Oculus managed to make people interested in virtual reality again pretty much by itself and has maintained its position at the top of the market ever since then. While plenty of other companies have jumped on the bandwagon and teased their own virtual reality products, none of them have really been able to challenge Oculus. However, that may very well change with Valve’s entrance into the market with SteamVR.
There’s a new frontrunner in virtual reality. At least for now. For the first time since virtual reality became “a thing” again, Oculus has been dethroned. SteamVR and the HTC Vive now reign supreme as the device I’m most looking forward to, following a demo during GDC. For a lot of you, that won’t mean much. We haven’t had a single consumer-grade virtual reality headset yet, unless you count the GearVR which—while an impressive piece of kit in its own right—isn’t exactly on a par with wired, desktop-based solutions. So to most of you, virtual reality is still just a product that’s “on the way,” and thus who cares if behind-the-scenes there’s a jockeying for power? And yet for me, the whole idea that Oculus is now the underdog? Unprecedented. Here’s what happened. My demo took place in a room much like that I saw during Oculus’ Crescent Bay demos last September at Oculus Connect—one of those fake, cubicle-type rooms that are thrown together for trade shows. No furniture except for two small bookshelves, a stool in the center, and a PC tower off in a corner.
