PlayStation CEO Says VR Won't Be a 'Meaningful' Part of Gaming For Years (theverge.com) 112
Sony PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says virtual reality won't be a meaningful part of interactive entertainment in the near future. The Verge reports: Ryan indicated to The Washington Post that VR still has a long way to go, although he emphasized that Sony isn't giving up on the medium. The statement suggests that an update to Sony's PlayStation VR headset is years away.
"I think we're more than a few minutes from the future of VR," Ryan told the Post. "PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that." He notes that the upcoming PlayStation 5, which will be released November 12th, supports the old PlayStation VR headset with a special adapter.
"I think we're more than a few minutes from the future of VR," Ryan told the Post. "PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that." He notes that the upcoming PlayStation 5, which will be released November 12th, supports the old PlayStation VR headset with a special adapter.
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Re:Not VR, but AR (Score:4, Insightful)
VR is too specialized and cuts people off from the world around them...
So does social media, and that stopped no one.
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You should check out the youtube video montages of smartphone zombies walking down the sidewalk and bonking themselves into No Parking signs! It's hilarious how "tuned out" people can be without putting on a headset.
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Still not so blocked (Score:2)
Re: Not VR, but AR (Score:4, Funny)
VR is too specialized and cuts people off from the world around them...
So does social media, and that stopped no one.
I wouldn't call something that got me in and many other people laid "cutting from the world".
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First reply:
YouPorn does not count as getting laid.
Alternative reply:
Tinder does not count as social media.
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...Tinder does not count as social media.
Your response was hilarious, but I'm not so sure I agree with this.
When it cums to bringing humans together, Tinder went balls deep and fucking put the "social", in social media.
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VR sex does not count as getting laid my friend.
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VR just doesn't have enough interesting applications yet. Once it becomes like a holodeck it might but at the moment it's basically just a free-look camera in a traditional game. It's also a disadvantage in some games, e.g. in racing games it tends to be less ideal than the artificial views and driving aids normal 2D players get.
Having said that even if it was like a holodeck I'd probably prefer to drive a racing sim sometimes. Driving like that is physically demanding and sometimes I just want to relax.
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Motion controllers are considered essential part of VR, so it's just not free-look camera.
For sims you would use regular sim controllers, so a driving wheel. Agreed that using motion controllers for driving a car to me sounds would be applicable only for arcade car games where you don't want to require any patricular hardware; but then again VTOL apparently makes good use of them even if there's a learning curve.
Consider for example Pavlov or Contractors VR. Or even the most famous game, Beat Saber.. Just f
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For a lot of games the motion controls aren't that big of a deal. For example in Half Life you might as well just use a gamepad/mouse for all the motion controls actually do. Often in FPS games they give you a reticule or laser sight to put you on a par with gamepad/mouse users too, not least because in most of these games you need to have super-human aiming ability to win. Like an action movie, not real life where data from the NYPD shows they have about an 18% hit ratio in a firefight.
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To me implying mouse and keyboard are comparative to the experience to motion controllers just says to me that you don't have experience with them. To throw a grenade in Pavlov you grab it from your vest, take the pin out (two hands), then throw it (with either hand); emulating this with keyboard or mouse is like a completely different experience. Shooting with a scope in Pavlov is really limited by how steady you can hold your hand (though stock or virtual stock can help).
Is digital joystick an alternative
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That's what I'm getting at though. Games are escapism, we enjoy being the action hero, not limited by our own physical limitations.
It is great for some types of game but not for others. I don't think there are enough types of game where it really shines for it to be a really big part of gaming for some time yet.
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I used to be an Arma 3 player for example, I like my realism mods that make things more complex. But from having been involved with an Arma 3 server and catering to what the players mostly want from their gaming experience, I know that excessive realism is pretty low on the list.
Most players of that already very specific milsim niche don't even like 1st person. Instead they prefer 3rd person with
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Well, that's a completely another issue, but it aligns exactly with why Sony is saying VR is not meaningful for gamingâ"now. It's not big enough. Few companies in VR make significant bucks. I bet though Beat Saber is doing just fine and needs no donations.
But every year the VR market seems to be growing. Every year the cost of hardware is decreasing. Few players who have switched to VR will want to switch back. Quest2 would be an amazing product if not for that one thing..
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Like an action movie, not real life where data from the NYPD shows they have about an 18% hit ratio in a firefight.
Those numbers are probably brought down by cops who have no business pointing guns at anything because their range scores are so low. Cheating on qualifying marksmanship tests is rampant in police forces.
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Not just range scores - far too many cops try to Starsky and Hutch it - standing, or worse advancing out in the open while firing, so fear and movement are screwing up their aim. Maybe they think all their fancy military gear turns them into some sort of action hero who doesn't have to worry about who the other 82% of their shots might hit.
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Even with practice, hit ratios are not going to be really high. Typically people practice against a static target, but in a real life shooting the target is moving to and fro, changing distances, etc. You also have an incredible adrenaline dump at that time (as does your attacker).
That's why it makes no sense when people say "why did they shoot TWELVE TIMES!?!?!" or some such. Yes, they're trained professionals, but that doesn't mean they fire a single precise shot and then strut off. Sometimes they miss
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As a certified firearms instructor, I will add my two cents to your comment. Far too many cops are completely incompetent when it comes to firearms. They can't hit shit because they never practice and they completely ignore the four rules of firearm safety. I'd rather be next to Joe-redneck than most cops at the range. Joe-redneck grew up with guns, is at the range almost every week, and is an excellent shot. Safety was literally knocked into his head when he first learned to shoot (at 6 years old).
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And full-view AR (or large view with blinders) with opacity support can do VR as a free bonus. I suspect the mainstream version of the two technologies will merge sooner rather than later. Of course, AR potentially comes in a lot of less comprehensive forms as well, which may offer substantial advantages in some situations.
I think for VR meeting rooms to really catch on, we really need to somehow integrate a live image of people's faces - or at least facial expressions. Those are a massive component of h
Re:Not VR, but AR (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people bring this up. But I don't even understand the argument. Is it really an argument against VR? How about people who want to enter the game world, instead of staying in their living rooms? Isn't that really a benefit for immersion, which I believe is in general considered to be a good thing?
Agreed though that see-through solutions and hand tracking, such as the ones provided by Rift S and Valve Index (I think, not sure if they do hand tracking), can be useful if your VR space has obstacles or you want to locate your straw, but it's hardly essential.
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What they really mean is when you are fully immersed in VR you can't see when other people walk in on you while you are "watching movies". With AR you can still see the room around you and put your pants back on if you see the door starting to open.
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I actually have the Valve Index controllers so I know that, but I meant _hand tracking_, so without controllers. I know Pimax can do it with an external module, but I don't have it, and I'm not sure if it's even useful :).
But I don't consider pure hand tracking to be any kind of final solution, given its complete lack of haptics.
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> VR is too specialized and cuts people off from the world around them
Have you looked outside in the last year or two? I'm struggling to see how that proposition could be seen as a bad thing.
On a less humorous note: people have complained about books being too isolational; or computer games or LAN games being isolational.
We also loved games when the graphics were VGA, EGA, CGA.
We also have plenty of popular media about other worlds, be they alien, parallel or virtual.
I take your point, I truly do. Howeve
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I take aboard your new explanation, not a problem.
However, I think the "also loved games when the graphics" point also addresses that new explanation.
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VR is too specialized and cuts people off from the world around them, so it won't be viable until it is good enough to be completely immersive.
Playstaion is a gaming platform, there is little to no need to interact with the world around you when you're playing a game in VR other than to not bump into stuff. There are a few VR games out now that are doing OK, not to mention VRChat and Neos VR which is still in development and, although not yet optimized, already offers an incredible VR experience. Facebook's Oculus Quest is cheep, although limited, and will get a lot of people into the VR world that don't care that they need to link it to their F
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"Steam's Rift"? What?
The last time I checked, the Oculus Rift was made by Facebook.
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You probably meant "Valve Index", I guess?
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You probably meant "Valve Index", I guess?
Yeah, I was one sip into my first cup of coffee and fighting a cat for keyboard access...
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VR is too specialized and cuts people off from the world around them
You say this as a negative rather than an end goal games typically strive for. Complete emersion in another world is fantastic. Sure you're not going to sit on your couch and play with with 4 friends splitscreen like you would Mario Kart, but compare that to actually getting engrossed in a decent single player game. When I'm enjoying the game the world around me can GTFO and leave me alone.
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Injure you? VR has handled that quite well. The vast majority of VR games do not require you to leave the spot. Hell the vast majority of them consider all sorts of tricks to handle your movement in ways to minimize so much as a cable tangle. To say nothing of the many that can be played sitting down with a controller (3D immersive sound and vision is 90% of experience, the ability to use your hands and move around is just icing on the cake).
I live in a small European apartment. If I can find the space to p
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If I wanted a social experience, I wouldn't be playing video games. I play video games to be by myself, get away from everything else, and immerse myself in a world that's totally different from my daily life. VR is perfect for that and AR is useless. Extroverts have this idea that everything in the world needs to be social, and cutting yourself off from the world around you is a bad thing. For a lot of gamers, cutting yourself off for a little while is the whole point.
For gaming, it's VR (Score:2)
Yeah but we're talking about games. VR is perfect for that because you want to be immersed in the virtual world, and for anyone that's used it in multiplayer it is much more social than normal multiplayer with occasional voice chat and no body language. VR headsets are also cheaper to produce than AR headsets making it more affordable as an accessory.
AR will no doubt find its uses but for gaming VR is the right tool for the job.
Re: Not VR, but AR (Score:1)
Quest 2 sales exceed expectations (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Quest 2 sales exceed expectations (Score:4, Informative)
The Quest 2 [oculus.com] is the newest VR headset from Occulus. Both the Quest 1 and Quest 2 are completely stand-alone and require no external equipment, so you can play them anywhere. No need for a gaming PC, no cables to plug in, and no external cameras to set up. That means you can bring it to a friend's house, or go downstairs with it after your kids go to bed, whatever works best at the time you want to play.
With the Quest 2 they've brought the price down to $299 USD, which means it's cheaper than buying a latest gen console. At work we figure this means it's targeting the casual gaming segment. It's also in continuous development, with the release of hand tracking this year (so no need to use controllers), Link (so you can play your PC VR games with a cable the same as other more expensive VR headsets), wireless streaming of games (not released yet, but supported by the official VR Desktop app), etc. With game prices averaging $5 - $20 USD, it's competitive with both PC and console game prices, and does offer experiences you can't get from those platforms alone.
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I was sorely tempted by the original, though from what I've heard it sounds like the 2 is enough of a jumble of improvements and regressions to not really be a clear upgrade.
I just wish it was being made by anyone but Facebook. I don't need one of the most abusive surveillance companies in the world psychoanalyzing my every gaze and movement in VR, to say nothing of voluntarily installing a real-world surveillance device in my home under their complete control.
Quest 2 *require* facebook (Score:2)
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In the standlone world Facebook has no competitor. In the tethered VR world I wouldn't even consider Oculus even if it weren't for the Facebook integration as of late. They are very much solely focused on creating a cheap toy that is mobile and have given up on high end and quality.
Don't get me wrong I love my Rift S, and it was absolutely a great headset at the time. I just wouldn't recommend one to anyone else right now over an Index or a Reverb G2. Facebook is targeting experiences that deviate further a
We need VR's equivalent of an iPad (Score:2)
VR is an expensive toy right now. There are a few enjoyable enough games, but $299 is a bit much to pay for Beatsaber and a few others, and there's no app that we can be certain has the longevity to justify the
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The Tablet was a proposed form factor for decades. Didn't really catch on until the iPad. A combination of Apple's marketing, a low enough price point and enough possible uses to justify the price. If nothing else, it was good enough to watch Netflix and handle email and web browsing for some years.
VR is an expensive toy right now. There are a few enjoyable enough games, but $299 is a bit much to pay for Beatsaber and a few others, and there's no app that we can be certain has the longevity to justify the price.
I guess the only legitimate use of VR is gaming? No way Sony should consider it for anything else especially during a global pandemic like oh I dunno...education? Amazing how it takes nothing more than social media addiction to justify a $1000 smartphone, but a third of that cost is too much to justify Virtual Reality? Tends to explain exactly why computers have been reduced to the nothingburger of a tablet over the last decade; doesn't take much computing power to satisfy the average text messaging bing
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VR for education has some health issues. Children are still growing, so will need smaller headsets that get upgraded regularly as they get bigger, and they need to be very light weight. Using them for long periods could cause vision issues, similar to or worse than excessive screen use.
At this point many countries can't even supply children with laptops and internet access so cost is probably prohibitive too.
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VR for education has some health issues. Children are still growing, so will need smaller headsets that get upgraded regularly as they get bigger, and they need to be very light weight. Using them for long periods could cause vision issues, similar to or worse than excessive screen use.
At this point many countries can't even supply children with laptops and internet access so cost is probably prohibitive too.
To be honest, I was more referring to the young adult mind that could take instruction and handle it far better than a child.
As far as cost, plenty seem have no problems at all justifying $20,000+/year on college. I highly doubt another grand or two would change that.
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Bad analogy, I know. But not that much worse than the tablet analogy.
These are very different things to compare.
The issues with VR it's not only the price, which includes the hardware to produce non nauseating frame rates and the software development that makes the games optimized well enough. It's that the peripherals for VR gaming more or less suck.
The per
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Better peripherals are needed. This is probably the biggest barrier. VR is confusing at first, and we need zero barriers to entry.
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The iPad (IMHO, anyway) also benefitted from taking advantage at the time of the decline in price and increase in quality of LCD touch displays. While sort of expensive, it was cheap enough to be mass adopted as a platform largely on a whim (giant iPhone, casual computer).
I'd wager what Sony is really waiting for a similar convergence of cheap technology which enables a high quality VR experience. Slashdot just had a story about 10k or something displays and the conversation shifted to how great it would
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Been hearing that since the 1990s.
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In my eyes we already see widespread application of AR in our everyday lives. It's not the AR that people who graduated in SciFi instead of a STEM field expect it to be, with all the resource consuming graphical nonsense, but it's been there in various forms since we've had GPS. Perhaps earlier.
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The main problem here would be the SciFi part, where application of the AR principles require ridiculous amounts of computing resources out of a mobile device to create mostly useless eye candy.
Now computing power is perhaps a technical problem, that will be solved in a couple of decades, where AR HMDs ar
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In a more general sense AR can be as boring and mundane as having a garage door opener app on your smartphone.
"AR can be defined as a system that fulfills three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects." While you don't need an AR headset and there are 'mundane' AR apps on phones that are not too uncommon, having a garage door opener app isn't AR.
Interestingly enough, the QR code example would not be considered AR if it pulls up a web page, but would be AR if it rendered that information as a placard placed next to the
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It wouldn't be that difficult to do to just render a text box and superimpose or just place it over a camera feed. There are already plenty of translation apps that use OCR on camera feeds. Yes, they're not very good at accurately translating, but they do
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VR has always been niche. Only someone sticking their head in the sand would ignore facts.
Steam Hardware Survey [steampowered.com] shows less then 2% of Steam accounts having VR:
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That's incorrect.
I copied/pasted the wrong line however if you click to expand the VR Headsets line it shows that less then 2% of all Steam users have VR:
VR is a niche.
Yeah (Score:2)
...and 640K is enough for everyone.
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Nope. They are saying: "640K will be enough for most users for years" while at the same time selling a system with 2MB.
And they are right. VR is years from being truly mainstream and no longer niche. It is very much in the exponential growth phase of adoption not unlike the first 3D accelerators were. Also PSVR is a thing they actively sell and develop all the while acknowledging that it's a niche.
I agree with Jim Ryan (Score:2)
Like many gamers, I got super excited about the possibility of VR finally becoming good enough to live up to the dreams - right from science fiction - a 'holo deck' in your own, in a way.
I got an early Oculus rift prototype back in 2013 and my hope was somewhat crushed - it was clear there was a *huge* way to go. ... cough ... reality coming back in.
Not totally crushed, just a bit of
It felt like a parlour trick, because, to all intents and purposes, it was.
The industry has come a long way in 7 years, headse
Quest is the NES of VR (Score:3)
We’ve had a Quest for about a year now and it’s the most used gaming platform in the house. The 6th grade set uses it preferentially. The 3rd grade set does to. And, it’s got the adults back into gaming.
The reason? The same one that made the Wii a hit: accessible, arcade-style games with minimal learning curves or no excessive narratives.
We just upgraded our gaming PC and the top requirement was VR (via the Quest Link).
I’ve been waiting my whole life for VR (ever since I saw Jaron Lanier in the 80s). From my perspective, it’s here and in its NES phase.
(Aside: yes, the Facebook connection sucks, but I’ve been scaling back FB use and just sacrificed my account for the Quest. Should be fun to see what their engagement algorithms do with that)
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I think the Quest is more the Gameboy and the Rift S / Index / Reverb are the NES equivalents. :-)
The Quest has some appeal but like any portable device there are tradeoffs.
Argh (Score:1)
Re: Argh (Score:3)
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He said:
He took the time to dismiss this year (sort of a given, otherwise we'd have heard about it by now) and the next, but kept saying that it's coming. So if you read between the lines, he basically said "You can expect a PSVR2 in 2
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That's a rather optimistic reading of those words. It sounds like "eh, we've got something out there, it's worth the effort to keep that existing thing going for now, for now we don't see a business case for refreshing the product, but I'm going to hedge my bets so that we can move forward if circumstances change and not completely screw over PSVR sales if I can help it."
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PS6 (Score:2)
"VR won't be significant until PS6 is ready to ship with full VR support".
Does anybody in 2020 actually believe these wankers speak honestly?
I think it's got the same problem 3D TVs do (Score:2)
I'm reminded of the early CD addons for 16 bit consoles, the tech was there and worked but there wasn't a lot of good reasons to use it yet and it was stupid expensive. Anyone remember seeing the TurboGraphx-16 CD for $400 and saying "That's great, but I'm not spending
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Indeed. And there is another problem: Making VR content is vastly more expensive and, depending on the game, it will often add nothing. For example, why would you want to make a hugely successful game like Terraria or Factorio VR? It would just completely screw up the experience. Even for games that are first person, it may not add much or it may make things worse.
The whole thing is a solution in search of a problem and it will remain that way unless and until we get a real holodeck.
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You could say the same for 2D vs 3D, though. Terraria is 2D, but push it to 3D and you sort of get Minecraft, for example. Terraria VR wouldn't work, but Minecraft VR would totally work.
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Nope. Terraria would not work in 3D and Minecraft would not work in 2D. They are fundamentally different games.
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They're not fundamentally different. They're basically the same type of gameplay, one is 2D and the other is 3D. You explore, dig, gather materials, build, fight ennemies, etc. Terraria and Minecraft have extremely similar gameplay and they're more alike than Terraria and Battlefield V, for example.
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Do you even play Terraria or Minecraft???
They are sandbox games. They are built upon these 3 pillars:
* Build
* Explore
* Survive
Both even have falling sand that behave the exact same way.
The fluid mechanics are different however:
* You could 100% simulate Minecraft's water behavior in Terraria. Terraria doesn't have Minecraft's "source water" blocks but that wouldn't be thathard,
* What would be computational expensive would be to simulate Terraria's ocean draining in Minecraft. Doable, but would require some
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Making VR content is vastly more expensive
That's not even remotely true. The overwhelming majority of VR games are indie games. And a shitton of them have VR and non VR modes. The cost of a game is largely the content creation and that is no different from VR to non VR. This is why you'll see games like Hitman 3 come with VR support, the latest Flightsim has the VR in Beta, you see cheap VR titles, and expensive VR titles, even titles like Fallout 4 which got VR support many years after its original release, or Alien which had modders make an almos
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Making VR content is vastly more expensive
That's not even remotely true. The overwhelming majority of VR games are indie games. And a shitton of them have VR and non VR modes.
I see you already have the explanation why I am right, you just do not see it.
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I see you already have the explanation why I am right, you just do not see it.
That makes you quite bad at communicating now doesn't it.
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I see you already have the explanation why I am right, you just do not see it.
That makes you quite bad at communicating now doesn't it.
Nope. It makes me unwilling to try to convince people that believe they already have the truth, but are obviously (and here by their own words) mistaken. There is no competing with the stupid. They pull you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
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TurboGrafx-16 has to be the most misspelled console name ever.
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not everybody can handle it.
Not everybody isn't the issue. 99% of people won't have a problem with it which is still a shitload of players that haven't adopted anything yet.
Cookies (Score:1)
Until they figure out how to stop people from tossing their cookies during play, VR will always be niche.
'You'll get used to it' is not an acceptable solution.
Big clunky headsets (Score:2)
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Headsets haven't weighed 2 lbs for a good 4 years now, and the halo strap concept which distributes the weight straight on your spine makes many headsets on the market literally fell weightless.
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Maybe because PSVR isn't that good? (Score:2)
I started using VR 4 years ago with the Vive, and switched to the Index this year.
I spend way more of my gaming time in VR these days than I do on a traditional monitor.
The Index on a PC is a significantly better VR experience than PSVR both from a physical hardware standpoint (large roomscale setups) and from a visual standpoint (higher resolution and 144Hz).
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The PSVR is over 4 years old and was very much a good competitor to the headsets of the time, cut them some slack. The valid complaint you may have is that there is no successor announced with the PS5.
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But just a few days ago you were stating Sony is "All in" on VR
And they are. The fact that they aren't appeasing your desperate need to be constantly feed new hardware at a yearly basis doesn't change the fact they have a VR division and actively support VR development in their games.
and NO it was not a good competitor to VR at the time except in price and accessibility
So it was not a good competitor except that it was a providing good competition at a better price point? Do you want to switch to another language, I speak a couple, maybe we can find one in which you too can make some sense.
it was still a long way behind what was being done
Behind in some ways, ahead in others. Tracking was worse than the
Stereoscopic glasses (Score:2)
I read this article in the '80s. Look, it's happening again.
Quite frankly, without the matching '80s hair styles, the ad campaigns showing VR sets simply don't have a chance.
If you include porn.... (Score:1)
They must be way behind Oculus (Score:2)
Console Gaming (Score:2)
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I now regularly get a nag window on Insult Exchange saying: "Are you a human being?
The irony is that this shit isn't posted by a human being.