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[Triple U]

...the hardcore PC VR market?

We saw how Sony handled MS so far this generation. Basically they showed what they had, let the competition dig its own grave, and then trumpet how much better their approach was. Oculus has just made a huge decision by aligning with Facebook. Its far to early to know how this will play out, but there is an obvious posibility for this move to sour the hardcore adoption of the Rift.

With that being said, does Sony now stand in position to take advantage of the situation? IMO they have a chance to arrive on PC and take a position that they are all to familar with. The hardcore gaming, tech focused product that gamers should buy.

Obviously this comes with changes to what they seemingly have announced so far. PC gamers will expect some semi regular iterations and upgrades. Which I don't think is too much of an issue. The expect open standards, which again Sony is kind of known for. They will expect premium performance and specs, which again its Sony.


Do they stand a chance at making a competitive PC product? Will they?

 

[quantumnerd]

Obviously this comes with changes to what they seemingly have announced so far. PC gamers will expect some semi regular iterations and upgrades. Which I don't think is too much of an issue. The expect open standards, which again Sony is kind of known for. They will expect premium performance and specs, which again its Sony.


Do they stand a chance at making a competitive PC product? Will they?

The PS4 is a fixed target. The headset will have one spec revision, maybe a comfort revision or two. Also, Sony kind of INVENTED proprietary interconnects when it came to memory cards. I don't trust their openness. That said, they've loosened up a bit there on PC, so they might release PC drivers.

 

[Soulflarz]

Hopefully cause screw facebook.

 

[Mushroomer25]

Yeah, they're not taking Morpheus to the PC. The Playstation is the only thing keeping Sony afloat right now, and they're going to keep any VR developments locked up in their ecosystem.

 

[Sendou]

Well first they would have to announce that their VR headset is indeed supported by PC. They hadn't said if it will be, right? Secondly it will still be a product that is chained to consoles. Not terribly exciting at this stage.

 

[childplease]

Yeah, they're not taking Morpheus to the PC. The Playstation is the only thing keeping Sony afloat right now, and they're going to keep any VR developments locked up in their ecosystem.

If they keep it on the ps4 it has a high potential of being a huge bomb just like every other accessory they have released for their consoles.

 

[CadetMahoney]

Screw facebook.

this.

 

[Nabs]

I'm not sure they'd gain anything by doing that. They'd probably end up losing money since they can't sell us games or more hardware.

 

[RaikuHebi]

I don't see it, but it makes sense. I doubt a PC gamer would go out of their way to get a PS4 just for VR, and a console gamer won't ditch the PS4 to use the VR with just because PC is supported.

But I doubt it.

 

[adamantypants]

If there's PC drivers for Morpheus it's an easy choice for me.

My oculus interest absolutely plummeted today.

 

[MBR]

They should've said it's open for PC's before the OR-->FB deal, since without PC drivers it's just gonna be an extremely niche product for a relatively weak platform.

 

[Salvor.Hardin]

Getting ahead of ourselves aren't we? Sure facebook is a company we all love to hate, but nothing tells me they're going to ruin Oculus or even significantly alter the plan already set out by the Oculus team going forward.

Where's the doom and gloom even coming from? If facebook's capital helps the team carve out a bigger part of the market than they previously could, that's fucking great. Having facebook back you up means incredible things for independent developer who were on the fence when it came to VR.

 

[coolasj19]

Obviously this comes with changes to what they seemingly have announced so far. PC gamers will expect some semi regular iterations and upgrades. Which I don't think is too much of an issue. The expect open standards, which again Sony is kind of known for. They will expect premium performance and specs, which again its Sony.


Do they stand a chance at making a competitive PC product? Will they?

What? The PS4 is Morpheus's main platform. Those iterations will be far and few in-between. Also, open standards and Sony in the same sentence? They are the Kings of proprietary hardware and software. Goddammit, the OG Vita has a proprietary charging port and the PS4 camera is a proprietary USB port!

But then again, Sony could always insert themselves into the PC market if they chose to do so. We don't know right now. Just like we don't know what Facebook will do to OR.

 

[Triple U]

The PS4 is a fixed target. The headset will have one spec revision, maybe a comfort revision or two. Also, Sony kind of INVENTED proprietary interconnects when it came to memory cards. I don't trust their openness. That said, they've loosened up a bit there on PC, so they might release PC drivers.

I specifically mentioned a PC product?

Well first they would have to announce that their VR headset is indeed supported by PC. They hadn't said if it will be, right? Secondly it will still be a product that is chained to consoles. Not terribly exciting at this stage.

How would it be chained to consoles? I said a PC product.

I'm not sure they'd gain anything by doing that. They'd probably end up losing money since they can't sell us games or more hardware.

I definitley think there's money to be made as the goto hardcore PC solution. Not as much as the PS4 ecosystem of course, but its not like they'd have to trade off much. Sony has shown the ability to make money in the premium market, a premium headset for PC could fall down that aisle.

 

[forknknife]

I'd say the opposite, now that Facebook is onboard i think Sony will scare away and concentrate on their ps4 market and nothing else, sadly.

Even if they would make it pc compatible, i would never expect them to make things easy for its community to get much more use out of it other than to play games. The great thing about the oculus was its more open nature which would make it easier and more inviting for developers to make apps for it. With Facebook controlling that i just expect the usual fb shit, lots of ads and privacy invasion. Fuck that.

 

[Big-E]

In regards to Sony being open, early PS3 was a time where they were. We had Linux support, replaceable hard drives, non propriety USB, media card reader that wasn't just memory sticks, etc. I hope that Sony could come back if the OR turns into a horrible product for gaming.

 

[Boss Mog]

If anything I think this hurts Sony because I doubt Oculus could've competed against them much. the rift would've been a niche high-priced device from a small company using "cellphone leftovers" . Now Oculus can give Sony a run for its money hardware-wise and price-wise and you know facebook will give the Rift plenty of advertising and exposure.

 

[nampad]

While Sony is slowly moving to be more platform agnostic, which is a good idea (e.g. PS Now for all devices in the future), I don't think they can swoop in at the PC VR market effectively.
If I remember correctly they commented that they are considering the PC comaptibility but need to earn their R&D investment through the Playstation market first. Besides profitability, supporting the PC market also takes many ressources Sony may not have right now.

And while the buyout surely sours many opinions about the Oculus, I don't think we will see changes in how Oculus operates in the short run to send all the VR fans running over to Sony.

 

[Raistlin]

The PS4 is a fixed target. The headset will have one spec revision, maybe a comfort revision or two. Also, Sony kind of INVENTED proprietary interconnects when it came to memory cards. I don't trust their openness. That said, they've loosened up a bit there on PC, so they might release PC drivers.

It uses HDMI and USB.

It will work fine on PCs

 

[Triple U]

Getting ahead of ourselves aren't we? Sure facebook is a company we all love to hate, but nothing tells me they're going to ruin Oculus or even significantly alter the plan already set out by the Oculus team going forward.

Where's the doom and gloom even coming from? If facebook's capital helps the team carve out a bigger part of the market than they previously could, that's fucking great. Having facebook back you up means incredible things for independent developer who were on the fence when it came to VR.

Its far to early to know how this will play out,

How?

What? The PS4 is Morpheus's main platform. Those iterations will be far and few in-between. Also, open standards and Sony in the same sentence? They are the Kings of proprietary hardware and software. Goddammit, the OG Vita has a proprietary charging port and the PS4 camera is a proprietary USB port!

But then again, Sony could always insert themselves into the PC market if they chose to do so. We don't know right now. Just like we don't know what Facebook will do to OR.

Im talking about a PC product, not the PS4. Do people read OP's?

Also, Sony is known for alot more open standards than they are propietary. The Vita was a poor step outside the norm.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

Man, I wish.

As a person who was timing my PC upgrade towards the consumer version of Occulus, my interests cratered today. I still have some conservation hopes it will be okay.

 

[jaypah]

Nah, I see OC doing bigger things faster with that Facebook money. Gamers will float the Rift through the next few years until a mass market "Facebook" crowd jumps on it, spurred on by some craze. Sports viewing, virtual tours, whatever... Maybe folks will have scene scanning cameras that can take a scene and turn it into a 3D Rift file. Or 360 degree attachment for their phones so when you play back a video you can look all around as if you were there. Who knows?

 

[KJ869]

If they officially go suppport PC, then yes. If its left for PC-people then no, as there wont be enought support for games and nobody has stated that the vr-solutions are similar enought not the need some tweaking for each.

 

[Bsigg12]

No because why would you buy a PS4 for VR if the Morpheus is available on a platform that can run everything better since hardware gets better every year?

Also the Rift will be the product Oculus originally envisioned and possibly even more. Facebook won't ruin a company who has yet to put out their first product and even Zuckerburg said they weren't a hardware company so they're going to leave all that to the team at Oculus. All they are doing is a forward thinking purchase to be ready for the enevitable VR revolution so they can lead it.

 

[Dabanton]

If anything Sony is aiming for the same place Oculus + Facebook sees VR going.

Also Sony has never really showed any real want to release it's PS products to work on PC and why would they? They want you to buy a PlayStation. Don't expect them to be any kind of 'saviour'.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

I don't think Sony is going to support PC. They will use VR as another way to attract people to the PS4. They talked about gaming and virtual tours iirc. Poor Oculus. RIP.

 

[coolasj19]

How?
Im talking about a PC product, not the PS4. Do people read OP's?
Also, Sony is known for alot more open standards than they are propietary. The Vita was a poor step outside the norm.

Sony doesn't have a PC product. The OP is presented as if Sony has said they're interested in a PC product. As far as I know, they've said nothing. So when speculating, we should go on what we have now, not what we want. Bringing Morpheus in its current form seems more likely than an entirely new product just for PC.

The dumb proprietary drivers on my Vaio say otherwise. But that was 4 years ago, so things have probably changed since then.

 

[dark10x]

I certainly hope they extend it to the PC. Would be foolish to lock it up behind the PS4 exclusively.

If it supported both PS4 and PC I would certainly choose this over Oculus.

 

[GhostTrick]

Sure, if they make something better than their actual prototype. If they make it open. If they don't have some propietary things...

The main problem here is the "Facebookaton". As far as I'm concerned, people are just overreacting, and in the wrong way.

All I see is good news for Oculus Rift. Those guys came from a hand-made prototype, with limited money, relying on poor smartphone parts... and right now, they have access to the best tech available and have means to product them much, much faster.

They came from the small company against a giant, since Sony introduced their own thing, to a big company with bigger funds.

Also, for the people concerned about Oculus not being aimed at gamers/videogames.... do you care that the TV you're playing on was first and foremost meant to watch TV shows or movies ? Because that's what Oculus Rift is: A peripheral. The main point is the hardware, once you have the hardware, you can done anything you want with it.

 

[quantumnerd]

It uses HDMI and USB.

It will work fine on PCs

If the final version doesn't use HDMI, but uses wireless whatever, we may have a problem. More likely, we will have a problem getting accelerational data out of it over USB (need drivers) and tracking the lights with a PS Eye (need drivers).

 

[cuyahoga]

Yes, but they might be missing the forest for the trees.

 

[ZehDon]

As has been mentioned already, Playstation is really Sony's saving grace at this point. They'll do whatever is possible to push as much business towards the Playstation brand as possible. Having said that, I don't think they're above Morpheus hitting the PC with some kind of parity clause, ensuring everything developed for it hits the Playstation.

A little off-topic, but I think it comes down to a money decision. If Sony can produce the Morpheus consumer version for cheap enough that they can make an OK profit off just the hardware, I think they'll throw the PC crowd a bone. If the profit margin is tiny, or they take a loss, it'll never come to the PC, because they have to ensure software sales to make up the difference.

 

[_hekk05]

Even though PC is a moving target, I don't think Morpheus needs to have an iteration every year or something. As long as it's speccs are decent, like 1080p 110 fov, at least 95+ fps, etc etc, they would be good enough for the PC crowd. Got extra processing power? Get better AA or supersample your graphics.

 

[Ryaaan14]

No. Oculus will occupy the hardcore and casual. Let's not forget Sony is aiming towards the casual as well. Just Oculus has $2bil behind it now.

 

[CadetMahoney]

My oculus interest absolutely plummeted today.

1st post nails it.

 

[AmyS]

Now I'm starting to think Sony and Nintendo would make the perfect team to fight Facebook-Rift. Nintendo would have Sony covered on the handheld side and Nintendo wouldn't have to worry about launching another home console. The next main console Mario and Zelda would be developed for a next-gen version of Morpheus on PS5, Nintendo could devote most of its resources toward software, not counting 3DS's successor.

Just kidding, but I don't know what to think after yesterday.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

I hope they open it for PC use, coz limiting it to PS4 only is a quick way to kill it. Doesn't matter of the PS4 sells 100million units, you've still tied the system to one horse.
The full potential of these VR sets is with the indie community for sure.

 

[shouamabane]

Yeah, today's announcement killed Oculus for me. I'm still waiting to see more from Sony.

 

[Wiktor]

No. Because Sony's kit will be outdated pretty soon. So it won't work in PC market. Meanwhile Occulous will keep on improving and most likely the team will actually get more R&D money and support from Facebook than Morpheus will do from Sony. Also..Rift will propably be a lot cheaper too.

Plus besides funds and resources the deal with Facebook gives VR the opportunity to go mainsteam, which will help with wide adoption, which in turn will give the device wider devs support, which will also benefit the hardcore userbase.

Bassicaly now Rift has gotten an opportunity to switch from niche success to true massmarket phenomenon.

 

[Canis lupus]

No. Because Sony's kit will be outdated pretty soon. So it won't work in PC market. Meanwhile Occulous will keep on improving and most likely the team will actually get more R&D money and support from Facebook than Morpheus will do from Sony.

I doubt anyone but a small group of hardcore in the pc market care if the panel is 1080p or 1440p or not. They just want to see VR, and Morpheus does VR good.

 

[The Crimson Kid]

There is an immense opportunity here for Sony to establish their headset as the effective standard for PC as well as console with Morpheus. It's just up for Sony to take it. In addition to the increased potential user base Sony could sell hardware to, supporting Morpheus on PC would strengthen the product versus Oculus and would help the PS4 in the fight against Microsoft and other potential competitors.

Buying a VR headset is going to be a big ask for consumers due to a high price and a lack of content, let alone expecting people to buy both for each platform. It is likely that those interested in VR will only choose one headset to buy, and Oculus currently has the advantage due to having a larger established content base and being on a more powerful platform.

Sony has three big challenges currently with Morpheus:
-garnering a large level of support for it, especially from third parties and indies, to prevent a Move-like peripheral failure
-competing with Oculus (and eventually Valve?)
-leveraging an exclusive experience to gain an advantage over Microsoft

Providing proper PC support for Morpheus would help to resolve all of these challenges.

Properly supporting PC gives Sony a nice competitive advantage over Oculus by working on multiple platforms, as well as expanding the potential audience for Morpheus past the console crowd. This will likely tip the scales for multi-platform gamers towards choosing Morpheus and it may even get some PC-only gamers to pick up a PS4 to use their headset with it for Sony's exclusives.

Selling to a larger audience and being compatible with multiple platforms will have several effects. Most importantly, it will increase the likelihood that Morpheus sells enough for publishers to justify supporting it (Ubisoft said they needed to sell 1 million for them to consider support). By being available on several platforms, not only will Sony increase sales of the unit, they will ensure that Morpheus gets the focus (if not exclusive) VR support from publishers due to having all of the VR market on Ps4 in addition to a good share of the market on PC.

Also, I firmly believe that indies would step up big time on PC to support Morpheus. In addition to the Oculus backlash, Sony will be hungry for VR experiences to show off on PS4, and plenty of savvy indie developers making VR games would love to get their game picked up by Sony for the PS4 for Sony to show off and place in a curated spot on the PS store instead of getting looked over on PC.

And finally, for Sony, every game that has VR support (whether first party, third party, or indie) not only gives the headset a greater value and a greater audience, it gives the PS4 a larger and larger competitive advantage against Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, or whoever else is fighting for the living room. Simple plug-and-play VR will make every other box out there look last-gen if Sony can get VR to catch on. I look at Facebook's plans with VR and I think that Sony is in a much better position to deliver on those visions quicker than Facebook can due to Sony's expertise with hardware production and with music, movies, and games as their home turf compared to how Facebook sees that as foreign territory.

I think that Sony is better positioned than anyone else for making VR a mainstream thing in the medium-term, but at the moment, VR is still in a fertile stage where all that growth is occurring on PC. I don't think that just making Uncharted for VR and a few other games on PS4 will be enough for Morpheus to compete against the continuing innovation we've seen with VR on the PC. If Sony really wants their headset to succeed, they're going to have to go where the growth is occurring.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

Im talking about a PC product, not the PS4. Do people read OP's?

Also, Sony is known for alot more open standards than they are propietary. The Vita was a poor step outside the norm.

They are?

 

[Durante]

As you say, that would require them to constantly iterate, while maintaining a separate product for PS4. I really don't see that happening.

 

[soxinthebox]

I suppose they could approach MySpace :/

 

[Wiktor]

I doubt anyone but a small group of hardcore in the pc market care if the panel is 1080p or 1440p or not. They just want to see VR, and Morpheus does VR good.

But Rift will do it better and will continue to improve. VR tech is still early, whatever we'll see this year or the next will be utter crap in 3 more years. You might not think it matters, but even the tiniest tech advantage still beats the "I hate facebook" argument pro-Morpheus

 

[Metalingus5150]

They do have an opportunity. Whether they jump on it remains to be seen. I don't think they will personally.

 

[StuBurns]

They always had the opportunity, and they're not taking it.

 

[EatChildren]

As long as Morpheus is locked to PlayStation 4, the little interest I have in it compared to Oculus. While the opportunity is there, it's really only there based on the panic induced hyperbole the Facebook acquisition news has generated. Facebook smashbook: worries are valid, but proof is in the execution and the fact of the matter is we don't know how Facebook will be approaching marketing, usability, and services related to Oculus. If indeed they do retain the philosophy that we've come to expect, and avoid the social network and marketing trappings so many fear, Oculus will be in an even more beneficial position than it already was pre-Facebook acquisition. One I'm not sure Sony can compete with, purely from a marketing standpoint.

Fact of the matter is that the "hardcore" market thrives on open source hardware and software, evolving in iterations at the behest of the manufacturer and/or the customers. Morpheus might be excellent tech, but Sony isn't exactly know for brilliant open source policy towards its customers. As it stands, Morpheus today is just as much of a locked, service/platform restricted device as the Facebook Oculus horror stories. I'm not sure Sony can produce and market a Morpheus device in the way the PC crowd expects while running in parallel to the PlayStation 4 device.

That said, mass market consumption will be the defining market quality of both, and VR is unproven tech in that regard. They've both got an uphill struggle, and just looking at the names quickly on paper I don't think Sony can compete with Facebook.

 

[Seanspeed]

Getting ahead of ourselves aren't we? Sure facebook is a company we all love to hate, but nothing tells me they're going to ruin Oculus or even significantly alter the plan already set out by the Oculus team going forward.

Where's the doom and gloom even coming from?

Because 'facebook = bad'. That's the extent of most people's reasoning, I'm sure.

 

[RalchAC]

Yeah, they're not taking Morpheus to the PC. The Playstation is the only thing keeping Sony afloat right now, and they're going to keep any VR developments locked up in their ecosystem.

If we had to choose a "division" as the one that carries the company I'll choose insurance services or music, to be honest. Now PS4 is doing great, but half the PS3 era was a massive loss for Sony.