware these users are using, and whether the data has changed as a whole.
It is not yet long before the company added the option of “VR helmets†in the survey, but we can look at the basic situation of VR helmet possession from this survey result. It is worth noting that although Oculus users can also use the Steam platform to play games, games on the platform are not officially ported (this means that the copyright of the game is still owned by Oculus Home). So without knowing which part of the Oculus Rift user is playing on the Steam platform, we can't extrapolate any conclusions from Valve's published data except the helmet market share.
Changes in VR helmet share of Steam platform (2016.4-2016.6)
However, this does not mean that these data are worthless. From the two most recent data points, the smooth curve between HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (CV1) reveals an interesting fact: The growing number of Oculus Rift CV1 helmets on the Steam platform nearly flattened the market share of HTC Vive. .
What does this mean? It is true that HTC Vive is shipping every day, but recent market share data shows that Vive is only trying to maintain its own share. At the same time, the share of the Rift CV1 took a big wave, soaring from 19.5% to 27.8%. The information that this chart gives us is that at the same time, the number of Rift CV1s added to the Steam platform is a lot larger than that of the HTC Vive.
Seeing here, readers and friends may form some of their own views, but they may be too arbitrary. This data can explain why Rift's sales will suddenly increase - perhaps Oculus's capacity has finally gone up, able to handle early orders. But it could also be that a group of Rift users just realized that they could connect to the Steam platform to play games. So far, we cannot make an accurate judgment.
However, we can infer more information from this data. If we know that Vive sold 93,000 in July, and Vive's market share reached 66%, we can figure out that 39,000 devices are on the Steam platform based on Oculus's market share. What we lack now is the detailed proportion of Oculus Rift.
Although Vive and Rift compete fiercely in the desktop-level VR space, the Sony PSVR (hosted VR) device will be available for sale in October this year. Some analysts believe it will have the fastest acceptance rate among the three.
This article is compiled from RoadToVR, with the map from the network, reproduced please be sure to indicate the source.