Gaben speaks again: Only 30 SteamVR apps have made more than $250K

One of the advantages of being a privately-held company, rather than a publicly-traded corporation, is the lack of pressure to keep driving up your share price. This relentless pressure means that, for publicly-traded corporations, you can't just make money; you always have to make more money than you made last year, or your share price falls, which can be catastrophic for people who e.g. have a bunch of your company's shares in their 401(k) or RRSP. 

A private company, by comparison, only has to make more money than they spend, or (in the case of dot-com startups) hold the promise of eventually making more money than they spend. Among other things, this can lead to more tolerance for risk-taking and innovation. Facebook lost money for years before figuring out a profitable business model and finally doing an IPO, but Facebook is now a publicly-traded company, with shareholders to answer to, and share prices that they have to continue to increase year-over-year, every year. 

Which may be why Mark Zuckerberg was only willing to admit under oath during the ZeniMax trial that Oculus probably won't turn a profit for ten years, and pleaded with shareholders to be patient while he keeps throwing good money after the $3.5B he's already thrown at VR:

“I would ask for the patience of the investor community,” he said. “Because we’re going to invest a lot in this, and it’s not going to return or be really profitable for us for quite a while.”

Gabe Newell, on the other hand, is being remarkably blunt about HTC Vive's shortcomings, and openly talking about how he's OK with VR failing completely. And he's apparently not done yet.

From c|net:

During a recent media event, Valve revealed that only 30 VR apps have made over $250,000 so far on Steam. Now focusing his company heavily on VR development, Valve president Gabe Newell remains bullish on the future of VR, but isn’t shying away from sharing frank assessments of the still young industry.

Sorting content ‘by VR’ through the Steam store, the number of titles that support the technology comfortably exceeds 1,000. While a few early indie VR titles have seen a few million in revenue, according to Valve only 30 of Steam’s VR apps have made over $250,000.

This could be a fairly discouraging figure for aspiring VR developers, as Steam is surely the most popular source for PC VR content, considering the apparent sales advantage of the HTC Vive over the competition, combined with the fact that SteamVR works with other headsets like the Oculus Rift and OSVR.

This figure isn't at all surprising, considering how poorly VR headsets, generally, have been selling, but it is a little unusual to hear the head of a company that's developing VR hardware and software speak so openly about it. But then, maybe that's just because Gaben doesn't have shareholders to answer to. Valve doesn't have to keep making more money than it made the year before; they just have to turn a profit, and can afford to lose money betting on VR's future, in a way that publicly-traded Facebook may find increasingly difficult, even though Facebook may actually have more cash on hand.

It's a very interesting dynamic, and it'll be even more interesting to see how this plays out as VR continues striving to become a thing. VR really isn't ready yet, and it really does need for hardware and content developers to be willing and able to spend boatloads of cash with no guarantee that this R&D will result in actual profits, ten years from now. Facebook, with billions of USD in reserve, should be well-positioned for this, but it may prove to be Valve who have the freedom and flexibility to actually spend the money, without risking an investors' revolt.

Stay tuned...