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Oculus Store update ties DRM to headset

I'm not sure I can recall a company doing *so* many things, all in a row, to turn their potential fans against them, at such an important time for their business.

To think of how excited I was back in January, to wake up early and pre-order.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
You live and breathe VR stuff, most of us aren't hearing or seeing much about VR anymore. Haven't see ANY talk on reddit either

You didn't hear anything about Google I/O? That's on you, then. But it was covered by most gaming and tech sites.

Example - Google Daydream announcement is on the front page of The Verge.
 
Personally, I don't think this is a move against the Vive, at least not exclusively. It's a move against cheaper manufacturers of VR sets coming from China.

The fact of the matter is that most of the hardware on the Oculus can be reversed engineered and built cheaply enough out of easily accessible parts, and the competition in the Chinese market is building a critical mass that will end up spilling to Western markets.

I mean, look at the number of headsets in this article, or the mentions of higher quality offerings in this other one. Headsets under or around $200 are very close, and most of what's being developed now in China already boasts its compatibility with Oculus-developed software.

The only chance that Oculus think they have is to close down the software and tie it up to their machine.

This was always going to happen though.
 
Luckey ultimately has bosses to answer to himself. He can't defy the wishes of Papa Facebook... well, unless he wants to be unceremoniously dismissed.
Facebook has nothing to do with this, they said they would be hands-off, allowing Oculus to manage their company as they see fit for at least a few years. I wouldn't be surprised if this idea came from Oculus CEO Iribe, though - he's definitely a business man first (couldn't even use the Oculus DK1 for more than 5 minutes without feeling sick, so not a VR enthusiast).

I have a feeling this decision was in part due to laziness on Oculus' part - since every Rift owner was going to install Oculus Home, and every Rift includes Lucky's Tale as a free packin, Oculus just made Lucky's Tale free to download from Oculus Home. But now we have Vive owners getting the game for free due to that laziness. Oculus probably paid a good deal of money to Lucky's Tale developers Playful for that pack-in license, and I'd bet large amounts of money the agreement only covers Oculus Rift owners.
 
this seems completely out of touch

a VR headset is like a monitor. it will get tossed aside and get replaced by a newer one in 5 years.

DRM for something like that is idiotic
 

Z3M0G

Member
Does this mean they have hardware stock that is not selling? Otherwise this only cuts their software sales for no reason.

And people with Vive get cut off from their current game purchases i imagine?
 
You didn't hear anything about Google I/O? That's on you, then. But it was covered by most gaming and tech sites.

Example - Google Daydream announcement is on the front page of The Verge.

Nope. I read neogaf almost every day and spend some time in pc gaming subreddits and I hadn't heard about it at all.
 

Riddick

Member
this seems completely out of touch

a VR headset is like a monitor. it will get tossed aside and get replaced by a newer one in 5 years.

DRM for something like that is idiotic


They're trying to make it something like a console. A console without the humongous investment that is needed or AAA developers and AAA projects. I know there's no proof that this is because of Facebook but I bet my left nut that Oculus would never do this shit if it hadn't been bought by facebook.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
the stupid thing is that this makes me not want a rift 2. I'm not brand loyal - I was a Kickstarter backer and was lookign forward to my rift until the vive came out. I went with the vive for the hand tracking and room scale. But I would have been very happy to go with oculus in gen 2 if they matched the tracking, and kept the improved weight and comfort.

But this kind of behaviour makes me less likely to want to do that.
 

aeolist

Banned
well i know which headset i won't be getting

funniest thing is that this is more likely to drive people to pirate oculus games for their vive, whereas before they could just buy them
 
lol, they still have people with day 1 preorders who haven't been filled.

And by "day 1 preorders," you mean "hour 1 preorders," at least here in the US. The latest preorder time I've seen shipped is ~45mins after they opened.

Doing stuff like this when they have a huge number of people with a) no money deposited on their preorder, b) exasperated from a months-long wait, and c) a strong competitor with a more-complete current offering... the mind, it boggles.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Personally, I don't think this is a move against the Vive, at least not exclusively. It's a move against cheaper manufacturers of VR sets coming from China.

The fact of the matter is that most of the hardware on the Oculus can be reversed engineered and built cheaply enough out of easily accessible parts, and the competition in the Chinese market is building a critical mass that will end up spilling to Western markets.

I mean, look at the number of headsets in this article, or the mentions of higher quality offerings in this other one. Headsets under or around $200 are very close, and most of what's being developed now in China already boasts its compatibility with Oculus-developed software.

The only chance that Oculus think they have is to close down the software and tie it up to their machine.

They could make a ton of money just being the netflix or facebook of VR. They have such a big headstart in content and I don't think valve would be able to match that as a mass market device, and that would allow them to make plenty of money even with these headsets coming in.

They could make even more money if they become the iphone of VR, but that comes with a way bigger risk, not just to oculus if these cheaper headsets end up eating their lunch, but also to the VR industry overall thanks to splitting the user base while VR's content is already one of the biggest hurdles to VR.

Long term it doesn't seem like a great idea to focus on a hardware monopoly when they could become the software monopoly of an even bigger industry, especially if the competition is putting out cheaper and better hardware.
 
Nope. I read neogaf almost every day and spend some time in pc gaming subreddits and I hadn't heard about it at all.

The Vive and Oculus threads are bumped quite a bit every day. There aren't a lot of new threads about VR related stuff because we are kind of debating what warrants a new thread. A lot of smaller games are coming out all the time, but it might seem excessive to put up OTs for all of them since it is a lot of early access stuff.
 
Won't it be a matter of days before it's patched again?

I edited in some quotes from the revive dev in the OP that explains why this is different from just breaking compatibility. Hopefully he can find a way around it, but this is completely new territory compared to what he was doing earlier.
 
I still have my 1 hour pre-order that's not shipped. I think I'm just canceling it over the weekend.

Honestly? Yours is likely to ship sometime soon, and the secondary market is still quite strong. I sold my Rift (opened, even) last week for ~$400 more than I paid for it. It might be worth sticking it out, depending on your situation.
 

artsi

Member
Honestly? Yours is likely to ship sometime soon, and the secondary market is still quite strong. I sold my Rift (opened, even) last week for ~$400 more than I paid for it. It might be worth sticking it out, depending on your situation.

Hmm that could work, if they're still going for so high prices.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Citation needed.

Some have already said that Facebook has a long history of avoiding exclusivity shenanigans but it's a moot point as the Rift is Facebook's first true piece of internal hardware. Sure, it's entirely possible that Oculus completing the 180 it began spinning towards post-buyout indeed has nothing to do Facebook, but citing past behaviour (or rather the lack thereof) is hardly a convincing argument as Facebook hasn't exactly been in this situation before.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Nope. I read neogaf almost every day and spend some time in pc gaming subreddits and I hadn't heard about it at all.

I considered making a thread but I know that most people here simply will laugh and say "mobile?! lol kek" etc.

The only real "gaming" news you missed from Google I/O:

- Vulkan is a part of android now - better battery life / games etc
- DayDream is Google's mobile VR Platform that they intend to use for all VR stuff
-- "Over time DayDream will encompass VR devices in many shapes and sizes, but currently DayDream is about enabling high quality VR on Android smartphones"
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I considered making a thread but I know that most people here simply will laugh and say "mobile?! lol kek" etc.

The only real "gaming" news you missed from Google I/O:

- Vulkan is a part of android now - better battery life / games etc
- DayDream is Google's mobile VR Platform that they intend to use for all VR stuff
-- "Over time DayDream will encompass VR devices in many shapes and sizes, but currently DayDream is about enabling high quality VR on Android smartphones"

Plus:

Announcement of Google motion controller
Release of DayDream SDK
DayDream Plugin for Unity and Unreal Engine 4 released
Project Tango AR spacial mapping demonstration
8 manufacturers of DayDream hardware including HTC and Samsung
4K resolution
 

Bookoo

Member
It sucks, but not suprised.

Rift is currently the best headset on the market and I actually like that they are investing heavily in content since we have a pretty big chicken and egg situation going on right now for VR.

But they just love to trash their image in gamers eyes, but in the grand scheme it doesn't matter since VR is bigger than gaming for them.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Plus:

Announcement of Google motion controller
Release of DayDream SDK
DayDream Plugin for Unity and Unreal Engine 4 released
Project Tango AR spacial mapping demonstration
8 manufacturers of DayDream hardware including HTC and Samsung
4K resolution

oh yeah, and that
 
I have a feeling this decision was in part due to laziness on Oculus' part - since every Rift owner was going to install Oculus Home, and every Rift includes Lucky's Tale as a free packin, Oculus just made Lucky's Tale free to download from Oculus Home. But now we have Vive owners getting the game for free due to that laziness. Oculus probably paid a good deal of money to Lucky's Tale developers Playful for that pack-in license, and I'd bet large amounts of money the agreement only covers Oculus Rift owners.

I think this is definitely part of it, but it's still dumb on their part. The best way to get people without your headset to check out your store is offer free content.

I just really don't get this. They're not making much profit on the headset and instead make that money from the store. Why wouldn't they want everyone to be able to buy stuff off their store? Just doesn't make any sense.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
It was a gaf thread that didn't even hit the second page.

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Kodiak333

Neo Member
What they should've done with Lucky's Tale etc is to give a code when you buy the Rift instead of making it free to everybody.
 

Kaako

Felium Defensor
This early into the game and you already on this DRM bullshiet? Oh you greedy buffoons. R.I.P in pieces.
 
What they should've done with Lucky's Tale etc is to give a code when you buy the Rift instead of making it free to everybody.

They could even let everyone have it for free, creating public goodwill and a huge incentive for people to install their store front and buy games even if they didn't own their head set. That's how you build a platform.
 
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