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Would releasing the PSVR on the Personal Computer have a negative effect?

There's going to be separate versions of games for Oculus and Vive, sold on separate stores, that will have gone through different submission processes to be on the platform.

There is some exclusive software, but the whole point of openVR is that the game can be agnostic of the hardware.
The games will support new hardware without any modifications to the actual game.
 
http://gamerant.com/oculus-rift-next-gen-xbox-one-ps4/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-rift-for-xbox-one-or-ps4-anything-is-possib/1100-6427135/

Different people there seem to be saying different things.
The creator seems to be very against it, but I've seen a few other people who were saying it was a possibility.

Overall, I think it's more likely for Sony to support PC, than OR to support PS4 based on certain comments.
What comments? We have Palmer saying that consoles suck, but that seems more like a rote regurgitation of a standard PC Elitist argument than something he actually thought through; around the same time he was saying gamepads suck, and now he's bundling one as the primary input device for his new toy. Anyway, he argues that consoles are too stagnant to bother with, but it's the stagnancy that's a strong argument in favor of support; once they do the work required to get CV1 running on PS4, they're done, and they now have access to all of those customers. Once that's done, they can release CVs 2 through 12 without thinking about PlayStation support at all because they're already covered there, and in three or four years when PS5 drops, they just need to make sure CV13 works with it to be covered for another five years or more.

Anyway, more recently, one of their veeps said they've talked to Sony about Rift working there, and that anything is possible, so it sounds like that route is being actively pursued, at least.

All I've personally heard from Sony is, "Umm, we don't really make PC stuff; we make stuff for PlayStation." What else have they said that makes you think PSVR->PC is more likely than Rift->PS4?
 
Do you know what opportunity costs are? Sony don't have an unlimited supply of money. What's a better use of the money they do have?

  • Having hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in inventory supplying discount headsets to PC gamers in the hopes that a handful of them will pick up a PS4 and a copy of RIGS rather than endlessly arguing that if Sony really wanted to be successful, they'd just port RIGS to Windows.
  • Having hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in the development of another half-dozen games of the quality of RIGS.



Okay, so it seems that you do understand how businesses work. You just need to think things through a bit more.

"Buy it for a dollar, sell it for two," you say, and right you are. That's why we're here; to make money. Right? Sony's business model for their consoles is a little more complicated though. "Build it for a dollar, sell it for a dollar, then license ten accessories for it that earn us a dime each, including one we made ourselves that hopefully profits ten or twenty cents all on its own." You're basically saying that they should set up a charity wing of their business, skipping the part of the process where they earn a return on their investment, basically entirely for the purpose of providing low-cost hardware to someone else's customers. As you say, a couple of those people might buy the 1st-party PSVR game that earns Sony ~15¢ but Sony are supposed to be looking for a $1 return on every $1 they invest, not 15¢ on a few of the dollars and 0¢ on the rest of them, right?

Another point you don't seem to have thought through is manufacturing costs. You correctly point out that manufacturing costs for the headsets will drop — especially if they're making lots of them — but forget the fact that by the time the headset costs half as much to build, they'll be selling it for half as much as well, just as they do with the PS4. So again, there's no opportunity for them to profit down the road, meaning you're still arguing they operate as a charity.

Also, I think you're grossly overestimating the number of Rift-class PCs that there are and will be compared to PS4s. You point out that there were nearly a million people with a 970 or better as of like six months ago, right?
Where'd you get that number anyway?
So after about eight months of global availability, 970-or-better processors still hadn't equalled what Sony sold in a single day of availability, just in North America. Yet you argue that in the immediate future, so many of these cards will be sold that PS4 will struggle to even remain an afterthought?? Srsly? Even if we ignore the facts that this clearly isn't happening, and that it never really has happened since console rose to prominence, then why should Sony even bother at all? Isn't their best course of action to shutter their console business as quickly as possible and jump on board the W10 bandwagon?

Oh, here's another argument of yours that's only half-valid. You correctly point out that Sony will be lucky if 20% of PS4 owners end up buying a PSVR, but then act as though every single one of these billions of imaginary Rift-class PC owners are gonna buy some form of VR, so Sony better do whatever they can to make sure the one they buy works on PlayStation too*, so it's not doomed to total irrelevancy, at least.



Well, there are lots of reasons a PC gamer might choose PSVR over one of the others. First and foremost, it sounds like it's gonna cost half of what the other headsets costs. I mean, lolSony, but that's a significant factor if all of these developers are telling the truth and it really does work just fine.

Also, there are a lot of PC gamers who believe frame rate is king, and that group is likely to grow substantially with the advent of VR (even on consoles, actually). PSVR is lower resolution than the others, but it's the only headset than can handle full 120 fps gaming. If a game targets 90 fps on Rift or Vive, simply dropping the res to 1080p might be enough to hit 120 fps on PSVR, assuming you can still get your physics and stuff done in time.

Plus, the lower specs will simply make the tech accessible to more gamers in general, because they won't need such a beefy machine to make it work. Maybe some PC devs would make games that have a 950 as a minimum recommendation instead, if they knew there were millions of users out there with a headset that could handle 1080p60, or 60 fps at all. (Really, the only reason Oculus and Valve don't allow 60 fps with frame doubling on their headsets is because they weren't able to get their hands on 120 Hz displays, and 45->90 just isn't good enough.)



You suppose it's a coincidence that after a few tweets from Palmer implying high prices, the narrative coming from the PC camp mostly went from "lolSony" to "Sony not allowing me to use their at-cost headset on my PC is simply Unjust"? :p



That's all you really care about? The ability to hack support for it? Go for it. I can't imagine enough people will try that Sony will bother to try and stop you. Just don't complain if it turns out to be really hard.

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*Okay, so let me ask everyone this. If PC stuff is supposed to be so open and flexible, why aren't you pestering Oculus and Valve/HTC for PS4 support from their headsets? If they're so unlocked and egalitarian, they should work to make sure it works on your PS4 too, right?

Well, I suppose there's the facts that they don't meet Sony's technical requirements, like the 120 Hz display and the 3D audio chip, but let's imagine that they did. There's no reason for them to not have it working on the PS4, right? It's not like Sony would block them. Why would they care? They're selling their own headsets at cost, so it makes no difference to them where you get the headset that allows you to play RIGS and EVE:Valkyrie on your PS4. They wouldn't care if your headset was Samsung any more than they care if your TV is. All they care about is selling PlayStation games, and if Oculus and Valve wanna help make it so they can sell more, great!

So aren't Oculus and Valve the ones you guys should be pestering to get their shit together here? Hurry up and make a v2 with a 120 Hz display that'll work on your PS4, and in the meantime, you can just play RIGS and Valkyrie on the ultra-affordable PSVR while you save up and wait for a decent PC headset to finally be released. ;)

I am pretty sure that stance has been around for a while and not just a recent thing.
 
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