HTC has a major problem in virtual reality right now: They’ve lost their touch outside of China. It might sounds strange, especially given how amazing the original HTC Vive was in 2016, but the ultimate truth is that HTC does not seem to understand today’s virtual reality market. The Vive Cosmos, HTC’s latest headset, has just 0.6% of the virtual reality market according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey as of this Story. That’s just barely above the Oculus DK2, which stands at 0.42% and came out 6 years ago (and doesn’t even have controllers with it). It’s become increasingly obvious that HTC’s most recent hardware iterations are failing, and their recent announcement of cheaper headsets doesn’t look like it will solve their problem. So for this, let’s dive into what HTC can do to actually fix their current virtual reality lineup for consumers outside of China.
Let’s start with the basics: What does a virtual reality product need to include in 2020 to actually be viable? Obviously, there needs to be a headset, but something that HTC seems to have forgotten with their Lighthouse-compatible face-plate for the Cosmos is that it also needs controllers! More specifically, they need controllers that can be tracked with six degrees-of-freedom (movement plus rotation), not three (rotation only) like on the Vive Focus. These controllers also need to match the current design patterns that…
