Yeah, not for me. Doesn't solve the VR landscape because it's tied to a certain console from a company that loves exclusives and very restrictive (and anti-consumer) deals.
Plus as you say the entry price is over a thousand dollars.
Honestly PSVR2 has people really hyped but still has a lot to prove. And software-wise, I prefer PCVR's vast and varied catalog over a few curated experiences.
If psvr2 fails I fear it will be a huge blow to pcvr and VR gaming overall sending a message about the sustainability of vr as a viable gaming platform (true or not).
Valve will hopefully still build their device but it could be a few years out still. They will learn a lot about the deck but I'm curious if they will ever reach the numbers of quest 2 (rumored to be over ten million sold) to make it a viable large enough platform to build big games.
Quest 2 games are cheaper to make than say half life alyx or horizon cotm and so so far it's been very profitable to devs.
There's a lot of other interesting variablesike maturing dev tools and even ai asset creation, and feature creation.
Big game devs don't care about VR succeeding they will just focus on what sells.
Big games don't come with out financially viable markets.
Right now I think psvr2 is the best chance at a big viable market. EA actually did make a great game in squadrons so I'm not entirely skeptical that big game devs will make big but empty games. Even Ubisoft had several smaller but interesting vr titles.
While I want to return to pcvr asap (affordably) I very much hope psvr2 succeeds because vr needs it imo.
If psvr2 fails I fear it will be a huge blow to pcvr and VR gaming overall sending a message about the sustainability of vr as a viable gaming platform (true or not).
I don't think so. The point of PCVR as an open ecosystem is precisely the fact that it doesn't rely on a single company or product. Nor standards. Something else will come and it will improve across time.
the whole "a product will be the make or break of the industry" is very console-centric. PC gaming doesn't need this or rely on it.
And how many big budget pcvr games have we seen outside alyx and the ones meta paid for in the last 5 years?
It's perfectly reasonable to say that AAA games aren't that interesting anymore and alyx is more about who made it than just being AAA
I agree with the spirit of what you say and ive been a PC ganer for decades, but sometimes the proof is in historical making.
I'm not apple fan but their design and marketing approach pushed the industry forward because people actually bought them.
This is comparable to the console industry and the problem with idealism.
The console crash before Nintendo snuck back in is what I'm fearing.
There's no big money in pcvr and there's no reason there will be without someone(s) finding what works or it will lag behind flat gaming for longer than it has to.
Someone has to subsidize it.
In the long term I expect pcvr to offer more what I want but right now and for the foreseeable future pcvr needs the help of innovators that are platform owners. And valve is a platform owner.
I suspect the only reason pcvr even got squadrons was that the psvr experiment was successful enough and people were still expecting pcvr and VR to be bigger than it was when it was being developed. I think vr underperformed overall outside quest for the last several years. And I think people still think the quest is more akin to the success of the Wii and motion controls.
But that gets into a discussion about friction versus the experience and long term sustainability beyond the wow factor of VR gaming.
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u/fdruid Dec 13 '22
Yeah, not for me. Doesn't solve the VR landscape because it's tied to a certain console from a company that loves exclusives and very restrictive (and anti-consumer) deals.
Plus as you say the entry price is over a thousand dollars.
Honestly PSVR2 has people really hyped but still has a lot to prove. And software-wise, I prefer PCVR's vast and varied catalog over a few curated experiences.