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YOUR AN IDIOT! TROLL!
HTC is splittings it's division, thats all. NOTHING SAYS THAT"S ITS FAILING! someone dropped you hard on your head!
You are HTC
- You have a Android branch making 46% loss.
- You also have a Choclate Cake factory making 30% loss
- And a VR branch that makes 20% loss
So you are right quoting the article like you did, Vive is the "most profitable".
But reality is: Vive is the one making the least loss.
I hope you see that there's a difference here.
###Edit### I see you posted some links on an ASUS and Microsoft VR set. Don't really see the coherence.
And let me correct you: they're not SPLITTING their division, the're looking to SELL IT.
There's a differnence here:
You SELL a division when it is not good for the company (making loss).
You KEEP a division if it makes profits.
There is NO REASON in SELLING a division if you make huge earnings with it. No reason at all. But if you make losses, then it makes sense to get rit of it. Which is what they are doing here.
I hope you get it now, sir.
We do know that HTC as a whole has struggled, so it's not surprising they are looking at ways of raising cash. And that's really what this looks like to me.
Any reports of the Vive being dead or unprofitable is pure speculation at this stage.
VR in general is unprofitable at this stage. Everyone releases a VR headset, but the Boom isn't there. Let me refer you to Steam Stats. Choose a VR game. They stagnate badly at sales.
Not surprising, because most of them are Tec Demos rather than a full game.
VR is missing a System Seller. A 'Halo' or 'Geas of War' that makes ppl buy xboxes.
That systemseller won't come, because it's risky for a big publisher to put big money in such a small market. A chicken-egg problem we have here. ;)
"Dude, we're making BILLIONS with our VR business, let's sell it off to someone else to take our Billions!!!!"
.... highly unlikely.
Use your head. You know what this means, even if noone says it. Right? ;) You can see behind the 'marketing blabla'. Selling it off means 'we don't care, because it's not profitable, we want to get rid of it, before it damages the company'.
Ok. Yet again I have to deal with someones ill percived perceptions of situation they have no understanding about.
In the first quarter of this year, the Vive shipped 190,000 units. Thats January 1st to March 31st. that indicates close to a million units in the first year. Couple that with sales from Oculus headsets and PSVR and in it's first year, over 3 million gaming level headsets have sold. VR is sticking around and the 3 units share a few titles together. I could even add in the 5 million VR phone headsets sold but lets just focus on the Vive + HTC for now.
Firstly, Steam is just one place you can use the Vive so whatever usage figure you see on Steam is not represenative of users as not everone who owns a Vive uses one. You can just use Viveport (a service which is popular on the Asian market and the service of choice in China) and there is a whole legion of companies using the Vive for business applications which only use openVR to power the unit. It is not and never was "just a gaming device" nor is it a requirment for Steam to be installed so lets not use that as "evidence" shall we?
Secondly HTC has been in trouble for a long time. Mobile phone sales have been on a downard spiral since 2011. Partnering with Steam ws a last ditch attempt to save the company and bring something back to the brand name. It acctually did to a degree and share prices of HTC have seen recent spikes but the VR part was never going .to make enough money in the first years to save the failing phone part. This whole "spinning Vive off into it's own company thing" has been publicly stated by HTC for months. It is not new information. What is new is that now HTC have to act. Shareholders demand results for their investment and they have hit a point of no return. Either spin Vive off into it's own company and sell off the phone part so the company as a whole does not sink OR sell the whole company. The point here is that it's down to investor offers. HTC may not be able to sell just the phone side of the company. Investors may only buy the company if the Vive part is included.
Thirdly, do you really REALLY think any company investing in VR belived they where going to make billions in the 16 months since launch? it's a slow burn technology. HTC HAS made profits but where under no illusions it would be billions within 16 months of launch. Hell..no new tech or even gaming system has ever made "billions" in the first years of launch.
Fourthly (and most importantly) claming there is no "system seller" just shows your ignorance on the subject. VR is not a system for a start. Contrary to what you think, it's a periphial for and existing device (PC). System selling titles however, since you seem so locked in on it are about to launch.
Fallout 4 VR comes out soon as does both Doom VR and Skyrim. Halo VR (Yes Halo) was anouced yesterday by Microsoft. Mechwarrior V with full VR support releases next year...etc etc etc. Titles take time but after VR (not the Vive but VR) sold over 3 million units within a year, loads of companies are rushing to produce VR titles. Every major gaming expo this year has been full of VR title promotion and at PAX next week Valve are "possibly" (it is Valve) releasing info on their first AAA VR title they've been teasing all year.
Again..these are titles for PC + PS VR to be played how you wish, not titles tied into to some console war ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that Oculus has been trying to do.
Even if you're right (and you're not) and Vive goes belly up, HTC has over 500 SteamVR partners now and more headsets being launched soon. LG are about to release their SteamVr headset (Which is exactly the same as the Vive at a technical level) . Microsoft are about to release 10 (yes 10) headsets which are SteamVR compatible. It's not and never was about the Vive. It;s about SteamVR and VR in generaland that has succeeded.
But please...continue with this misguinded notion you know more than Valve, Microsoft, Oculus, Sony, Google ETC. They're all stood firmly behind the new technology and are pleased with the progress (which acctually beat what they expected as an adoption rate). You can continue clicking sensationlist headlines without any understanding of the context or seeing the bigger picture. VR is here to stay.
But just because some big companies bring out some hardware doesn't validate it.
Remember that for the past 6 years you couldn't really buy a TV without integrated 3D? Because all manufacturers integrated it, it was a 'must have'.
Things never really took off, I think samsung was the first to take it out, the rest followed.
And yet, most of us have a 3D capable TV at home, which we rarely used in it's 3D function.
My point here: According to them huge manufacturers, 3D-TV was the bee's knee. Until it wasn't.
And all the big names had to lelease one. Until it failed. Like they do now with VR. Until it fails again.
The first iPhone had, among other things:
- an Accelerometer
- a Gyroscope
- A cellphone display.
Add another Cellphone display to the list and you basically have a VR headset. A peripheral, like you said. Hard to justify the pricetag.
I have yet to see a valid, broadly used application that justifies VR.
Let me link you to the washington post. Yes, VR takes off so slow, the Post actually has an article on it ;)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/16/why-is-virtual-reality-taking-so-long-to-take-off/
There you read stuff like "What virtual reality needs, experts say, is a killer app. " - the systemseller I mentioned.
Your argument that Millions of headsets have sold is true, too. Altough, compared to the relative number of gamers, is minimal according to the Post:
" An estimated 6.3 million headsets have sold worldwide — indicating that, even among the world’s 2.6 billion gamers, few have picked one up."
As for all kinds of companies bringing out their own headset, this of course causes fragmentation of the market, if you ever used Linux you know exactly what I mean. :)
The fragmentation means basically, instead of taking off, they'll cannibalize the market, until everyone lost.
Let me remind you, the first Oculus Rift (or more general, the first VR headset) was presented in 2012. It's nearly 2018 now - it has NOT taken off in almost 6 YEARS.
Ironically you mentioned DOOM VR will come out. Doom 3 was the tech demo for the rift. In 2012. :D
https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/30/3052191/doom-3-bfg-edition-announced-for-the-fall-we-try-it-with-john
We're talking about a technology here, that had to go crowd-begging on kickstarter, initially.
Since then, you're right here, many have jumped on the train.
But it clearly has not, and will not, take off.
And yes, it's a peripheral, not a gaming platform. But let's be honest here, if we gamers won't make it fly, noone will. Do you see Novartis or Glencore giveVR the push it needs? ;)
Btw, where's google glass? You know, the augmented thingie the biggest internet corporation in the world.... Never mind. :D
I would not regret the experience, have had some serious fun with it; and have enjoyed watching dozens of friends and family play on it.
and when the next VR console comes out with AAA titles @ half the price, great...i will buy it also
No idea what you are talking about here. Oculus has it's own store front and so far have only supported their own headset. Yes it;s true there is a level of fragmentation but (oculus withstanding) most of this stems from everyone developing their own VR standard over the last few years. This is about to end via openXR which solves all those issues making headsets as plug and play as a monitor or keyboard.
https://www.khronos.org/openxr
The Oculus Rift was not commercially released until last year. The dev kit was never a commercial product, was offically only sold to developers, was never in retail stores, had no software store, no support of any kind and was limited to a production run of about 300K's worth of units all of which sold from it;s one and only sales point on the original Oculus development site. In the 16 months since release however, it's sold about a million units with massive uptake during the recent sales (about 100'000 by current estimations). Thats on par with Apple during their first year with iphone sales (since you mentioned them).
Beyond that statement I can say only this. You're entitled to your opinion...and thats all it is.
I know VR is here to stay. Billions of dollars investment by hundreds of tech firms says otherwise. Hundreds of studios developing VR titles says otherwise. Actually using VR says otherwise (as the majority of people trying it are blown away). I'm not arguing it's for everyone right now but eventually it will be.
I know that whilst HTC might go bye bye, the Vive wont. The Vive will litterally become it's own company or be bought out and continued by someone else due to it's current popularity. the Chinese would have a fit if it was taken off the market it;s so big over there. Even if the worst does happen, other companies are about to release their versions of the Vive which, lo and behold, work exactly the same on SteamVR (LGs VR headset for example) and operates exactly the same as the Vive. Maybe you should start looking at a business reports, tech insider reports and share prices instead of sensastionaist articles from a journalist with no real understanding of what they are talking about.
But hey..you might be right. I might well not be continuing to enjoy VR as I am now and I better make the most of it whilst it's here. All that money, years and years of development, millions of man hours coding etc...it all might end up being pissed against the wall and lead to nothing.
So..if you dont mind I'm going back into my virtual spaceship and hunting some aliens whilst I still can. I know it's the most fun I've ever had gaming and I know it's a true loss to all gamers (even those who do not know it yet) if that sort of experiance just stops but you know..thats my opinion.
Not necessarily. There are a lot of reasons companies restructure, and this can and does include selling off profitable divisions.
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is the source of this rumor; it's an alleged inside source that talks about HTC talking about restructuring, but we have precious little to go on beyond that.
And FWIW, HTC has stated that they have been selling the Vive at a profit on a per-unit basis.
The same thing was said about the laptop: http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/08/business/the-executive-computer.html
People have also said the same thing about lots of other tech, most notable tablets in recent memory. Heck, even video games as a whole were once considered a 'fad' by some.
Bottom line is you nor anyone else truly knows what the future will bring.