 It all began with a topic on the WAND show. There was an article on VentureBeat titled, VR adoption amongst Steam users has crashed to a halt. Linus was all like, whaaaaat? And I wasn't actually surprised. And I explained my theory as to why it was happening. But that doesn't mean I was happy about it. I speculated that it was due to the marketing issues behind explaining the experience to people that were unable to try it for themselves. The total cost of ownership being very high. And finally, that the inferior experience of the Gear VR, which Samsung is marketing like crazy, has the potential to leave people unsatisfied with the Gear VR and therefore uninterested in other VR experiences. In the car, a couple days later, I heard a radio ad for the Samsung Gear VR. This triggered some trains of thought through my brain. First of which was concern for people that had the Type-C connector with their Galaxy Note 7s. And then, going a little bit deeper, I began to question my original rant on the WAND show. Who or what actually killed VR? Who am I supposed to be mad at? Is it marketing? Is it cost? Is it Samsung? Or is it Oculus? Let's dig deeper. FreshBooks is the super simple invoicing solution that lets you get organized, save time, and get paid faster. Click now to try it for free. In order to answer this question, we need to establish some data points. The main one of which being cost of entry. Starting from nothing, a Gear VR ranges from about $470 US dollars for a Galaxy S6 and a 2015 version of the Gear VR to about $1000 US dollars for a shiny new Note 7 and a 2016 version of the Gear VR. Now, one thing that hurts the install base for Gear VR is that it is very unlikely that someone would buy a phone solely for the purpose of playing with their Gear VR. But in that same vein, especially with Apple's so-called courageous abandonment of the headphone jack, this also helps them. As it is very likely that your next phone would be an S6, an S6 Edge, an S6 Edge Plus, a Note 5, a Galaxy S7, an S7 Edge, or a Note 7. All of which are compatible with the new Gear VR 2016. Computers are similar in this way, but scaled up a bit. If you don't have a gaming PC yet, you're probably looking at about $1600 US dollars for a rig that meets the recommended spec and an Oculus Rift included. Slightly over three times the from-nothing cost of a Gear VR. And the top end? Well, if you've ever watched any of our videos, I'm sure you know by now, when it comes to computers, the sky isn't the limit for cost. It's more like galaxies far, far away. On top of that, benchmarking VR is in its infancy. So choosing a VR computer is not only prohibitively expensive, but probably also rather confusing for most people. Now, of course, there are those of us with computers fast enough to support VR already. But unfortunately, that number, whatever it is, is assuredly much, much lower than the number of people that will already have a Samsung phone and even a high-end one thanks to carrier subsidies. And even if the starting install bases were equal, that still leaves desktop VR at $600 to $800 minimum for a headset versus $70 to $100 for a Gear VR. Now that we've established that, I need a couple people that aren't me or anyone else at Linus Media Group. I needed people with no experience with desktop VR beyond the Oculus Development Kit 1, but who can appreciate technology. My plan was to have them try a Gear VR paired with an S7 Edge with Darknet, Temple Run, and Eve Gunjack, give their impressions to the camera, and then try an HTC Vive with Holopoint, Audio Shield, Raw Data, and Google Tilt Brush. Now, there are a couple problems with this test. I could have changed the order that they tried the headsets in instead of having them go on a rising curve from the Gear VR up to the HTC Vive. I could have had them go on a falling curve from the Vive down to the Gear VR. It's also heavily app-dependent. I didn't show them the Oculus Rift. I didn't show them any seated experience, and the game experiences aren't really apples to apples, as in, I should have had them demoed Eve Valkyrie, considering they tried Gunjack. But worst of all, my sample size. It's small, and I should feel bad. If this was a proper study, it would have probably been a couple hundred people at least. But this wasn't a proper study, and I think we got our answer anyways. It's surprisingly simple. Money. It's just too damn expensive. When all is said and done, all the experience improvements and health benefits mean nothing if people just plain can't afford it. After everything, when I asked them which one they would choose between the two, they both chose to my utter dismay, prefer the Gear. I have to give it to the Gear VR. Neither of my subjects had VR-ready PCs. Also, unsurprisingly, they both had Samsung phones compatible with the Gear VR. $1,600 plus US dollars is a hard pill to swallow when you can just pass over a hundred bucks and get part of the way there, even if I would argue that it's not close at all in terms of quality of experience. It's also not that close in terms of cost, and you're able to shed the cable, allowing you to take it with you on trips and stuff as well. Though, to be fair, I did hear from one of my test subjects that days later, he was still thinking about Tilt Brush. He even went as far as to say that it left a fundamentally different psychological imprint, but that didn't make him want to buy it. That made him want to try it again. I still think the lack of exposure for desktop VR and the overexposure of mobile VR are relatively large issues. I still think the fact that the industry is generally calling them the same damn thing doesn't help matters either. But if my flawed study is to be believed, cost really is the root here. Desktop VR isn't dead, it just had a bit of a false start. Here's hoping they can turn things around soon. TunnelBear is the super simple VPN application that makes it really easy to enjoy a more private and open internet. With TunnelBear turned on, your private information is kept yours away from your internet provider, advertisers, hackers, and just anyone looking to track and profit off of your data. TunnelBear has a top rated privacy policy and does not log your activity. You can try for free with 500 megabytes and no credit card required. And if you do choose to get a year of unlimited data, you can save up to 10% by going to tunnelbear.com slash LTT. Thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, I completely understand. I don't like saying negative things about desktop VR either. So hit the like button. Also, if you liked it, hit the like button too, because why not? That'll it's I think I'm cheating here a little bit, but that's fine. Get subscribed either way. If you want to buy something cool, check out Amazon. We talked about a number of things in this video. Also in the description down below, we have shirts. I don't think you can buy this one anymore. Get wrecked. But you can buy other ones, which would also be cool. You can talk about what I said in this video on the community forum. It's a fantastic site. Check that out. Also, watch this video, which is like my review of the Oculus Rift. And in there, I talk about some comparisons between the Vive and yada yada yada yada. Anyways, see you next time.