Standalone VR's First Step into the Mainstream

While the holiday season isn’t quite the barometer of product success it once was, it still provides good insight into general consumer trends and preferences. One bit of news that might go overlooked is the currently limited availability of the Oculus Quest, which is still (post-holiday) sold out by most retailers, including Oculus direct, with stock coming back between mid-January and late February. These stockouts were not the result of dramatic holiday price cuts; in fact, there were minimal changes to pricing and, while the game Vader Immortal was included as a package deal, the allure of the Oculus Quest stems from many of the issues the standalone Virtual Reality (VR) segment is tackling head on.  

To the public eye, VR might look like a technology searching for a problem and, indeed, a large number of those on the outside looking in (at VR) have already written it off as another 3D TV. Speaking to companies within the video value chain, the sentiments here seem to corroborate a similar progression: the Consumer Electronics (CE) industry pumps up a new technology that consumers don’t want, content remains limited, and it fades away into obscurity. Extending this view to the VR industry as a whole would miss the market developments in commercial spaces and mischaracterize the opportunities for VR and immersive technologies.

ABI Research continues to view VR and immersive technologies like previous technologies or form factors that took time to develop. The market development of the smart phone is a prime example that VR and immersive technologies could follow: commercial entities are incentivized differently than consumers and are able to better justify technical issues, high costs, etc., if it improves efficiencies, safety, etc. As the specifications of the hardware and software improve over time, the threshold where it becomes more mainstream-friendly is crossed and immersive technologies are on this pathway. The Oculus Quest and standalone VR certainly address some of the early issues (e.g., ease of setup, cost, performance, comfort), but we would be remiss to expect that the Oculus Quest’s early successes will radically alter the negativity around the consumer space—Facebook continues to state the Quest has exceeded its expectations, which were likely quite modest; the bar likely wasn’t terribly high for demand to outstrip supply, but regardless it is a more envious position to be in than the alternative.    

To change the wider perspective of VR, the technology needs to get to a state where more people have that “aha” moment and see how VR or immersive technologies could play a role in their daily lives. This means it’s more than just making the devices comfortable enough to wear for longer periods of time and cutting down setup time—users and consumers in particular need to see the applications before they are willing to put on a wearable as bulky as a VR Head-Mounted Device (HMD).

The industry needs to view comfort and ease of setup as fundamental elements of immersive technologies and not as points of differentiation. While standalone VR HMDs like the Quest are steps forward, market applications keep these devices within the early adopter category, which still better serves the commercial space and gamers. CES 2020 might not showcase the immersive tech that will bridge the gap between early adopter and mainstream, but there are already some glimpses of this future. Varjo’s HMDs, which offer high resolution screens, for example, allow users to easily read text and see detail that is not possible with lesser displays. This level of performance could open up the doors to more use cases in the consumer market—for example, better Internet browsing and productivity.

In addition this type of performance can support virtual screens that could reasonably replace physical displays within the room. The combination of Augmented Reality (AR) and VR for merged or Mixed Reality (MR) applications also helps expand the value proposition. 2020 is yet another pivotal year for VR, but look to the commercial solutions and applications to see where and how VR will ultimately break into the wider consumer space; while VR isn’t expected to become the next smartphone, immersive technologies collectively will leave an indelible mark on the future of compute, just not as quickly as some of us had expected (or as a consumer, hoped).