This “Pimax Prime” is a bad idea for various reasons:
a) I don’t want online checks / phone home. (I have firewalled my Pimax Play for a reason)
b) It introduced an unnecessary point of failure (server down for a week or is taken offline completely at some point => headset can only be used as paperweight?)
c) It reduces the value of the device in case a refund becomes necessary
d) It makes resales unnecessarily complicated
e) It might make imports unnecessarily complicated (the hardware doesn’t really cost $999, customs will understand that point more sooner than later)
f) It should be obvious that the software needed to run the headset is part of the package. This is no extra “value added” service, this is a fundamental necessity to use the device. Totally unfitting to handle this as a subscription for a driver.
Please reconsider this! I won’t buy anything new from Pimax as long this isn’t reverted.
Just make a normal buy option and if you want a payment by installments option. No software online enforcement, no account binding, no servers. Just a piece of hardware and a driver.
I didn‘t look at that part of the Pimax video, but now see your comment and heard it in a video from MRTV - I guess they wanted to be creative, also with customs, but no, I definitely don‘t want to be stuck to some kind of weird subscription. The mere thought that it could brick my headset, make it complicated to sell it, etc. let‘s me give this a hard pass. It sort of reminds me of the Varjo stuff, which also made me loose interest in an instant (and that it was insanely priced didn‘t help the cause either). It also creates uncertainty around what will happen after the two years, if Pimax suddenly change the terms after all and you are soft-forced into extending a (lower fee) subscription to get access to updates, etc., etc…
It just feels like a can of worms being opened here.
But I will wait for a chance to go hands-on before making any purchasing decision anyhow, so I hope that by the time the headset is out in the wild Pimax have reconsidered this approach and at least offer the option to just buy the headset without any dubious subscription.
I will not get it on a subscription basis, there are too many potential issues connected to this approach for my liking, no matter what they tell us today.
But with new headsets you have to register and have to install this online-client. Even for BugFixes of my 8KX, the newest client seems to be required to run Steam properly. A registration I hate as a must.
I understand that they need an account for the app store. But imho it would be better anyways to decouple the driver interface for the headset from the store. Or at least make logging in to the store optional. The driver interface should be 100% local without any necessity to contact any servers. Even checking for new firmware or driver versions would be better explicitly triggered, not auto-enforced. It happened often enough that I had a perfectly running setup that was then demolished by a failing firmware update. So people could update when they see problems or when they want a new feature, but could stay at a stable system once they achieved that state.
Even having a remote locking mechanism inside the software feels uncomfortable. Holding the device hostage are ransomware self-justice methods - whether the claim is justified or not.
This has gone a long way from even considering to open source the Pimax client to - this. I really hope they get back to the initial, much more appeasing and trustworthy approach!
The Subscription wording is misleading. It is only for headsets bought using the deposit + 24 monthly payments. Once the 24 payments is complete no further payments required.
It might have been rolled out liked this for cheaper import fees.
The account once made. You can load pimax play in offline mode.
One benefit to having an account if set up good. Is option to upload bug report log files.
Is already known what will happen when the system cannot reach the server to verify that the headset is fully paid? If the system locks out headsets as soon as it cannot verify this, would it also affect fully paid headsets - even those that we already have since years?
This all sounds like a recipe for undesired sideeffects and reputation loss - absolutely unforced and with little gain.
If somebody wants to provide a callback possibility when sending in crash logs they can optionally provide an email address. If not then not, like most software does it.
What ever the intention is, be it just a different way to offer payment in installments and circumvent custom duties, the potential collateral damages are far outweighing any benefit the customer may experience.
If Pimax servers are offline, the headset won‘t work. If my internet access is down for some reason, my headset won‘t work. And that‘s just the best case thinking, it can turn out to be much, much worse with many additional issues arising for me as a customer.
If I am asked to pay 1,700$ I surely won‘t accept any such restrictions, burdens, risks associated with the purchase.
So I did pay the 1$ when they announced the Super to reserve my spot in the line. Had they told us at the time that they would come up with this sh!t, I wouldn’t have bothered.
When you turn the news on a see a trade war coming any Chinese goods are going to shoot up 20% in theory. Won’t made any difference here in Europe I suppose. But if it works in the US then Europe will follow suit at some point.
Didn’t Meta go a similar thing years ago with DRM and there was a big hoo haa about it? Or am I getting mixed up with Facebook logins?
I could never imagine owning a TV that wouldn’t work if you didn’t sign in to the manufacturer. It’s a bit under the thumb isn’t it.
Agreed. Hardware is owned (or in case of partial payment partially owned) by the customer. So depending on legislation adding and then deliberately or accidentally triggering a remote kill switch can be illegal (in the worst case considered as cybercrime).
But legal points aside, it just feels wrong and not something I want in products I buy and rely on.
No concern if you’re offline. As this will be when the program is online checking for an update that the serial number check verify if on payment plan.
We saw pimax in the past experiment with this idea.
Which cell providers have used for years and can have a device blacklisted from being connected to any carrier.
Many lease to own computers also use hardware locking. Though iirc this is usually done either via software or a special bios option. That each month you get a code to keep the PC unlocked. At least this was how MDG Computers lease to own.
Leasing is different from financing.
Assume you finance a car, have payed 49900 € and miss to pay the last 100€ in time. I am pretty convinced that the car company has no legal right to remote disable that car. They can sue for the last 100€ in the worst case but taking the car hostage is most certainly illegal.
That said, I’m not a lawyer.
But Pimax has of course the choice under which circumstances they want to offer their products, within legal boundaries. And customers can choose whether to buy under these conditions or not.
My bet would bei that a trustworthy, kill switch free, optimally even open driver would be the better bet for Pimax.
But time will tell.
Well MDG Computers l, Cell Providers can indeed restrict)prevent use.
When you typically finance a car that is not leased through a car lot. Then it is typically the financial institution; to which I have seen with a bank eventually stating they would not take ownership of the car at this point if a payment was missed as the collateral. This likely depends on where you are. GM uses low jacking to repossess cars if you miss too many payments(OnStar). A friend had to goto the dealership to collect his tools when they repossessed his truck.
Varjo if you don’t buy outright for considerably one time payment. The headset becomes unusable as I recall.
This software locking is not new. And in this case once the one time pay in full is complete or final payment made. The headset is free and clear. So not really an issue unless one is planning to be dishonest and not finish paying off the product.
The only real debacle here is in regards to whether this ok with import/vat? Considering Steam was forced to not allow say me to buy a game and gift it to someone in another region due to Vat not being paid in that region.
Of course in all cases pimax needs to research the legalities of each area. Some even have different sub regions within a country that may have different rules.
This is where I disagree quite a bit, actually. But if this is the view Pimax adopt, fine, but then they will lose me as a customer because this is a red flag for me. I would be opting to pay the entire amount upfront anyhow, so no trust issue for Pimax in this deal.
So if they insist on grabbing & holding on to my balls just in case anyhow although I have paid the full price before they even ship the device to me, then it turns into a big trust issue - for me in this case. And my trust in Pimax is - how do I put this - fragile. Not that I would think that they are trying to scam people, not at all, but their management decision making seems quite random at times and hard to predict. It’s hard enough to tell myself to put 1,700 on the line for a device Pimax built, with all the kinks and issues they had (and QA being of lesser standards than of most other players in the market), but to add this kind of pandora’s/black box hoping it won’t blow up in my face - nope, that is not going to happen, not with 1,700 at stake.
Good point. So, after the clarifications from Pimax side it might make sense to reiterate:
Online checks are apparently still planned. According to Pimax they are not enforced though, so one can run Pimax Play completely offline. We will see how this plays out. A non-intrusive variant of implementing this is imaginable. (But on the other side, a firmware upgrade process that doesn’t have a 50% chance to fail should also be possible. And still, every update is a nail-biter. Making things as easy and stable as possible to ensure that users have a good experience and high “uptime” with their headsets makes imho more sense than artificially adding further pitfalls that require not making any kind of mistake.
They meant that if a refund should really become necessary then Pimax Prime would also be refunded. So this is good now.
Still a point. One has to ensure/trust that a 2nd hand headset is really fully payed off. Otherwise one is potentially in for an unpleasant surprise.
Still a critical point. The best way around this: Sell the headset for what the headset is worth. With a driver to use it and adequate support, as usual. If Pimax can come up with further services that people might want to buy and subscribe to: Offer these separately, then people have the choice. And there would be no raised eyebrows on custom’s side.
Apparently it is a “subscription” that is not really a subscription. Don’t confuse people, just call it payment by installments if that’s what it is. Having to make clarification videos on how a text on the Pimax webpage is supposed to be interpreted shouldn’t be necessary, please spend some time up front, it should be possible to describe everything in a way so that questions don’t even arise.
Imho the (now clarified) approach isn’t a total no-go in my book anymore. But it is still a relevant uncertainty, uneasy doubtful feeling that I will take into consideration when choosing my next headset. Imho this all is just unnecessary, making the Pimax headsets artificially less attractive with little gain for anybody.
But if you bought it outright, they wouldn’t have hands on your “balls” as you’re not on a monthly purchase plan. This is a fairly common practice with computers on a payment plan. On final payment the device’s lock is removed.
Even pimax has had this in the software back in pitool. So this part of the software has just been dormant all this time.
If you paid in full. Then the only online checks is as it currently is. On launch and/or frequency the software does a check to see if a new release is out. So your current firewall blocking is not in jeopardy.
The online checks have been there since early pitool. As you said which hasn’t changed. These online checks are not forced. How else is the software going to inform you there is an update? As ppl have said in the past not everyone follows online.
I would just relax and see how things go and then decide after all details known how this changes or doesn’t change things. Currently I only see a marketing strategy that will allow more ppl to afford a very expensive computer peripheral/toy that otherwise most ppl could not reasonably afford otherwise.
I understood them differently - even if I would pay the entire amount upfront, they still would have the subscription mechanism in place checking the Pimax server database, just that in theory it should be cleared every time. but the issue if something going wrong and me not being able to use the headset would remain, plus the precedent of having to pay for software & support will be looming over Pimax from this day on.
But it is fine to have different opinions, for me it just happens to be a red flag. They will have considered the pro‘s & con‘s, so I am sure they consciously made the decision to lose the interest of some potential customers by doing so. Perhaps they believe it will attract more new ones than they lose existing prospects, which is fine. It‘s a commercial decision. I am just not as bullish as others may be if the gains outweigh the losses, but time will tell.
Well it has been doing checks for years now. It will likely be like before. The serial# is checked against the serial list of headsets in a payment plan. As this far the online connection is primarily needed for registration. After that block it in your firewall and download updates manually. I really doubt they have gone the way of Varjo where Online connection is required for it’s online check.
The software unless blocked we know does server checks like Steam, Windows etc… We do know that Windows and Steam can be invalidated/content removed.
As we have often discussed simply wait instead of wanting to be first in line and see how things go.
Biggest risk for pimax is not making a 2 year warranty standard. If a person is in the 24 monthly payments and the headset dies after say 14 months; how many will stop making payments in the remainder 10 months?
Well, Pimax‘ subscription approach gave me the push to allocate the funds to something else, actually another Kickstarter project: a projector, the Valerion Visionmaster Max. Hope this plays out, but it should as going Kickstarter is more of a marketing stunt for the new long-throw projector brand of AWOL.
I had that budget earmarked for the Super but as that still has a share of uncertainties surrounding it (how good will it be, will the 135 FoV version really deliver, do I have the same convergence issue as with past Pimax products, and last but not least will it become available w/o subscription), I thought the projector seems to be really good & an upgrade I‘ll use for hopefully 5-10 years, so I chose the more certain over the uncertain. And at the risk of repeating myself, the Quest 3 is quite a neat package, and the mere thought of being tethered again makes me groan; w/o the wider FoV the mere bump in resolution might not be enough to give up this freedom again.
So I won‘t be spending another 2 grand the coming months, which also allows me to wait for reviews from a number of users once the Super is released. Perhaps Black Friday next year? We would also know more about Meta‘s plans regarding the Quest 4 by then…