Oculus Rift demo stations in 200 Best Buy stores across the United States are to be shut according to Business Insider, who state the reason for the closure is “it was common for them to go days without giving a single demonstration.” Oculus have confirmed the closures with Oculus spokeswoman Andrea Schubert saying they stations were being axed due to “seasonal changes.”
“We still believe the best way to learn about VR is through a live demo,” she added, “We’re going to find opportunities to do regular events and pop ups in retail locations and local communities throughout the year.”
Best Buy stores will continue to offer Oculus Rift and the Touch controllers for sale. Business Insider say they spoke to multiple “Oculus Ambassadors” who stated that they only sold 1-2 units per week, and after Christmas the sales have dropped to almost nothing.
Source: BI
Crazy_Del
Was the Demo Stations free? Cause Game were charging customers to try out the VR Demo which was a joke lol.
ron_mcphatty
A mate paid for a PSVR demo, he was made to stand around while other customers watched him! Super awkward, especially because he looks uncannily like Uncle Fester.
Starman
The demo pods would’ve taken up a lot of space, and the stores probably wanted something more profitable in it’s place. VR as a whole has flopped once again.
Tuffcub
BB say they made 300,000 demos in the last quarter in VR. Now, as we know bugger all of them were Oculus, PSVR and/or Vive seem to be doing ok. Oculus is just too expensive for average joe.
Starman
The usually forthcoming Sony have refused to give any psvr sales figures, that tells you all you need to know. They’ve already abandoned it like they did the vita.
The problem is there are no must have games on vr. No title has the buzz around it that you need to sell a system.
The market has also become saturated because all the usual corporations heard about it and tried to cash in, which just creates compatibility issues.
Severn2j
Oculus is in the unfortunate position of being not as good as the Vive technically, and a lot more expensive than PSVR.. While its hard to get figures on sales, you can estimate Vive sales using SteamSpy (https://steamspy.com/tag/VR+Only).
Looking at “The Lab” (which was free with the Vive), its logged 495,509 (±20,510) owners. While it may not be up there with PS4 level of sales, its pretty good considering that its an expensive first generation device, aimed at early adopters, who need a high end gaming PC to run it.
I wouldn’t count VR out just yet, its more likely establishing which one is the betamax / HD-DVD and which is VHS / Bluray.
The Lone Steven
They have Resident Evil VII and erm….
er…..
Batman VR?
and erm…… Shaving VR?
bunimomike
Aww… this is like the catalogue lady who’d visit the house and try and sell you weirdly branded household cleaners that were “Used By Industry!” even though you didn’t know who the fuck they were.
Expect Oculus to be in the Kleeneze catalogue soon.
JR.
The most shocking thing about all of this is that they actually thought VR was going to be the next big thing. It’s a niche market at best.
The Lone Steven
They had demo stations? Kinda really dropped the ball there with not letting everyone know. Oculus really needed to do more to advertise it though I can see Game,Gamestop not wanting to have two VR demo things due to space and well, Sony kinda had a ton of advantages with the PSVR. Oculus was kinda untested, it was a new company and well, there were 3-4 different VR systems. Out of the 3 or 4, I can only name this, PSVR and Vive. The vive, i’ve just remembered exists.
Severn2j
Hmm, possibly related tweet?
https://twitter.com/NicoRichaud/status/829647260308893696
750,000 PSVR’s sold
420,000 HTC Vive’s
240,000 Rifts
Kinda what I expected, considering price and marketing (assuming those figures are correct).