VR could seize its moment – if the big players would cooperate
gamesindustry.biz
gamesindustry.biz
The author tends to push pretty hard on Oculus for being a different platform from SteamVR. Would they be okay if Valve were forced to give up their technology stack and conform to Oculus' technology stack, storefronts and all?
No, I doubt it.
I argue the inverse to be true. It's far too early to worry about standardization, when we don't even know what works yet. Forcing PC VR vendors to conform to other vendors' standards will only stifle innovation.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. This might not be great for PC VR, but VR itself is doing better. Between the Oculus Quest and PSVR, the VR industry is growing just fine.
I guess you could also argue that the only reason VR took of is because the big players saw it as a chance to own the platform side of things. We'll see what happens, I just hope that Facebook doesn't end up owning the whole thing, because I trust Facebook as far as I can throw them.
That doesn't mean that others aren't working on different technology.
I think the only real threat to Facebook in the VR space is Sony. Valve really isn't pushing their platform that hard, and the other players just don't matter. I really hope they don't just give up on PC VR because their "if you build it, they will come" approach isn't working out.
Like I said, VR itself isn't under threat. It's mainly PC VR that's suffering.