June Steam hardware survey: The Rift-Vive gap shrinks … sort of

The Oculus Rift still leads the charge with 44.12% of the overall VR headset use on Steam. Pairing the 40.76% share that HTC Vive has with the 1.66% share of the Vive Pro, HTC is at 42.42%. That’s a difference of just 1.7% between the two headsets. That’s about half of last month’s difference of 3.82%. However it’s not as simple as it all seems.

We still don’t know if this month’s results include the Oculus Rift S in its findings. Venturebeat reached out to Valve to ask, but given the results group the Vive and Vive Pro differently it doesn’t seem likely. It even has separate listings for Rift’s DK1 and Dk2 headsets. Similarly, we don’t know if these results include the newly-launched Vive Pro Eye. And, of course, they clearly don’t include Valve’s new headset, the Index, which started arriving on people’s doors right at the end of June.

If Rift S isn’t included, then it’s not surprising to see Vive gain ground. Oculus stopped selling the original Rift months ago now in preparation for Rift S launch.

Rounding out this month’s results is Windows VR’s 11.13% share. That’s a modest jump over last month’s 10.99%.

Either way, we’re still looking forward to when these headsets are properly indexed (pun intended) on Steam. The survey is optional and not a definitive means of reporting on the VR market share, but it’s the best we’ve got as it stands.