The quality of a user's experience with the Oculus is going to be directly correlated to the quantity and quality of games/experiences available for the device. Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem. Quantity/quality are even more important to the user after making such a significant investment.
The problem here is if developers will be able to make money creating quality experiences for Oculus if the userbase is tiny because no one can afford one. The user market is already being fractured by the different units available - if I develop a game for the HTC Vive (which supports room tracking) is it easy or even possible to port the experience to the Oculus?
Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base (XBOX/PS4/PC/etc). Due to the nature of VR a quality experience is going to require a significant investment to build. If companies can't recoup that cost they'll stop developing and if there aren't any killer experiences people will stop buying the Rift.
For Oculus (or any of the upcoming units) to be successful they need to walk the line between quality and price, and I'm not sure they've done it.
I'm starting to think Sony is in a better position even though it's looking like they have inferior hardware.
The problem is that you're associating quality with only AAA titles. There are have been plenty of quality indie titles for years now.
> Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem.
I don't know about the oculus store, but there's already enough content with existing titles on Steam.
Another way to look at it is that the Oculus isn't just a peripheral, it's a platform. Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base, which in turn draws developers and subsequently a larger library which leads to more platform purchases.
Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR. The best experiences, and the ones that will drive sales will be designed specifically for VR.
Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.
So everybody, even the AAA guys, are going to be putting you into environments like cartoons, space and buildings rather than natural environments, and the people you interact with are going to be in vehicles or space suits or avatars or anything to avoid having to model a human face.
So, ironically, AAA budgets probably aren't going to be a hugely limiting factor, at least in the first wave of VR games, in my opinion.
I agree that AAA games have the marketing power to broaden appeal. However, indie gaming is becoming a powerhouse of sorts. Look at the Steam Top Sellers list at any time, and you'll usually see at least half the games listed there being indies. Currently, it looks to be a solid 50/50, although I'm sure the residual affects of the last Steam sale are there.
Something with the viral appeal of Minecraft, released for the Oculus, would be a massive draw.
Well there are plenty of great 3D indie games as well, so it's a moot point.
> Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base
That happened generations ago. With the growth of the internet, now they're inefficient gatekeepers compared to the app stores, notably Steam. It's much easier and cheaper for developers of all sizes to make a release on an App Store. How this translates to gamers is that they get a lot more variety of quality content that risk averse giant publishers would never approve for release, let alone development.
> Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR
Yes, but this is a PC release with an audience that's accustomed to tinkering (mods, custom desktops, ...)
> Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.
When consoles like the NES, Genesis, PS One, Xbox, and the Wii were first released, you can say the same thing about plenty of 3rd party titles. That didn't turn off consumers from video games altogether.
EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_video_games
You can also adapt many AAA games to 3d glasses with minimal issues. The physics and models are unchanged just a 'minor' change to the UI and renderer.
The Vive will be as expensive and likely more expensive than the Rift.
> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base
Oculus has already paid for a number of Rift exclusive games. Expect them to keep doing that.
Not to mention, it's only 1 game... for this to work, pretty much 99% of AAA titles need to be designed for VR (not just the "enable VR" checkbox).
Call of Duty Black Ops III was just released... no VR support. Battlefront was just released, same thing. These are the AAA titles that would bring support... but they aren't. (it also shows Facebook et al did a terrible job of convincing AAA studios to think towards VR... which could be a nail in the VR coffin in they don't come around on their own).
(and yes, I know there are ways to get both games to work with VR... but it's not native, and the game wasn't designed with VR in mind).
Given it can take 1-2 years to develop a AAA title, it could be a long while before we see it becoming the "norm". In the meantime, all of Oculus' competitors will be on the market, probably cheaper and better (due to learning from the first-to-market's mistakes).
(Although expect to see people playing FPSs on virtual IMAX-like screens in VR. A little bit of stable context can mitigate the nausea.)
But why are you counting the titles available today? The Rift hasn't even been released yet. Even if they are planning to adapt those titles, there's not much incentive for EA and Activision to rush their ports out.
The development kits have been out for years. The failure to bring big AAA titles to the Rift at launch clearly shows one of two things:
1) Facebook et all were unsuccessful in persuading AAA studios to work with them on VR for relative lined-up launches.
2) Facebook et all did not try to persuade AAA studios to work with them on VR, instead opting for it to grow "organically".
Both are total failures for the Rift, and may spell disaster. For an expensive device like this, it needs several AAA titles featuring full support... they don't exist.
Part of this miraculous unplanned and very sudden firesale to Facebook was so that Oculus could have "virtually unlimited funds", which would be used to further the platform... Facebook could have easily subsidized AAA studios to produce full Oculus/VR support on their next title... but that clearly didn't happen.
AAA status is usually reserved for big studios that produce many games of high quality(ish), and yes, with big budgets (GTA5 cost over $265 MM to create).
A parallel would be a big budget movie produced by Sony vs. Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars was produced by successful people within the film industry, but it's not on the same level as a full production.
> $105 million (and counting) in dev costs
Well, that's not in dev costs... that's money raised... and they're trying to bootstrap a company at the same time, so not all of that money will even go to the game development (unlike a big budget big studio development where literally every penny of their quoted budget is in development cost as the business is already established and earning on it's own).
I think of the Palm and WinMo phones I paid $500+ for during the early generations of smartphones and it starts to make more sense. And just as I'm sure those devices from Palm and HTC could've been a lot nicer even with the tech of the day, the price would've pushed into the $1000 range. Gen 1 is always gonna be fairly expensive and still not quite as good as you wish it was. With later revisions, price drops and capabilities go up.
The only issue I see here is that rather than looking at relative openness and ability to run in-development software on something like the Vive or the Rift, many people are going to look only at price and wait for something like a $300 Playstation VR headset that's limited to whatever can be sold and approved for a game console.
As I see it, it's still an early-adopter techie toy/luxury so whether it costs $399 or $599, I'd only really buy it if I had that sort of dough in my "fun stuff I don't need" budget. Even as someone who bought a Rift DK2 at launch, I'm both waiting on buying any consumer device and not too concerned with the price difference between a $400 device and a $600 device. If anything ends up striking me as really worth buying, I won't just buy a lesser device to save a couple hundred bucks. I'd rather wait until I see something I really want and will use and not buy anything at all until then.
This is what I imagine will be the most common outcome here. Sure the Rift is 'only' $600, but you need a $400 video card to make it work on top of a decent rig, so a minimum $1500 investment?
Meanwhile, millions of kids with Xboxes and PS4's already have everything they need for a perhaps lesser experience, but come xmas that $299 console headset is going to be crazy attractive. The hands on reviews I've read with Morpheus compared it to a later model Rift. No idea how it stacks to this new consumer model, but if Sony can sell that level of resolution and performance on consoles, then its going to hurt Oculus severely. As someone who owns both I'm leaning on wating for the consoles to ante up. I think the PC end of VR is going to be a lot of half assed indie games, non-VR games tied to some crappy driver that makes them 'VR' but with a very poor experience, general steam shovelware/paid beta's, and demos masquerading as "games" while the consoles will only allow polished AAA products on their VR platform.
Later on, sure, there will be plenty of fully commercialized and polished software on every VR platform that's still around but right now this is inherently an early-adopter platform. Sony will offer a handful of launch titles that work with Morpheus and maybe let you rent VR movies for $20 a pop. But when the HMD is just a peripheral, you'll get the polished stuff as well as the beta stuff and honestly that's where all of the cool software and applications are gonna be for a little while still.
I can't imagine Sony allowing something like Riftmax Theater or letting you use something like VorpX to simulate playing your games on a giant 3D IMAX screen. I'll never get to enable beta VR support in a game like I can with Steam and I'll never get to fire up Unreal Engine and model out some neat stuff, hit "play", and then walk around it in VR.
Basically if AAA games are your priority, Sony and other console-type platforms will be more polished but probably more limited. If you're here as an early adopter with enthusiasm for VR as a platform and eager to try out every new concept or application, you're better off with a more open platform for creation and distribution.
And as for the cost, needing a $400 video card only applies to some people. Since I already need and use a computer for lots of things, I tend to spend the extra money on a nice GPU instead of a gaming console for roughly the same cost. This won't apply to everyone but it's the market that PC-based VR is after at the moment. My GPU cost me $100 more than the launch price of a PS4 with no additional peripherals and lets me play any new games (as well as my huge library of older ones) at 2560x1440 with all the bells and whistles. I think for a lot of people who enjoy gaming and multimedia work/hobby, it's a solid way to go.
Either way, in 5-10 years it'll go the way of much other consumer tech and you'll be able to get top performance at mainstream, affordable prices. The high costs and tradeoffs on various platforms right now will become less of an issue with volume sales and mature hardware/software.
Interesting comparison, but most people are able to finance phones through their carrier (although I haven't looked into that for a bleeding edge new phone model).
The interesting question is how long before this version of the Rift becomes obsolete, or will Oculus provide a contract-based upgrade plan (like for phones).
I'd be totally OK with it costing $1000 if it could really provide a great VR experience.
Right now they have a serious expectation management problem with their price - they're turning off customers because they nearly doubled their asking price overnight. Those free units would translate into a sizeable discount for their paying retail customers, so I argue that the problem here is both real and self-inflicted.
[1] http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/build-an-amazing-gef...
Regarding the other things - the fact that nice components exist is entirely irrelevant to the failures of expectation management here. If NVIDIA spent 2 years marketing the Titan X as the best GPU to have at the $1k price point, and then on launch day it's suddenly $2k - their customers would very justifiably be pissed and it would certainly affect sales.
It's neither here nor there, but you can also cut build costs quite a bit further than they did in that article. You can bring it down to about $800 for the same set of core components. Buy the CPU at MicroCenter, use the stock CPU fan instead of a cooler, buy a refurb 970 from EVGA, look for a 750W Gold PSU around the $50 mark, buy a cheaper mobo, buy cheaper memory. You can even go cheaper if you make some minor compromises - use a 2500k and overclock, get a refurb 780 Ti from EVGA B-stock (same performance as a 970), and you can also drop the HDD until you really need more space. That lets you squeeze at least another $200 out of it pretty easily without affecting performance, which would get you down to around $600.
I doubt it. Initial runs are always more expensive because you're paying for the initial tooling and investment, not necessarily because of the actual raw price of the unit. Depending on minimum size commitments and the like with the manufacturers, the 7k "free" units may even be netting a discount on the remaining unit costs.
I think you are wrong on that. I honestly doubt the 6500 free units they are giving out would actually affect the price at all. Think about this, what would have been worse, your 6500 most loyal and vocal customers being pissed because the price of an oculus rift was doubled overnight or goodwill from dropping the price of a rift 10 dollars?
With that in mind, 7k free units may very well indeed be sizable.
Regardless, they already pissed off most of their original backers during the sudden-no-forementioned sale to Facebook (which to this day remains a bizarre marriage). Sure, it may make some folks feel better, but it's unlikely to tip the scales in any sizable manner (or effect the eventual outcome of bringing this product to market).
$599 is nothing for their target: a Dell "Gaming Monitor" is $699.99 (S2716DG) for instance.
Avid gamers do have a habit of going overboard on things, such as buying 64GB+ of RAM even though they never use it (and wont unless they run VM's, or huge services/server software, etc...).
It's easy to spend $2,000-$4,000+ on a super high end gaming rig, but in reality the $1,000 rig will game just fine for a long while before mandating upgrades.
The monitor will last you for at least five years, the Rift will be outdated within the year.
I'm very interested to try Oculus, but not until the price is around other gaming accessories (i.e. south of 200€). Unless someone comes out with game or app that completely revolutionalizes the way we use computers I'm not forking over 750€ for a fad
Just wondering if we would think the same way if Apple had launched this even for something as high as $1000.
Perception matters. The apple watch is median $500. And its not even something novel. Watches have existed since hundreds of years.
I think Apple will come to launch VR sometime in the future and it will be ~$1000, and people will buy without blinking, because people will think it's Apple, and a expensive product means a good product.
You have to be really rich, and have the right attitude to think that just cause something is expensive it is good.
I spend a lot of money with Apple, but I'm always paying attention to cost-- I count every penny, and if I could get comparable quality elsewhere I would certainly consider it.
The thing is, nobody is making decent laptops, or mobile phones or watches to compete with Apple, certainly not at Apple's price points. Those who think Apple is expensive have a much lower threshold for what is "Good" -- which is fine, they are not using the items in the same way I am.
The few OSX gamers I know just gave up and run parallels or bootcamp.
VR could be the next paradigm shift, but it might not be.
If it is then the transformation could arguably be bigger than mobile was and the hardware/software companies can't ignore it. Games may just be the first obvious application.
While autonomous cars have been more obviously coming since 2012, VR is more uncertain. I'd imagine Apple is doing some work here though or at least watching it closely.
really? seems fine to me. this is cheaper than most high end tv / monitors.
tech early adopters and taste makers have six figure incomes, many are just straight up rich.
Of course we all understand why Oculus does not want to offer cheaper, low spec models that might fill the "beginner model" gap. In that kind of situation, maybe Oculus would do well offering franchise kits for rent-a-rift shops. The last remaining video stores might be a good match, the audience is open for technological home entertainment and their economic situation is likely to be desperate enough to try new side lines.
http://www.tomsguide.com/faq/id-2355037/minimize-oculus-rift...
The Rift itself, in conjunction with good software, is excellent at tracking both rotation and translation motion and keeping the display in sync. More often than not, the nausea one experiences has to do with locomotion within the game. Spinning your character around with your mouse, for example, produces a spinning sensation with no corresponding input from your equilibrium, resulting in a sick feeling in some people.
The good news is: Many people are able to "get their VR legs" by starting with simple experiences and slowing introducing more complex ones.
It's like blaming the plate for overeating.
To use a food analogy: You sell pizza, it is the best pizza in town, but the delivery driver sucks and food is constantly arriving cold or smashed. Your patrons aren't going to care that you always blame the delivery driver for the problems, or that the pizza COULD be good if not ruined, they're going to either shop somewhere else or quit buying delivered pizza. Same thing here, regardless who ruined the thing, the experience is still the same.
I absolutely would not blame the restaurant if my GrubHub delivery guy ruined the order.
And regardless, what the mythical "average consumer" does or doesn't do is immaterial. You should know better.
I don't know if "blame" is the right word, but eating off a large plate does make you more prone to overeating.
I don't need a wireless xbox controller, I have 2 sitting right next to me.
I have no interest in those two games, they'll be thrown on the stack of AOL floppies, Colin McRae: Dirt download codes, and McAfee CDs I have gathering dust in the corner.
The headphones are nice I guess if you don't have wireless ones but I do so they'll be relegated to the bin.
The Oculus Remote doesn't appear to be integral, it just looks like an optional accessory you could use instead of another input means.
One of the reasons I think Oculus went with an onboard DAC is to precisely sync audio, visuals, and head tracking. Using a non-Oculus audio pipeline could introduce unpredictable timing and a worse experience.
This doesn't include their touch controller, if that's what you mean. If it did I'd consider buying it (I'm still annoyed by 30 dollar shipping costs).
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10723568/oculus-rift-remote...
I do wish they'd sell it without the Xbox One controller since I already have 2x wireless 360 controllers. Nothing in the new one sounds particular worth re-buying.
I might be priced out this generation regardless. Ah well.
They did charge a relative high amount for the dev' kits and made wishy washy claims that they could produce the consumer version for less.