The HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift was all the craze when it came out which made Steam encounter stock problems. After resolving the stock restriction by July, which made them freely available from retailers in the U.S., everyone wanted one straight away.
That's why rumors of VR Sales flatlining arose last week when Steam survey showed that only 0.18% of users own an HTC Vibe and 0.10% have an Oculus Rift.
However, Oculus VR founder Luckey Palmer responded harshly against these rumors, tweeting: "So much clickbait about Rift/VR sales 'flatlining' or 'crashing' based on the Steam user hardware survey. Not how the data works, guys." He further asserts the Steam survey only pops up on certain users and that a vast majority of the VR market never touches the Steam survey.
But even so, the dropping sales from 0.03% to 0.01% for the Rift and basically nothing for the HTC Vive still show a consistent decline in usage, sources say no matter way you cut it, they've gotten slightly less popular than the previous months.
Still the future sales for the VR remained optimistic as it's expected to grow tenfold by 2020, from 2 million as of year 2016 to 21 million.
And it's because the momentum of which games compatible with the VR and 360-degrees content are what's said to be driving these sales according to CCS Insight chief of research, Ben Wood. Adding that, "All major content providers are piling into this area, and user-generated content is poised to explode as more affordable 360-degree cameras come to market."
Many are showing much optimism for the future of VR even though few companies offer the VR to be able to push it into mainstream and the market is still in its early days, still it's a promising market. And CCS Insight estimates the total VR device market will be worth $1.5 billion by the end of the year and will climb to $11 billion by 2020.
