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Despite Hype, VR Investment Fades In Q1 2017

Rygar 8 Bit

Jaguar 64-bit
I think the biggest issue with Virtual Reality that it is a additional device in the vein Vita TV was or smartwatches are now.

It adds value for those who bought into the ecosystem, it is not really a ecosystem on its own. Smartphones are, PCs are and of course consoles are. VR devices are addons with limited value, which noone truly needs.

I guess VR needs to become a standard, not a bonus.

i mean neither are graphics cards you dont need a 1080 to run spreadsheets or look at the web
 

baconcow

Member
While it has been said before, I am not surprised by this. My computer did not pass the Vive VR test and I am not quite ready to upgrade to a VR-capable computer, at this time. That, and there are no must-have software for VR.
 

Moondrop

Banned
People seem to be conflating two separate propositions:
1) The business profitability of this generation of VR, and
2) The long-term viability of VR.

This generation could absolutely be a bust- but someone has to attempt to push the technology forward. And on that note, why are people referring to this generation as the first of VR? It's at least the third generation by my count.

As to the second point, people should really learn to never say never. Imagine beyond headsets, for example.

Maybe it'll take off in a few years, when Nintendo finally releases the Virtual Boy Classic.
I loled. Then realized I would probably buy one.
Fortunately it will never be in stock.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I dunno. VR still impresses me every single week and has done so consistently for a year. There are tons of refinements to be had, but I don't see a future where VR isn't a factor.

Don't feel ashamed. I feel the same way when I use my VR headset still too.

100% agreed and well put. I fail to understand why so few people can see this. VR is the endgame for all media, plain and simple.

No it's not. It's just hopefully will be one "extra" way to view pieces of media.
 

True Fire

Member
Gartner's Hype Cycle. VR's decline is right on queue. It'll blow up again as soon as someone like Apple or Nintendo runs with it.
 

Compsiox

Banned
Gartner's Hype Cycle. VR's decline is right on queue. It'll blow up again as soon as someone like Apple or Nintendo runs with it.

With Apple allowing actual Mac based computers to be made with real full sized GPUs, I could actually see this happening very soon.
 

StereoVsn

Member
The biggest issue is indeed lack of meaningful content. All the 2-5 hours indie games might be interesting and some of them maybe good but that won't drive adoption beyond the current figures.

Personally I am waiting for a hardware revision and larger more interesting gaming experiences. Fallout 4 VR and Star Citizen (if it ever comes out) might push me in the right direction. If Elite ever becomes less boring I could consider that as well.

We need those larger games. Something like Hitman, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Witcher, etc...
 
Hate to say "I told yah so".


VR will be a mainstream thing, eventually, but it's just not there yet. When it finally does become that thing, I don't see video games being the primary driver of it.
 

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
Like others have said, waiting on Valve to put out the software.

"The Lab" was the single best gaming experience and "wow" moment since Super Mario 64 and maybe even Super Mario Bros. for me. But it's just a 1 hour tech demo.

The only game I've put a decent amount of time into is Audioshield. QuiVR and Zombie Training Simulator are fun but my arms get too tired to play those for huge blocks of time.

So I'm really just waiting for a nice meaty AAA experience of some kind. Until then, my Vive is kinda gathering dust.
 
Batman in VR was one of my top gaming experiences in my 40 years of playing video games.
Games with this high quality make me forget I'm wearing something on my head. Sadly the majority of the games still have me feeling like I'm gaming in a scuba mask with a small field of view.
So my PSVR sits there(3 months)until the next must have.
 

Tumle

Member
Somehow I have to agree. There is something off in VR and I am saying that as exVive owner.

All those who are saying that we need to wait for next iteration, next gen of VR I think are very likely to be mistaken.

Compering VR v1.0 (if we can call this iteration version 1.0) to early stages of video gaming in general is misleading - just keep in mind that every young person dreamed about new Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum ]etc, and they were all in it.
From my low level perspective it is not happening with VR (as also says post I am quoting).

There is just something off with it...



Maybe you are right, but do you remember great movie called 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well in 2001 nothing was like Kubrick imagined.
Are you sure about the bolded part? There was a reason that gaming wasn't mainstream at that point in time, where those machines where out..
I'll agree that there is not enough quality content right now.. but I didn't expect AAA game after AAA game on a device that is niche and just started..
 

UrbanRats

Member
I never said a 2D screen is the apex of interaction. But I'm just saying the market may not want anything more than that. Automobiles aren't the apex of transportation but we haven't really moved beyond it on a consumer level because it's far more practical, economical, and easy to use than everyone having their own plane, or jet packs, or helicopters, or hovercraft. So yeah I kind of see VR as like the hovercraft of display technology. Is it cool? Hell yeah! Will it pretty much replace 2D screens even within 50 years? I don't think so. Hovercraft aren't going to surpass wheeled vehicles any time soon even though they pretty much negate the need for roads all together (but that also causes problems).

People are fighting even automated cars just because of norms. Tons of people just don't like the idea of self driving cars because of safety concerns, even though they are stastically safer than humans driving cars. People like to have some control of their physical surroundings. VR, and self driving cars, kind of take that away, so I think there is a natural instinct to not adopt the tech. Automated cars I think will eventually take over though because of industry and government pushing that way regardless of consumer interest. VR relies on consumer interest, and I just don't really see widespread interest.
I disagree with your analogy mainly because one major reason why we'll never have flying cars like in Blade Runner, beyond obvious technical difficulties of getting a car to fly, is the limitations of humans.
We can barely be trusted to not drink and drive, let alone fly.
With self driving cars becoming a reality though, i think its more plausible.

VR however doesnt share that drawback, it just offers what a 2d screen does, but with more convincing intensity, to the point of tricking your brain into thinking its reality.
Its obstacles are all pretty trivial, in the grander scheme.

World wide adoption is harder to predict, simply because the economic landscape is so wildly varied, but for developed, fairly rich countries, yeah i can see VR being a major market in 50 or 60 years.


That is, barring any massive catastrophe in the next couple of decades, which unfortunately doesnt seem out of the realm of possibilities.
 
well yea the average joe was saying the same but the hundreds of threads on here was consisting of us getting shot down saying youll see etc, i was saying for ages this isnt going to be a average consumer product and never will be, not for gaming anyway, gaming for most people is a social thing / winding down after school/work, and for many gaming with a vr type device or any form of motion controlls is just effort they dont wanna use because thats not what they game for.

As long as you have to put a helmet on or anything that obscures your vision, it will never be a mass market product IMO. It's too much effort for most people.
 

Sanctuary

Member
I'm still not convinced this will ever take off and become a mass market thing.

Anything where you have to wear something on your head is always going to be a hard sell.

61% of the reported population wears glasses. VR in its current form is too heavy to wear comfortably for extended periods. It's also too bulky, as well as a spaghetti mess of connections. Once VR and AR are reduced in size to the average pair of reading glasses, the only thing holding it back would be software.

It's a catch 22 situation though. Lack of interest leads to lack of funding, which leads to slower innovation, which leads to a quagmire of hardware and software development, which sustains a lack of interest.

Is anyone truly surprised though? Aside from those few who didn't believe this would just be a similar situation as the 90s anyway.
 
I recently upgraded my graphics card to a 1070, so I finally have hardware capable of playing roomscale VR games, but for me it's just too expensive for too little content I want to experience. PSVR is cheaper, but also has the problem of just not enough stuff I want.

When VR was announced, all I really imagined playing was Bethesda open world games. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/NV; playing those in VR sounded incredible, even without native motion controls. But so far there are only unofficial mods for getting those games working (heard mixed things about them), Fallout 4 VR is still being worked on, and not much else similar to those games seems to be coming anytime soon.

I have a Gear VR for my S7, but that's more of a fun little thing to mess with now and then. There are actually a few decent games and experiences on it, even if it doesn't have the fidelity or full tracking of the expensive units.

Hopefully in a few years the units will get lighter, wireless (with super low latency), and cheaper to the point where they'll be easy to get.
 

Chumley

Banned
People don't have big enough homes and wallets for this stuff. The tech needs to advance significantly and price way lower for it to have a real shot at touching the mainstream.
 
But how different is it, really?

Looking past the obvious major difference in interface:

- both are pricey add-ons for a PC or game console (with VR being even more pricey)
- both struggled/are struggling to find developers willing to go all in on quality content for them
- both have some amazing games amidst many generic and/or mediocre and/or poorly-executed games

They sure do have quite a bit in common, except maybe that VR has a future in video gaming. It's just not going to happen yet IMO.

Incredibly freaking different. You find a game like Onward on Kinect and you let me know. That was made by one guy. I could sit there and breakdown what each peripheral offers, who is interested, and why one had a cool idea with 0 application and the other is an amazing idea with unlimited application, but once again, it's been in dozens of VR threads.

An easy answer: nobody on NeoGAF liked Kinect. Little kids who liked to dance liked Kinect. There are a lot of people on NeoGAF very passionate about VR. Valve has invested tons in VR. Epic is investing a lot in VR. Mark Zuckerberg is passionate about VR. Michael Abrash is passionate about VR. Carmack is passionate about VR. Who was passionate about Kinect? Peter Molyneux. Project Milo, that's Kinect. Vaporware marketing horseshit. VR market is full of smart, passionate people with foresight beyond current limitations. They're the people willing to make the leap in order to drive the tech forward, because they know what it means.

Edit: Not to say some of your comparisons aren't there, they just don't really mean anything to me. A vast majority of innovative products go through growing pains, that doesn't mean you can compare 2 things that aren't super popular (yet) and say they're both super similar. You're correlating the wrong stuff here.

Edit 2: The Future LOL. Another
 

SomTervo

Member
The biggest issue is indeed lack of meaningful content. All the 2-5 hours indie games might be interesting and some of them maybe good but that won't drive adoption beyond the current figures.

Personally I am waiting for a hardware revision and larger more interesting gaming experiences. Fallout 4 VR and Star Citizen (if it ever comes out) might push me in the right direction. If Elite ever becomes less boring I could consider that as well.

We need those larger games. Something like Hitman, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Witcher, etc...

No. Most of the "2-5 hour indie games" are priced appropriately, so it's not a bitter pill to swallow. And many provide more than 2-5 hours, especially multiplayer ones.

Think about the mainstream consumer. What are the most popular ways they consume entertainment these days?

1) smartphones/tablets
2) TV (more specifically, a variety of things displayed on a TV, including Netflix/similar, video games, or actual TV from a cable/fiber/satellite company)
3) multitasking with a combination of the above

And guess what? 3) happens a lot. A LOT. For a lot of people, it's more often than not. And you can't check your phone if you're wearing goggles. That would make VR completely incompatible with how the average person consumes entertainment in 2017. I'm not saying that this won't change in the future, but this is the way it is right now.



But how different is it, really?

Looking past the obvious major difference in interface:

- both are pricey add-ons for a PC or game console (with VR being even more pricey)
- both struggled/are struggling to find developers willing to go all in on quality content for them
- both have some amazing games amidst many generic and/or mediocre and/or poorly-executed games

They sure do have quite a bit in common, except maybe that VR has a future in video gaming. It's just not going to happen yet IMO.

The bolded is ridiculous. Gamescon polls showed as many devs working on VR as on PS4 and Pro (more than XBO).
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Sadly, I am literally in the process of getting rid of my PSVR. Had a decent amount of fun with the few titles I owned(Batman, Rez, Until Dawn, Psychonauts, and others), but the nausea hit me hard and I never grew my VR legs.

It reached a point where I literally grew fearful of even putting the headset on at all due to some tremendously poor experiences.

Those I showed my library of games to usually seemed to have better experiences(though no one could handle more than a single race of Driveclub). More importantly, their time with the unit never once led to a new sale.

I nearly got rid of mine last Xmas, but held off for RE7(which I just can't really play in VR anyway due to nausea and also...fear). After three added months of giving the future a chance(Psychonauts was pretty wonderful but short and limited), I am done.

Maybe will give the Vive a look down the road, but its looking bleak.
 
if i had to buy any VR today, it would be something something Oculus, something something standalone, something something slightly better than GEAR VR, something something CHEAP.

If Facebook put out a cheap mobile standalone unit hooked up to the Oculus store that integrated whatever social tech that Zuckerberg is talking about HERE, then I'd be very happy.

I invested into Samsung Gear VR, and enjoyed it although I really didn't want to be married to the phone. Now that I'm back on apple, I miss the GEAR VR but hate the crap that comes with it.

Whoever puts that unit out cheaply (sub 200) wins the VR game.
 
Yes, good VR is pricey. You have huge companies that can withstand any financial downfalls that arise from poor sales due to lack of adoption(again, shit is expensive) and can push the medium forward. 5-10 years, I guarantee things will be different. We will not have garages on our heads.
 

Dabanton

Member
Hate to say "I told yah so".


VR will be a mainstream thing, eventually, but it's just not there yet. When it finally does become that thing, I don't see video games being the primary driver of it.

It will probably be VR music concerts, sporting events and crazy stuff like VR Everest holidays that do it.
 

jman2050

Member
61% of the reported population wears glasses.

How many of those actually enjoy wearing glasses, as opposed to merely tolerating their presence because being able to see clearly is kind of a big deal?

The correct answer is very close to none of them.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
shark sandwich said:
- the inconvenience of strapping a display to your face and losing vision of your surroundings

- motion sickness (and this is a REAL problem, I never got sick from roller coasters/planes/etc but some VR games made me horribly sick after 5-10 minutes)

- controlling a game by moving your head/neck/body around and pantomiming the actions is just plain inferior to controlling it with small twitches of your fingers
Except motion-sickness (which is a software problem, not VR in of itself) none of the others are remotely relevant. VR is not (and never was) competing with 2d games as an entertainment medium, and that won't really change as the hardware gets better and more accessible.
With that said - a lot of the early adopters that only wanted VR as a "my favorite 2d game reality strap-on" were jumping in for all the wrong reasons too. It isn't to say those properties won't successfully translate to VR eventually - but the end-goals are completely different.
 

Vlaphor

Member
It'll be ok.

I've discovered the true future of virtual reality

http://imgur.com/PEHzNvm

I put it behind a link because it'll blow your mind too much to see it unprepared...and it might be construed as a bit NSFW...not sure...playing it safe.
 

Aaron

Member
VR will always be a niche product. Companies needed to learn the right lessons from the failure of 3D. That any obstacle, no matter how small, between a person and the experience is going to deter the majority. Once the focus shifts more to AR and it becomes more ubiquitous, which is still really far off, it'll gain a majority acceptance. VR is essentially a laserdisc or minidisc product. Something for the hardcore fans that'll eventually lead to a mainstream product.
 
The price of entry combined with no must have titles doesn't make this too surprising. Think it'll be a few years before we see VR anything take off.
 

Jimrpg

Member
US$800 for Vive, AU$1400 to get it delivered in Australia. That's the problem right there.

Even at half the price, it's still a significant outlay to drop on a Vive kit as its not certain what games will be available.

And although I could get a PSVR, ive got a vastly superior PC so I'd rather do it right and get the Vive instead.
 
Resident evil 7 was a great playthrough in VR but after i finished that and looked towards the horizon nothing looked interesting so i sold my PSVR but one day VR hopefully will really take off cause the stuff i played was really cool.
 
VR will always be a niche product. Companies needed to learn the right lessons from the failure of 3D. That any obstacle, no matter how small, between a person and the experience is going to deter the majority. Once the focus shifts more to AR and it becomes more ubiquitous, which is still really far off, it'll gain a majority acceptance. VR is essentially a laserdisc or minidisc product. Something for the hardcore fans that'll eventually lead to a mainstream product.

Headphones are between you and the music. A ski mask is between you and the snow. a helmet is between you and bicycling, sunglasses are between you and the world. Care to rephrase in a less absolute manner? It's embarrassing, and the 3D comparison just adds to it.

Like I've said a million times, the experience has to be unique and powerful enough to override the fact that you're wearing something on your head. Is it there yet? Maybe not for the majority, but "always a niche product"? "Any obstacle no matter how small"? Your extremes reflect poorly on those knowledgeable folks that know the b.s. you're spewing. A computer, a computer is an obstacle to the real world. A phone is something you put against your ear (it requires your hand too, oh god), and it's an obstacle to actually talking to someone in person. Are those niche? What about it being closer to your face makes it's success impossible (not to mention the 3D makes it feel anything but close).
 

Shoyz

Member
How many of those actually enjoy wearing glasses, as opposed to merely tolerating their presence because being able to see clearly is kind of a big deal?

The correct answer is very close to none of them.

Considering how glasses are a fashion item, and the trend of people going so far as to wear lenseless glasses, I'd say quite a few. Especially considering there are alternatives available (contacts, laser surgery). If it's a matter of being worth the inconvenience, VR is pretty enticing..

It was pretty obvious from the onset that VR headsets that cost ~$800 all-in, which require a high-end PC for another grand or so weren't going to fly off the shelves. If we checked how well the first televisions sold in the first year or two, might not look so pretty either. But in time the computers and headsets will become more affordable, and the technology will get better.
 

mike6467

Member
Considering how glasses are a fashion item, and the trend of people going so far as to wear lenseless glasses, I'd say quite a few. Especially considering there are alternatives available (contacts, laser surgery). If it's a matter of being worth the inconvenience, VR is pretty enticing..

It was pretty obvious from the onset that VR headsets that cost ~$800 all-in, which require a high-end PC for another grand or so weren't going to fly off the shelves. If we checked how well the first televisions sold in the first year or two, might not look so pretty either. But in time the computers and headsets will become more affordable, and the technology will get better.

Enticing yeah, but will it stick? After a summer full of VR last year (Vive/Oculus) I realized I like my house, I like the people here, and I don't want complete escapism. Maybe occasionally, but the games I enjoyed the most were the short social games. Keep Talking and Nobody explodes was a lot of fun because of how they handled the manual.

I think VR has a huge future ahead of it, but I think a lot of that is outside the scope of gaming, I believe it will be revolutionary for training/education and stuff like that.

It definitely has a presence in gaming, but I think people are making a huge assumption in assuming that VR is something everyone will take to given the chance (yes, even if we get virtually weightless, wireless headsets that you barely know are there).
 
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but literally 99% of my gaming is done alone. There is no aspect of vr that I find inconvenient. I'm not saying that applies to everyone, but man it seems like some people are really reaching. Many videogames are solitary experiences.
 

oatmeal

Banned
Yeah this comes as no surprise. There was like a 3 month high for Vr that culminated with RE7.

Really disappointed in how things shaped up.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Virtual Boy outsold Rift and Vive.

I enjoyed virtual boy more than the Rift I bought.
At least it didn't make me feel sick.

VR technology isn't there yet and it feels like this first generation was released too early when too many problems still exist with it.
 
1. It's uncomfortable in several ways

2. Isolates you from your house (matters, in a family)

3. Worse image quality than you have become used to.

Those three things are the main problems that need to be solved before it stands a chance and they sound simple but they are actually really really hard to address. In particular the motion issue may be impossible to solve for stationary VR.

Gaming on a screen is not going to stand still so issue 3 is a moving target. How can that be fixed when gaming on a screen is always at the edge of performance?
 
1. It's uncomfortable in several ways

2. Isolates you from your house (matters, in a family)

3. Worse image quality than you have become used to.

Those three things are the main problems that need to be solved before it stands a chance and they sound simple but they are actually really really hard to address. In particular the motion issue may be impossible to solve for stationary VR.

Gaming on a screen is not going to stand still so issue 3 is a moving target. How can that be fixed when gaming on a screen is always at the edge of performance?

But that makes it a great "my time" activity. Some guys choose a garage, I choose VR, computers and weed.

The image quality doesn't bug me (well for some games it does). The 3D effect, super wide FOV and high frame-rate make up for it. It gives it a different sense of real.
 

sleepnaught

Member
Glad I didn't waste my money on VR. Anyone should've seen it wasn't ready from a mile away. $4-800 for these on top of the cost of the system, no way the masses would be willing to Shell out for that, especially with the lackluster titles. It is a shame though, RE in VR was amazing, I hope the tech becomes more affordable soon so people won't be afraid of dropping a paycheck on one of these things
 
It was probably originally intended to be RIGS to get lots of people in with something built on online multiplayer.
Something full-sized single-player might have made more impact though.

But while they closed that studio, they do now have a first party studio that they opened last year specifically for making VR games so they clearly have some first party stuff in the works along with GT.

Batman in VR was one of my top gaming experiences in my 40 years of playing video games.

Yup, this and Wayward Sky were two of my favorite surprise experiences last year. I'd like more quality software that builds off these (and RE7) and for them to be proper full length titles, I think that's the next step since many are ready to move beyond the short stuff.

I hope someone makes "my RE7", a big fully featured game like that, but that's not horror so that I can fully play it :)
Robinson was a nice middle title.

Also, seems like there's a lot of exaggeration that VR fans were claiming these would take off like a rocket, when many of those threads fans often said that these would be slow build things due to price, even PSVR despite being the best current mix of tech, price, and available games in exchange for not being the most powerful package like the Vive and its great full roomscale, is still a pricey device.
 
But that makes it a great "my time" activity. Some guys choose a garage, I choose VR, computers and weed.

The image quality doesn't bug me (well for some games it does). The 3D effect, super wide FOV and high frame-rate make up for it. It gives it a different sense of real.
A garage doesn't isolate and cut you off from your family the same way VR does.
 

border

Member
Also, seems like there's a lot of exaggeration that VR fans were claiming these would take off like a rocket, when many of those threads fans often said that these would be slow build things due to price, even PSVR despite being the best current mix of tech, price, and available games in exchange for not being the most powerful package like the Vive and its great full roomscale, is still a pricey device.

I don't think anyone claimed VR would "take off like a rocket".

But an unending refrain prior to 2016 was that as soon as people got their hands on VR, they'd want it. They'd quickly pick up on the appeal, and even if it was too expensive it'd be an experience people would crave more of. VR is something everybody will love, and the only problem was that thereweren't any products yet that people could try out. If you tried it out at PAX or E3 and weren't all that impressed well then you just didn't get the right demo.....or it wasn't a good atmosphere to try it in.

But now here we are in 2017, and the technology seems to have lost all its buzz. It never gained any kind of traction with a mainstream audience (at least not as compared to something like iPhone, Wii, or Kinect). When I tell people I own a PSVR, they aren't intrigued....I don't get questions about it or the experience. Nobody has asked to try it out.

It boggles my mind that there are people still predicting that a casual audience is going to want to pay for tickets to a "virtual concert" or "virtual basketball game." When even the fully immersive 3D experiences aren't resonating, I fail to see why a livestream of 360 video is going to be even remotely compelling.
 
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