Nearly past early adopters phase?

Mr_Sukebe

Mr_Sukebe

Mr_Sukebe

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Marketing uses the term "early adopters" for those happy to pay for leading edge technology.

Anyone think we might have nearly passed that phase already?
Clearly we've seen the second hand units being sold for ridiculous prices on Ebay, due to unavailability of units.

Steam have stated that they can now supply within 3 days and OCUK that they recently received 500 units of the Vive.
Sounds to me that this has just killed the "opportunist" market for overpriced units on Ebay. A good thing IMO.

The question next is when are manufacturers going to start thinking that their production is outstripping demand, due to either unexpected lower sales or competition in the marketplace. Once that happens, the initial prices are almost certainly doing to drop.

So, any predictions? Will Steam have enough to put in some discounts during their summer sale, or will we need to wait for Sony to bring their answer out?
 
I think the entire gen1 release can be classified as "early adopters"
if you look back at what a "gen1" smartphone looked like and look at the types of things being touted to be included in gen2, and then the sort of price drops we are likely to see if VR gets proper mainstream acceptance
 
I would say this gen isn't really early adopters its gen 1, (plus current sales lack of games seems like an average console launch)

Early would have been Kickstarter etc there's a proven demand

How much Sony will be the biggest influence, but u have to buy a new console. (Well we don't know what it will be like on current consoles)

Pc will be the best experience but also costs the most, I doubt these will get discounted by steam as htc wants their cut, maybe the games but that's it.

When we will get discounts is when they can produce the parts cheaper for the units.
That's normally a year of production,

Though I could be wrong Facebook could just say we're losing market share to htc sell each unit at a 50% loss and make it up in the store like pervious console launches
 
zangetsu19 said:
I would say this gen isn't really early adopters its gen 1, (plus current sales lack of games seems like an average console launch)

Early would have been Kickstarter etc there's a proven demand
Click to expand...

Kick starter was development kits, gen1 is incredubly niche, its still early adopters. You could maybe argue that PSVR is semi-mainstream but considering even then you are going to need a specific new console to use it, for me that is still early adopters compared with what the potential is.

For a start, for VR to become mainstream they are going to have to do away with external tracking cameras / lighthouses and have the whole thing built in to the headset.
 
in manufacturing the biggest unit cost reductions come with increases in volume, which I just don't see happening anytime soon in any significant size.
If prices drop at all I'll be amazed. I see them staying where they are, with slight increases with each successive generation that is released, much in the same way smartphones have.
 
Maybe I should have made this a poll as to when we think the price will drop.
My personal opinion is that we're being charged "entry" rates. See the Sony VR for a comparison. Planned to be massively cheaper.
Now I know that it's not quite as good from a technical viewpoint. However, just consider how much of a product is made up of:
- The packaging
- Distribution
- Marketing
- Margins to cover things like warranty/fault issues
- Recovering development costs
etc

The reality of most "techie" products are that the physical costs are a pretty low %. So you can probably say with reasonable certainty that the additional technical complexity of either the Oculus or HTC are nothing like £300-500.

My guess is that we'll see some level of discounting in a couple of months, then a reasonable drop prior to Xmas.
 
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One thing that will effect cost is going to be xboxs new console and sonys.

just heard that xbox will use oculus on their new console and its around a 970 power range.

though two will defo start a price war
 
I HIGHLY doubt we will see any significant discount on Gen 1 Oculus/Vive, certainly not enough to say it's no longer an 'early adopters' product. Even 10% would see it out of reach of most people. VR needs to get way down in the £300 price range before it will even be considered by the masses, not to mention wider game support and more choice to actually justify the purchase. The latter is just as much a factor as the price anyway, and developers are still finding their way with the technology and how best to utilise it.

Oculus have stated their release cycle to be between a console and phone, so it will be a little while before we see Gen 2... perhaps as that time nears we will see bigger discounts, but that's not going to sway the masses if a better and cheaper product is on the horizon. The plan WILL be to bring the price down... they aren't Nvidia, they aren't looking to gouge the consumer for every penny they've got, namely because there is no a lack of competition to drive that performance/value quotient. Interesting times ahead, but unless we see a BIG upsurge in content and a significant price drop, VR will remain somewhat niche... which makes all the GPU marketing centered around VR seem a bit bizarre to me given how small a percentage of their customer base is actually listening to that. I guess they can't afford to NOT mention it though as if nothing else it makes them sound very 'current' and high tech.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Marketing uses the term "early adopters" for those happy to pay for leading edge technology.

Anyone think we might have nearly passed that phase already?
Clearly we've seen the second hand units being sold for ridiculous prices on Ebay, due to unavailability of units.

Steam have stated that they can now supply within 3 days and OCUK that they recently received 500 units of the Vive.
Sounds to me that this has just killed the "opportunist" market for overpriced units on Ebay. A good thing IMO.

The question next is when are manufacturers going to start thinking that their production is outstripping demand, due to either unexpected lower sales or competition in the marketplace. Once that happens, the initial prices are almost certainly doing to drop.

So, any predictions? Will Steam have enough to put in some discounts during their summer sale, or will we need to wait for Sony to bring their answer out?
Click to expand...

valve advertises on steam, that the headsets are now delivered within 3 business days
 
The controllers are still in there infancy and the headsets are too uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. There is still a lot of development to be done yet I think. So to answer the ops question not quite.
 
how long do you guys think the VR headsets generations would refresh? waiting for like the 3/4th gen where hopefully all the kinks have been straighten out and the price is manageable
 
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