Virtual Reality: are you doing any of it? Your impressions?

Discussion in 'Computers & Tech' started by gorfias, Mar 10, 2019.

  1. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And how well will it last in the longevity area? That is the real benchmark.

    When Fallout VR came out, you saw tons of videos and reviews come out about it. Then, it largely died. One of the YouTubers I follow even admitted he has not played it after the first month. He played with it, beat the game once, then put it away. But he still regularly makes new content on the old PC version of the game.

    He just prefers it on the PC. And one of his biggest complaints was that it is just more comfortable to play for 6 hours in order to get 30 minutes of video content on a PC than it is on a VR version.

    Yes, there is always potential. But the vast majority of us still prefer the old way, because we do not want to spend our entire lives cut off from our "real world". I want to be able to pause the game and talk to my family, not have to take off the headset in order to do it. And I can talk to my wife or son while playing Fallout on a console without interruption. Make eye contact with them, and interact. Something I just can not do with VR.

    Porn however, that is a perfect medium for VR. That is unquestionably a "solitary interaction", and is not where you want to interact with others. Which is why it is great for VR.

    And yea, the new Half-Life. Like the earlier releases of Fallout and other games, I do expect a lot of sales. And within a month or so, the demand to largely die. I still see new content almost daily for older games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but funny that the VR releases (Fallout 4, Skyrim) are hardly mentioned anymore.

    To give an idea, one of the bigger VR titles was Skyrim VR. 2.2 million sales. Impressive, but a fraction of the over 30 million units of Skyrim sold. Enough to make their money back for the production costs, and to make the claim they are "cutting edge". But do not expect it to be more than a niche market for another decade or more.

    Fallout 4, over 15 million units sold. Fallout VR, 500k units sold. And that is behind Skyrim mostly because of overseas sales. The "Fallout Universe" is both based in a real world and highly US based, and has real world nations as adversaries. China is a huge market for games now, and since that is the main enemy in the Fallout backstory it has not been very popular there (or in most countries outside of the US). Where as Skyrim is entirely fictional, so has no strong cultural bias.

    I base this analysis on real world numbers, in sales and long term playability. I am sure Half-Life VR will sell very well. Nut how many will be playing it in a year from now? It is going on 5 years now and I still play Fallout 4. How many are still playing Fallout VR after 2 years?
     
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  2. gorfias

    gorfias Well-Known Member

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    Thank you. An interesting analysis. I concede I don't much play my Wii games. Much better to relax with my 360 controller on PC. My Mixed Reality headset mostly gets touched to dust it. Resident Evil 7 VR also got good reviews. From your observations, it likely is not doing well long term either.
     
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  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Over the decades, I have seen a great many fads come and go. And the real way to tell is to see (or extrapolate) how it will do in 2, 5, 10, and 20 years. Will the use increase, decrease, or largely stay the same.

    VR has been around for decades. And it has yet to really move out of a niche market, other than porn. And it is not that nobody has invested money into it. Some place the investment into developing the Google Glass between $500 million and $1 billion+. And in 7 years, most estimate they have sold around 500k units. They are actually in their 4th generation now (Enterprise Edition 2), and sales are still underwhelming. I bet most are not even aware that they are in their 4th generation, no matter how much hype there was when they first came out.

    VR, Wearables, it is all mostly things people use to shut up the kids, or to have to show they are "cutting edge". If there was really a demand for gameplay like that, then the Wii, Xbox Kinect, PlayStation Camera and PlayStation Eye would all be dominating the gaming industry. But they are not, in fact most are now generally considered failures.

    Failures not in that they did not make their companies money, but recognizing they were only targeting fads which were not long term viable business decisions. And of Kinect units sold, most estimate that over 75% of them were sold as part of bundles. I know I own one for my 360. It was interesting, I bought 3 games for it, played with them a bit, and have not had it hooked up for years. While interesting, the games were ultimately dull, and not all that fun to play.

    I have many hundreds of hours invested in the various Fable games. But maybe 5 hours at the most in "Fable: The Journey". standing in front of my TV and waving my hands was not an enjoyable way to play a game for more than 30 minutes or so at a time. And I just decided that trying to get to the end of it was not worth the effort.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2020
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  4. gorfias

    gorfias Well-Known Member

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    I got a bundle of VR games from Humble Bundle a few months back, including Moss, which looks very interesting. In the months since then, I haven't tried it. Yesterday I grinded some more on Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order on my Xbox, seated comfortably before a 75" Samsung 4K. Been playing that almost non-stop.

    Time to start looking for some VR porn I guess if I'm gonna make use of this thing :)
     
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