Huh? Oculus is the best selling VR headset available, it sold way more than the Index.
> The only advantage Oculus has had is affordability
...yes, this is how consumer sales works. People buy what is affordable.
> Carmack goes on to say that Bosworth greenlit the release of the Oculus Go root build (an unlocked OS allowing full access (opens in new tab)) that he had long pushed-for, but "after seeing how much internal effort was involved to make it happen, I almost felt bad about it," said Carmack. "The constraints are just different in a company the size of Meta."
The "constraints" are their business model: underprice the hardware and overprice the software. It's not a new model, this is what consoles have done since Carmack made Doom!
Release date of Valve Index: 2019-06-28
Release date of first Oculus¹: 2016-03-28
There were about three years of tech adoption by consumers between these releases, Oculus was, before their first commercial HMD release, was acquired by Facebook for US$2 Billion, FB which could also use its near monopoly in social networks to place ads and thus influence billions of people to buy the product(s) of one of its subsidiaries.
In contrast:
> It sold an estimated 149,000 sets in 2019, 103,000 of which were in the fourth quarter due to the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, which buyers received for free. The sudden demand caused the unit to be sold out in all 31 countries except Japan in January 2020. As of December 2019, 6.67% of the VR units connected to Steam are Valve Index sets. While Valve had anticipated supply for many of those that had ordered the Index in time for the March 2020 release of Half-Life: Alyx, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted production of the Index which left Valve with a reduced number of units available on the release date.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Index#Release (emphasis mine)
¹: since you didn't specify which of the range of Oculus HMDs you're referring to