New Steam Survey: Vive is outselling Oculus by two to one

By Imad Khan July 5, 2016

vive oculus survey june 25472241336 2b9f1f11ae k — Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr

The battle for virtual reality supremacy has been rough, but it’s looking like the more expensive HTC Vive is beating out the Oculus Rift.

In Steam’s monthly hardware survey, where it analyzes what processors or GPUs gamers are using, it found that far more of its users are buying HTC Vives.

According to those surveyed, 66 percent of Steam users own an HTC Vive while 27.75 percent own an Oculus Rift. The survey also asked if users owned an Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2), and 6.25 percent said they did. Even when combining the consumer Oculus Rift with the DK2, that comes out to 34 percent, a little over half of the market share HTC has claimed.

vr headsets — Image used with permission by copyright holder

What’s interesting is the fact that HTC’s Vive is a good $200 more expensive than the Oculus Rift. In achieving these results even in the face of a higher, $800 price tag, Vive can make a strong case that its headset is the superior one. Unlike Oculus, Vive uses motion controllers and motion detectors that are placed around your room to more accurately capture movements. This has translated to more positive reviews and consumer response when compared to Oculus. While both are still incredibly capable VR headsets, the hardcore early adopter audience went with the better option.

This does come as bit of a surprise, considering Oculus had far more publicity than Vive with its Kickstarter and subsequent purchase by Facebook. It turns out that consumers were paying very close attention to which headset would edge the other out.

Oculus has also been on a recent bidding war, courting developers to its side to make exclusive Oculus games. This has left gamers upset, as many feel that making certain games exclusive to Oculus would be the equivalent to making games exclusive to Samsung TVs.

Possibly in order to profit from this caustic environment, Valve has announced that it will pay developers to make games and has made it clear that it will not demand exclusivity. This more consumer-focused message by HTC and Valve may be what’s pushing consumers to their side.

The VR war is only beginning, as PlayStation is set to launch its PSVR this October and Razer is also entering the game with its Open Source VR headset. Stay tuned.

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