Oculus Rift headsets and the Valve Index have surrendered a tiny share of overall VR headset usage to HTC Vive in October’s Steam Hardware Survey.
September was another month of growth for both Rift and Index. But, while the newly-released Rift S continued to grow in October, the total percentage of Rift and Valve headsets used on Steam was down.
Steam Shrinkage
On the Rift front, the S went from 13.03% to 13.7%. It’s easily the slowest month of growth for the headset since the Steam Hardware Survey started following it. Combine that with 0.37% usage of DK2 and 33.07% usage of the standard Rift and total Oculus usage on Steam comes to, amazingly, 49.99%. Last month it was at 50.07%. Not a major reduction, then, but enough to put it back below the 50% mark.
We can’t help but wonder if the recent announcement of Oculus Link, which will allow Quest owners to plug their headsets into PCs to play Rift games, might have stalled Rift S’s growth. Link arrives this month and we’ll be interested to see how it changes up the PC VR landscape.
As for Index, Valve’s headset fell from 4.98% to 4.92%. Again, it’s a very, very small reduction, but it’s the first time Index has gone backwards instead of forwards since it joined the Steam Hardware Survey.
The biggest loser of the month, though, is Windows VR. Microsoft’s range of devices fell from 5.87% to 5.22%. Surely next month will see Index overtake that line of products?
So, what which headset(s) are gaining the ground Facebook and Valve have lost. The answer is the HTC Vive platform. Last month’s total Vive usage (combining Vive and Vive Pro) was 34.78%. This month it came to 35.18%.
October saw the launch of the Vive Cosmos, though the survey doesn’t list the device yet. Still, we do know Cosmos replaced the original Vive, so this bump may be attributed to a last-minute rush to buy up the last Vive units.
November is now upon us and that means one thing: Black Friday. We’ll be looking forward to seeing how this year’s deals shake up the results in early December.
