Is PCVR Dying? Steam Hardware Survey Shows VR Users Stagnating

Apr 9

The conversation of “VR Is Dead” or “VR Is Dying” pops up on social media, especially X (Twitter), every now and again.

Strong sales of VR headsets in general in the early 2020s proved this continual conversation to be wrong, at least until the recent stagnation of VR headset sales in 2023.

United States headset sales, according to CNBC, went down nearly forty percent in 2023. This is pretty shocking news to someone who is a Virtual Reality fan and wants to see others enjoy VR as much as possible.

This could be attributed to a number of things, like the cessation of COVID restrictions on living and travel, or simply market fatigue and general awareness of Virtual Reality reaching its peak. What the VR headset sales numbers don’t show you, however, is how many games existing users are buying, and most importantly how often existing users are using their headsets.

While we don’t have either of these numbers for what appears to be the most popular way to enjoy VR, standalone headsets like the Meta Quest, we do have some PCVR information from the March 2024 Steam Hardware Survey.

The “VR Headsets” results from the March 2024 Steam Hardware Survey.

This information is much more useful than headset sales. It doesn’t matter how many headsets get sold if new adopters don’t use it, or those already playing VR stop using it. While it would be great to have some numbers for how often standalone headsets get used, we can at least see if PCVR is still popular.

Most PCVR games are played through Steam, and what we see here in the hardware survey isn’t encouraging. You would think with new headsets still being continually sold in the millions that we would have at least a slight uptick in the amount of Steam users with VR headsets.

Yet we have a slight decrease, basically a net neutral change. In fact, what’s even more alarming is the decrease in PCVR usage among Quest users. Could this potentially be pointing to a stagnation in Quest usage or just a stagnation in people streaming PCVR games to their Quest?

Either way with continual sales of VR headsets it’s not encouraging to see that PCVR numbers are not increasing. That being said, the cost of both a headset and a PC capable of playing VR games is limiting and means that far fewer people have access to PCVR in general.

So PCVR is stagnating according to Steam. Is PCVR dead? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

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Answered - How Do You Spawn Enemies In Blade And Sorcery?

Wondering how to spawn enemies in the fantastic VR sandbox fighting game Blade & Sorcery? Well look no further. This article will show you how to spawn enemies in Blade and Sorcery.

Spawning enemies in Blade and Sorcery, whether you’re playing it on PCVR or the standalone version for Meta Quest 2 and 3 called Blade and Sorcery: Nomad is quite easy. So here’s the answer to the question: “How do you spawn enemies in Blade and Sorcery?”

The quick answer is: In each sandbox map there is a book, and you can spawn enemies from that book. It will always sit on top of a stone pedestal, and will sometimes be near where you spawn, but not always. Just look for the book and use it to spawn enemies. It’s usually near the book that spawns weapons as well, but again not always. For an easy example go to the Market map and the book is right in front of where you spawn to the right of the steps.

The First VR Headset - The Sword Of Damocles and The Virtual Boy

Virtual Reality has actually been around in one form or another much longer than you might think.

VR is often viewed as a more recent technological breakthrough with huge advances in consumer headsets like the original Oculus Rift, Valve Index, and HTC Vive. Not to mention more recent breakthroughs in standalone VR headsets (those that don’t need to be plugged into a PC to work) in the Meta Quest and Pico.

Despite the popularity and consumer availability of VR headsets skyrocketing so recently in the last decade, Virtual Reality technology has actually been around since the 1960s with the first VR headset… The Sword Of Damocles.

CONVRGENCE VR Early Access Review

So what do you do in CONVRGENCE? Mostly you collect stuff to sell, buy stuff, and use that stuff to avoid getting killed while you collect more stuff. It's a surprisingly entertaining system.

You fight and loot your way through until you find an extract and stand next to it for a few seconds. Then you're back in the base, sell your stuff, buy whatever you want or need. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and if you do die you lose everything, unless you have insurance, then you lose everything except for what's in your backpack.

There are multiple different location types to go and raid with different enemies, dangers, and surroundings, and overall I'd say the gameplay loop is solid. It's very similar to Paradox Of Hope's Raid Mode, though unfortunately there's no story mode in CONVRGENCE.

Is PCVR Dying? Steam Hardware Survey Shows VR Users Stagnating

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