- Facebook/Oculus are selling this as basically a VR game console, meaning that its US$400 price tag, with two VR controllers included, is in pretty much in line with their intended competition.
- People who weren't interested in Oculus' Go or Rift products might just be interested in a US$400 VR gaming console, especially since it won't require them to pay for expensive PC upgrades anymore while still providing acceptable performance.
As I see it, in order for FB/Oculus' latest product to succeed, it needs to clear all of the following hurdles.
#1. Even compared to an under-powered console like the Nintendo Switch, the Oculus Quest is under-powered. A wireless device that could provide a Rift-quality experience might be enticing enough to draw in users who have been standing off until now, but the Quest will not be a Rift-quality experience. You don't have take my word for that, either; John Carmack himself, Oculus' Chief Technical Officer, has compared its performance to the PS3 and XBox360, both last generation consoles. Even the Nintendo Switch gives better performance than that, and with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all working on next-generation hardware already, I don't know how eager consumers will be to lay down current-gen cash for last-gen performance.
#2. Launching an under-powered console in the middle of a console cycle, against well-established competitors offering better-performing products, is incredibly difficult. To the best of my knowledge, the only company to ever pull off this feat was Nintendo, with the Switch; in other words, it's happened exactly once, leaving numerous expensive failures from various companies littering the graveyard of console gaming history.
#3. Even if they were launching at the start of a console cycle, against comparably-performing competitors, the lack of exclusive content would hurt the Quest's chances. Just ask Microsoft, whose XBox One console is currently languishing well back of the PS4's sales numbers, unable to gain traction because they have no titles on offer that can't be found elsewhere. Yes, Oculus has tried to establish a walled-garden ecosystem for the Rift, but without much success, and most existing VR titles are either VR ports of existing games, or receive non-VR versions shortly after release; the fact that Oculus closed their own VR production unit is not helpful here.
#4. The Oculus Quest isn't a console. Consumers understand gaming consoles; they know more or less what to expect from one, and how a new gaming console would fit into their lives and homes. None of that is true of VR, which has been heavily hyped as a revolutionary new type of device, with capabilities that can't even be imagined yet.
Now, that's always been a terrible sales pitch, effectively robbing VR of anything like a value proposition; if you can't tell consumers where and how your device fits into their lives, they're unlikely to buy in, as evidenced by the fact that consumers haven't yet bought into VR. But to turn around and tell those same consumers that VR isn't actually revolutionary and new, that it's really just another gaming console, clashes with the one thing they've been told about VR up to now. That's a tough sell, made tougher by the fact that it runs right into points #1, #2, and #3 above: poor performance, strong competition, and a lack of unique content, since you're now claiming that the VR experience itself isn't all that unique. Of course, my position all along has been that VR's biggest problem is that it doesn't enable any quantitatively new experiences; for Oculus to start selling it as just another gaming console basically stabs the Quest right in VR's Achilles' heel.
#5. The Oculus Quest is a room-scale implementation of VR. While the pairing of room-scale and wireless does make sense, room-scale VR does demand that potential users either a) have an 8'-square room whose furniture can be rearranged every time the device is used, which quickly becomes onerous if the device sees anything like regular use, or b) have an entire 8'-square room that can be permanently configured around VR activities, which basically means that you need a house with a basement that isn't done up yet.
Even assuming that the Quest is able to clear all four other hurdles to this point, the limitations inherent in room-scale VR present a barrier to entry that most apartment-dwelling potential customers simply won't be able to clear. Only the most dedicated VR enthusiasts, or the wealthiest VR enthusiasts, will be able to fit the Quest into their homes, i.e. people who probably already own VR headsets already, and who may not be jonesing for a second VR device to add to the drawer.
And that's before we even start talking about VR's other nagging issues, like the simulation sickness problem, the locomotion problem, and the controller problem, none of which have been solved yet, and all of which limit the users' ability to move around in and interact with VR environments, even in room-scale implementations. The fact that Quest is a weird hybrid is just icing on the cake, here; it's Oculus Go (but without the portability) crossed with HTC Vive (but without the performance), a console that won't work with most living rooms, all in addition to being an entirely new kind of device that has no obvious place in potential customers lives or homes... and whose makers now say that it isn't all that new, after all.
Maybe I'm missing something, here, but as I see it, that's simply too many hurdles for the Quest to get over, and I really do think that the Quest has to clear all of them to stand a chance of succeeding. Which basically means that it has zero chance of succeeding. Sorry, Oculus; it's a nice try, but I'm still predicting Oculus Go-level sales numbers for the Quest.