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Vive-Viveport-Feature

Dorsum in Baronial, HTC announced that information technology would add together support for the Oculus Rift to its Viveport Subscription service. Like the Oculus Store, Viveport is HTC'south method for distributing games and apps to its customer base without having to rely solely on a service like Steam and Steam VR.

That support has now gone alive. Starting today, yous tin can download and install Viveport if y'all're an Oculus RiftSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce owner (HTC has published a blog mail with details on how to go almost doing this). The process should be relatively straightforward if you've configured a VR headset before, though it'due south worth noting that configuring VR headsets to work with multiple applications at once remains a rather kludgy process. Amazon's 1-click ordering, this own't.

The full general hassle of getting VR working on a new system or all the various pieces of software to always play nicely notwithstanding, Viveport's subscription offer — pay $19.99 for three months (working out to $6.66 per month). In return, you tin play upwards to five games per calendar month. I'm not much in favor of this kind of offer considering information technology doesn't offering y'all much if it turns out one or more of the choices yous've selected are lousy games. Information technology would exist nice if the ViveSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce offered, say, a 60-minute timer to try a game and opt not to spend a token on it, should the game non exist to your liking.

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But with that said, HTC is making the correct move here. It isn't clear which company has sold the virtually headsets to date between HTC and Oculus, though we know the PSVR has sold more than 3 million headsets total, making it the market leader in consumer VR in terms of unit shipments. But the Steam Hardware Survey'southward at present-corrected numbers suggest that 0.35 percent of customers ain a Rift, 0.32 percent own a Vive, 0.05 percent have a Windows Mixed Reality headset, with the Vive Pro (0.01 percent) and Rift DK2 (0.01 percent) bringing upwardly the rear. The implication here is that the two firms are fairly close — add up the $.25, and Oculus-branded headsets are at 0.36 percent to 0.33 per centum for HTC. These are not the kinds of numbers that sends analysts running to advise the game industry that the world is almost to change.

Only they are the kind of numbers that suggests an alliance between the two firms could be meaningfully useful in terms of expanding VR's tiny market share. This is a point we've argued since it became clear virtual reality would be coming to market place in the start place. While we understand that companies like Oculus and HTC want to build their ain brands and domain presence, VR is not an easy hobby to enter right now. The more barriers to entry that these firms can remove, the better off everyone is going to be.

Now Read: VR Marketplace Expected to Improve Despite Sharp Turn down in 2022, VR Sales are Tanking, and Is the High-End VR Marketplace Dead,