Walled garden issue. Facebook essentially bought out a bunch of shit Epic Games style for exclusivity for their store. They also take a loss on the Quest devices and people buy them because they are cheaper. They fucked VR, it should have all been cross-compatible from the get go.
What walled-garden exclusives are even worth looking at? All the best shit is on Steam. Most of the stuff that is only on this device or that device I’ve seen are no better than mobile shovelware.
I really wish that people would pile on Sony for not having PSVR1 games be compatible with the second headset. I would consider buying their headset just for PCVR and the entire PSVR1 library plus the PSVR2 stuff. At that point if you also own a PS5 like I do, that opens up a lot of games and rivals what Meta is doing.
I think PSVR2 is dead in the water unless Sony invests a lot into it. Great PC headset but otherwise no. I really think Meta is doing an okay job with their library, so if you aren’t super worried about Meta having personal data on you, bite the bullet there. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with the stagnant SteamVR offerings which only have a worthwhile longer experience a couple times a year.
I think PSVR2 was dead in the water before it was even released. It was pretty clear that nobody was going to pay that price, then Sony would do exactly what they are doing now, no more development, no more marketing, basically just letting it die a slow death. Which is on par with what they did with PSVR1. This whole PC thing is a low effort last ditch effort.
I remember telling people on Reddit on release day, that this thing was going to be a disaster, and getting down voted to like -144. None of those doornails are here to see this, but man was I fucking right.
Now if they would have priced it at like $199 or $299 maybe, we’d be having a different conversation, and I’m sure there’d be way more games being developed.
Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.
So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable
I agree with you on the second paragraph for sure. That’s a code issue here. But I suspect that a decision maker holding a budget at a development company, is going to struggle to want to spend development dollars on a product that has saturated 1% or however many percent of the market (we all know it’s super low).
There’s really only three ways to increase saturation though, to incite development: 1 - Create a product that’s a must have, which this pretty clearly isn’t. 2 - Target a core part of the market and bombard them with marketing and special pricing, which they pretty clearly aren’t. Or the ol’ usual go to, 3 - Cut the price to a level where people will make spur of the moment purchasing decisions to buy the product. 3 being about the only way, yet Sony has done none of this.
I remember buying the PSVR back in 2016, and while driving home being like, “Jesus did I really just spend $600 CAD on this?” If this same headset was $199 or maybe max $299 CAD, this wouldn’t even be a conversation and my dumb ass would probably have a PSVR2 downstairs right now, as would many many other people. It would be the ideal Christmas present for many people and kids at that price, especially when some of us have cranky wives that ask us what we want for Christmas, and we always just say I dunno, don’t worry about it. You’d probably would have way more games being developed too, because the thing would probably sell a heck of a lot better. Which brings me to my main point, if they can’t deliver the mainstream headsets in this sort of price range, I kind of question the feasibility of VR as a whole. No one wants to effectively pay for the equivalent of another PlayStation for something that is mostly novelty and of questionable lifespan/usage.
Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.
In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.
The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.
Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.
You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.
Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.
Consoles have always been cancer for walled gardens and anti-consumerism, so it’s just expected unfortunately. Would be great for VR in general if all the hardware was platform agnostic. I’ll never personally recommend Meta hardware, due to the aforementioned practice, but they are the only ones still pumping money into it. Guess we will see what happens when Valve’s next headset is released.
I mean I think VR has a bright future but it won’t be until Meta can gain some serious traction with their headsets that we get some really good games on other platforms.
Now Meta would assume this is a win but they’re just going to generate temporary traction for themselves and then people will move elsewhere as Valve and Sony are better at both software and hardware. They’re letting Meta do the expensive part, the R&D, for them. Then all of these players plan to swoop in and steal their business. You’ll watch it happen in 6-10 years.
I think a big problem is (as of the last time I checked) the complete lack of anyone making practical things for VR. Not saying that everything needs to be practical to justify its existence but, I think that VR companies have been continually trying to skip ahead to the equivalent of where computing is now, ignoring the history of computers being primarily targeted to research and practical applications before they were adopted en masse and provided a lucrative market. So, instead, they just keep making glorified tech demos, hoping that someone else will do the hard work and they can rake in easy money by forcing them through app stores.
TL;DR: I think that short-sighted, profit-driven decision making is the reason that VR isn’t yet anything more than a niche.
The PSVR had like 4 or 5 actually well thought out games, and the rest were shovelware you played once or showed your buddies when they were over, and that was that. So yeah, that was a lot of money for not a lot of entertainment.
I think I struggled to get to 20 hours, and now the things just a dust catcher in the living room, forever in the way. I couldn’t play it for more than 10 minutes without feeling like I was going to hurl, with the exception of 3 games (Resident Evil 7, which was awesome, Blood and Truth, which was also awesome, and that headbanging ball at the wall game the thing launched with, which was weirdly addicting and awesome). Even with those games, I could do an hour max, and it still made me queasy. That whole screen door thing was what did it, plus the blurry graphics and the lack of fresh air inside it. I’m sure the newer VR headsets are a lot better, but every time I walk by the dust catcher in the living room, I’m reminded to be wiser with my money.
this parasitic behavior is what turned me into FLOSS evangelist, can’t trust companies with control of platforms!!! once they get market share, they will start fucking all of us. there other benefits too ;)
Catch 22. There’s not much software because there’s not many users with VR, but there are fewer people in VR than there could be because a lot of potential users don’t see any software they wanna use so they don’t buy a VR setup.
VR has content issue
Walled garden issue. Facebook essentially bought out a bunch of shit Epic Games style for exclusivity for their store. They also take a loss on the Quest devices and people buy them because they are cheaper. They fucked VR, it should have all been cross-compatible from the get go.
What walled-garden exclusives are even worth looking at? All the best shit is on Steam. Most of the stuff that is only on this device or that device I’ve seen are no better than mobile shovelware.
I really wish that people would pile on Sony for not having PSVR1 games be compatible with the second headset. I would consider buying their headset just for PCVR and the entire PSVR1 library plus the PSVR2 stuff. At that point if you also own a PS5 like I do, that opens up a lot of games and rivals what Meta is doing.
I think PSVR2 is dead in the water unless Sony invests a lot into it. Great PC headset but otherwise no. I really think Meta is doing an okay job with their library, so if you aren’t super worried about Meta having personal data on you, bite the bullet there. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with the stagnant SteamVR offerings which only have a worthwhile longer experience a couple times a year.
I think PSVR2 was dead in the water before it was even released. It was pretty clear that nobody was going to pay that price, then Sony would do exactly what they are doing now, no more development, no more marketing, basically just letting it die a slow death. Which is on par with what they did with PSVR1. This whole PC thing is a low effort last ditch effort.
I remember telling people on Reddit on release day, that this thing was going to be a disaster, and getting down voted to like -144. None of those doornails are here to see this, but man was I fucking right.
Now if they would have priced it at like $199 or $299 maybe, we’d be having a different conversation, and I’m sure there’d be way more games being developed.
Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.
So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable
I agree with you on the second paragraph for sure. That’s a code issue here. But I suspect that a decision maker holding a budget at a development company, is going to struggle to want to spend development dollars on a product that has saturated 1% or however many percent of the market (we all know it’s super low).
There’s really only three ways to increase saturation though, to incite development: 1 - Create a product that’s a must have, which this pretty clearly isn’t. 2 - Target a core part of the market and bombard them with marketing and special pricing, which they pretty clearly aren’t. Or the ol’ usual go to, 3 - Cut the price to a level where people will make spur of the moment purchasing decisions to buy the product. 3 being about the only way, yet Sony has done none of this.
I remember buying the PSVR back in 2016, and while driving home being like, “Jesus did I really just spend $600 CAD on this?” If this same headset was $199 or maybe max $299 CAD, this wouldn’t even be a conversation and my dumb ass would probably have a PSVR2 downstairs right now, as would many many other people. It would be the ideal Christmas present for many people and kids at that price, especially when some of us have cranky wives that ask us what we want for Christmas, and we always just say I dunno, don’t worry about it. You’d probably would have way more games being developed too, because the thing would probably sell a heck of a lot better. Which brings me to my main point, if they can’t deliver the mainstream headsets in this sort of price range, I kind of question the feasibility of VR as a whole. No one wants to effectively pay for the equivalent of another PlayStation for something that is mostly novelty and of questionable lifespan/usage.
Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.
In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.
The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.
Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.
You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.
Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.
Consoles have always been cancer for walled gardens and anti-consumerism, so it’s just expected unfortunately. Would be great for VR in general if all the hardware was platform agnostic. I’ll never personally recommend Meta hardware, due to the aforementioned practice, but they are the only ones still pumping money into it. Guess we will see what happens when Valve’s next headset is released.
I mean I think VR has a bright future but it won’t be until Meta can gain some serious traction with their headsets that we get some really good games on other platforms.
Now Meta would assume this is a win but they’re just going to generate temporary traction for themselves and then people will move elsewhere as Valve and Sony are better at both software and hardware. They’re letting Meta do the expensive part, the R&D, for them. Then all of these players plan to swoop in and steal their business. You’ll watch it happen in 6-10 years.
Of course. It’s still mostly a niche market and the majority of headsets are very expensive.
Yeah some why would anybody buy headsets?
My 2016 pucharse prolly got 30 hours of iae total. Still no content to use it for really
I think a big problem is (as of the last time I checked) the complete lack of anyone making practical things for VR. Not saying that everything needs to be practical to justify its existence but, I think that VR companies have been continually trying to skip ahead to the equivalent of where computing is now, ignoring the history of computers being primarily targeted to research and practical applications before they were adopted en masse and provided a lucrative market. So, instead, they just keep making glorified tech demos, hoping that someone else will do the hard work and they can rake in easy money by forcing them through app stores.
TL;DR: I think that short-sighted, profit-driven decision making is the reason that VR isn’t yet anything more than a niche.
they want to grow user base with tech demos 🤡
that’s how it felt to me. they were hoping for another smartphone but smartphone has key everyday usage lol
The PSVR had like 4 or 5 actually well thought out games, and the rest were shovelware you played once or showed your buddies when they were over, and that was that. So yeah, that was a lot of money for not a lot of entertainment.
Eh, I think that’s more of a “you” problem. There’s definitely enough games and apps for more than 30 hours out there.
I think I struggled to get to 20 hours, and now the things just a dust catcher in the living room, forever in the way. I couldn’t play it for more than 10 minutes without feeling like I was going to hurl, with the exception of 3 games (Resident Evil 7, which was awesome, Blood and Truth, which was also awesome, and that headbanging ball at the wall game the thing launched with, which was weirdly addicting and awesome). Even with those games, I could do an hour max, and it still made me queasy. That whole screen door thing was what did it, plus the blurry graphics and the lack of fresh air inside it. I’m sure the newer VR headsets are a lot better, but every time I walk by the dust catcher in the living room, I’m reminded to be wiser with my money.
does not help that headset manufacturers are trying to create walled gardens for their ecosystems
this parasitic behavior is what turned me into FLOSS evangelist, can’t trust companies with control of platforms!!! once they get market share, they will start fucking all of us. there other benefits too ;)
STOP FEEDING THEM!!!
This is the ladder that big tech hit every rung on, on the way down.
Video games in general were able to develop within walled gardens.
It feels like the problem with consumer grade VR has less to do with being in a walled garden and more to do with not being a compelling product.
Catch 22. There’s not much software because there’s not many users with VR, but there are fewer people in VR than there could be because a lot of potential users don’t see any software they wanna use so they don’t buy a VR setup.