PC VR “A Boutique Niche”, Beat Saber “Far More Important Than Half-Life: Alyx”

John Carmack described PC VR as “a boutique niche”, standalone VR as “the biggest win that VR ever had”, and Beat Saber as “far more important than Half-Life: Alyx”.

In a post on X, the former Oculus CTO once again clarified his position on standalone and PC VR, a position he has held for more than a decade.

Whenever I post something critical of Meta’s handling of VR, there are always some old timers that pile on with “Yeah! More AAA PC VR Games is the way to win!”. To be clear — standalone VR was the biggest win that VR ever had, by a huge margin, and Beat Saber was far more important than Half-Life Alyx.

Using a PC to drive VR experiences is a boutique niche. Still valuable and definitely worth supporting as a bonus feature, but not something that was going to turn into even console level success, let alone mobile level.

The economics of AAA development were never going to be widely brought to bear on a PC accessory. I do think there is opportunity for AAA content to profitably have “VR bonus features”, but not fully designed-for-VR projects at comparable levels of effort.”

Carmack was the driving force behind the original mobile VR efforts at Oculus, spearheading the software side of the Samsung Gear VR partnership and Oculus Go, which was essentially a standalone version of it.

In 2012, before he even formally joined Oculus, Carmack described his goal of a headset that would use “mobile phone hardware” and cameras for positional tracking with no wires. And in 2013, while CTO of Oculus, Carmack even described this ideal headset as running a version of Android.

A few months after the original Oculus Quest launched, bringing positional tracking and tracked controllers to standalone VR, Carmack proudly revealed that it was “by far” the company’s most retentive headset yet, surpassing both PC-based Rift headsets.

By March 2023, around two and a half years into the Quest 2 era, Meta had sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets, vastly more than any PC VR headset.

Carmack: Quest Is ‘By Far Our Most Retentive Hardware’, Rift S Surpasses Rift

Facebook’s new VR headsets are already seeing impressive retention, according to John Carmack. During his keynote speech at Oculus Connect 6 today, Carmack announced that Oculus Quest is “by far” Facebook’s most retentive hardware. The Oculus Rift S, however, has already surpassed the original Rift in terms of

Half-Life: Alyx has sold approximately 3 million units. In contrast, almost 10 million people have unlocked the first achievement of Beat Saber on Quest alone, and the game is also available on both PlayStation VR headsets and SteamVR.

So on objective reach, Carmack is objectively correct. But whether you think Beat Saber or Half-Life: Alyx has greater cultural impact will be a matter of debate.