Every year XRDC (formerly known as VRDC) releases survey results from an “Innovation Report” that’s compiled with responses from over 600 professionals across the VR/AR/MR community. This year most of the survey results are about what you’d expect if you have even a passing interest in the VR/AR market, but there were a couple points that stood out as surprising or significant.
Both of the past two years (2016 and 2017) showed a clear trend: Vive was more popular than Rift with developers. In both years devs were mostly working on current Vive projects and had more plans to work on Vive again as opposed to Rift (or any other platform, for that matter) but now the tides are shifting.
When asked: “Which AR/VR/MR platforms will your next title be released on? (choose all that apply),” for the first time the majority of respondents selected Rift instead of Vive. Here are the 2017 (last year) and 2018 (this year) results side-by-side:
This shift is supported by other recent data, too. For starters, according to Steam hardware surveys as of early July, Rift has surpassed Vive in terms of current headset usage as well. When you consider that the Vive’s native VR platform is Steam, that’s even more surprising.
It’s also worth noting that last year’s results did prove true in that more devs are currently working on Vive projects (45.41%) than Rift projects (41.38%).
Also of note is the fact that over 40% of respondents indicated that their current VR/AR/MR projects are being funded by existing internal company funds, rather than outside investment. In fact, more developers reported dipping into personal funds (26.6%) than relying on angel investors (9.15%), clients (21.59%), crowdfunding (2.59%), external publishers (3.45%), or venture capital investments (8.46%).
According to the survey, 1 in 3 developers (about 32%) are working on a platform exclusive project (such as Marvel Powers United VR for Rift or Firewall: Zero Hour for PSVR) which is in line with last year’s response (31%). Considering the fact that 95% of all respondents believe in the long-term sustainability of VR/AR/MR, things are looking good for the health of the market and the confidence of its developers.
If you’re interested in reading the full survey, you can sign up for a copy from XRDC right here. Let us know what you think of these results down in the comments below!
