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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I never heard anyone really passionately speak about the 3D experience. It was always marketing speech with movie-goers sometimes buying into the expectation. But after experiencing it, no one ever was really passionate about it. At most they would slightly prefer, and even so I think it was because the confounding factor that 3D sessions are also played in the largest screens and the best sound system.

But for VR? It is a niche, for sure, but I know a few people really enjoy it.

It can be a niche forever (like high end sound equipment) or it can grow into mainstream (like TV), I have no idea, but I doubt it will fade away.

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Unfortunately, I don't think it can be a niche forever, assuming it's a gaming platform. As we see from game developers in this thread, a platform with a too-small audience is uneconomical. That's true even when the platforms are as similar as Windows and Mac. It'll be way more true given that VR is a very different experience.

Apparently Quest sales figures aren't public, but I see estimates that they sold a million units last year. Nintendo sold that many Switches last month. And the month before that. And the month before that. (And in December it was something like 5 million/month.)

However much niche users enjoy it, I have a hard time seeing how they'll sustain enough of a developer ecosystem to keep them entertained. High end sound equipment can draft off of every music player in the world for content. But good VR is very much VR-specific.

Dude, Half Life just came out on VR. It's not a niche anymore.

That doesn't prove it's not a niche, dude.

Valve, like a lot of other companies, hopes that VR will become a thing, so they're making a headset. Because they'd like to sell headsets, they took a major property and made a VR version. If they lose money on their VR version of Half Life, they're fine with that.

Some game makers will surely try VR versions as well. This could be a big wave, and they want to be ready, so it's ok to lose money. But if unit sales aren't there, they're not going to keep doing it. In which case, things could well end up just like every other attempt at VR going back to Nintendo's 1995 effort. Or like the various waves of 3D movies and TV, where everybody's really excited for a hot minute and then people stop caring.

You can try to reason all you want, the fact is that today there is a Half Life game that is only playable on VR. It's a significant fact.

I am not denying the fact. I'm saying it doesn't prove that VR has gone mainstream. It's a valiant attempt on Valve's part to make that happen, but it's just an attempt.

We’ll see in a year.

That would be great, but I doubt it. I've been having this discussion since 1997 or so. VR will always have true believers who believe that this is the year. A year later, they just have a different reason. It's the same deal with Bitcoin advocates: https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1071833726294749184

> I've been having this discussion since 1997

I tried VR back then, and I tried VR now. It sounds like you haven't tried it now? I've seen people crying because they couldn't believe how crazy it was. Just give it a try!

Ah yes, the assumption of ignorance and the belief that if I only try it I'll become a convert. Two more tiresome features of quasi-religious discussions.

I have tried it a number of times, including the current generation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23048814

what games have you tried? I guess trying a shitty experience does not help

‘Doom just came out for the Atari Jaguar. It’s gonna be huge!’

From the perspective of everyone not in the niche, the difference between it fading away and being a niche is minimal.

Let me say in no uncertain terms that there will be a time soon when desk monitors and tvs will be present but not the main display, and their sales will drop at that point. To me, it's more "when" than "if." To reach that tipping point two things need to first occur: there needs to be an ~300 USD headset with specs comparable to the current Valve Index, there need to be improvements to hand & finger tracking so existing workflows begin translating directly into the virtual environment. When those two things transpire, give it like 3-5 years tops, and I'll think you'll see a state change.

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