Games sell game controllers, not the other way around.
When a sufficiently good experience is available for VR, which isn't usable without VR, then VR headsets will sell.
I've tried all the VR apps and games, and they all underwhelm.
When a sufficiently good experience is available for VR, which isn't usable without VR, then VR headsets will sell.
I've tried all the VR apps and games, and they all underwhelm.
Currently I do this with a Quest 2 attached to a Vive Deluxe Audio headstrap with 3D printed adapters and a counterweight on the back to take pressure off my face (a setup dubbed "frankenquest"). It works well enough but there's a lot of room for improvement.
It's a long way from the ultra-casual Wii experience.
You wipe it down? Is that normal?
I'm old; I ate dirt, swam in lakes and drank from a garden hose! My immune system is superman.
Yeah, Star Wars Squadrons was what sold me a VR headset. No regrets.
If you're looking for a long-lived multiplayer game, probably not. If you're just excited to sit in an X-Wing cockpit and blow up some TIE fighters then it's really great in VR.
Also while the variety in stock maps is better than its ever been, it still doesn’t hold a candle to the thousands of community maps.
You're exaggerating.
Is that true? A kinda competitor to Beat Saber is Synth Riders, and it's not wink-wink, there is official support for custom songs (and mods I think? I'm not sure). And when I get back to Beat Saber (because I like both Beat Saber and Synth Riders' game play), I feel like I'm owning an iPhone: a beautiful object but I can't actually do what I want with it
I wouldn't call it a killer app simply because these days, FPS is all about multiplayer, and a FPS multiplayer in VR is just...meh? It doesn't really work.
Really, any sort of action-packed combat is just not going to work in VR. Jumping behind cover works fine outside VR because the medium acknowledges the limitation. But in VR, trying to jump behind cover doesn't work when you have to worry about being next to the edge of your play space. VR tries to immerse you, but that immersion is limited when you can't touch your surroundings. Being crouched behind cover and peeking over it to shoot feels unnatural and immersion-breaking when you can't lean against the wall you're hiding behind.
Even as a VR supporter and owner of a Valve Index (And the HTC Vive before that), I don't know what the killer app for VR would be. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd even EXPECT there to be a true single "killer app" for VR, but rather, a collection of apps that work incredibly well in VR, or don't work without VR. Beat Saber comes up a lot, and it's fun, but I wouldn't call it the "killer app". It's just an example of something that only works in VR.
HOT
SUPER
HOT
SUPER
HOT
Yeah, SUPER HOT VR was amazing. It really makes you feel like you're in a kick-ass slow-mo action scene.
Out of ~20 people, I think there has only been one who liked something else better (the X-wing mission in SW:Battlefront).
Some people seemed hesitant to trust Meta due to it's Facebook account requirement (now removed), but for me their behaviour with Beat Saber is one reason that I'm kinda hesitant to trust them going forward.
e.g. Beat Saber has an update appear and all your mods stop functioning for a bit until verified to work with the new release. (From what I recall on the Quest version trying to mod results in some warning messages that stuff like this might result in your account getting banned, though I've never heard of them actually doing this to Beat Saber players). i.e. it's annoying and cumbersome to do, needs to be repeated for each update, and you're threatened with having your account banned (though I suspect that they'll continue to not follow through with those threats).
They'd also previously promised they were gonna add custom level support on Quest (e.g. https://twitter.com/BeatSaber/status/1182645623683727360) but despite tweaking stuff like this multiple times in 2019 that support never materialized.
Net result is that I'm mostly a Synth Riders player and tend to advise people purchasing a headset to avoid Beat Saber when looking for rhythm games.
(Synth Riders, Audio Trip, Boombox all allow custom songs out of the box and Pistol Whip finally has that scheduled for release this month - https://twitter.com/PistolWhipVR/status/1664037754550771717)
On Windows there's several utilities to keep your Beat Saber version and mods frozen. The utility I use, BSManager[0], also symlinks your beatmaps folder so it's shared between versions, making it easy to switch between arbitrary versions at will.
With that setup I play one version for extended periods and only upgrade when custom maps start using frills from newer versions. I'm currently playing on 1.27.0 even though the current version of Beat Saber is up to 1.30.0.
That's bummer, and it was worse when GPU were costing an arm and a leg, so I'd totally understand people being hesitant to jump in.
HL:Alyx got close to the "only in VR" sort of mechanics, but change 2-3 big set pieces, and it could very much be done on a 2D screen.
I've tested VR sporadically ever since the first Oculus Rift came out, and I just get a headache after 15 minutes and that kind of has ruined it for me forever I guess as I now associate VR with motion sickness, bad ergonomics etc. That's very personal of course, I know there are others who can run around in VR fine for a whole day without these reactions.
Anyway... the game has to be outrageously good for me at least to use a VR version instead of just sitting on my chair staring on the screen with a cup of tea next to me.
Edit: and the Quest 2 will be reduced to $300 in a couple days from now
I will buy the Quest 3 as soon as it is released, but just for my stack of fitness games that are in my daily routine.
That usually means your IPD isn’t setup properly on your headset. It’s more common on HTC headsets or any others that have really fresnel lenses
VR needs some less intense and some more fun, low-stress gaming experiences to draw in the casuals like me.
You’re in luck because those types of titles form the majority of VR titles today. The more common complaint is the lack of AAA content like Alyx which is due to the lack of users
But I feel like there's a lot more for people like you. Moss, Beat Saber, Red Matter etc.
The industry is surprisingly conservative in terms of content/genre outside of indie studios. It’s basically Hollywood.
The only game my wife ever played was The Sims and was completely baffled when she learned there were no other games similar to it.
And yet they’ll spend $200M making yet another military FPS
I’ll concede animal crossing is a good exception to the rule, but this only serves to prove our original point that there’s room for AAA-grade games in this market segment.
What are these big studios even doing? Why didn't their customer research tell them that there's demand for games like Stardew Valley?
1. Thrill of the Fight. Boxing standing up throwing fists and blocking with precision just doesn’t exist with controllers.
2. Blaston believe it or not. I really enjoyed hiding behind barriers dodging shots and leaping out to grab power ups.
3. The table tennis game. Swinging my arm like a real paddle was so realistic and the shots are just not reproducible with such precision.
4. Golf with the cut down iron shaft. Again, the fidelity of the shots just isn’t possible otherwise. You can get the same thing at some sports bars but it costs way more :)
It's fun but it's also an intense workout, especially if you crank up the difficulty level. I've purchased fitness games for the Quest, and while I enjoy them, they don't give the same intensity of workout that Thrill of the Fight does.
I hope they'll make a v2 of this excellent game.
Yet it's a perfectly valid usecase and one where VR adds value. Despite current tech not making perfect use of what VR offers (no 6DOF for example). There are also motion-synced peripherals available to add an extra factor to it. It's a booming industry.
Meta are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring it. There's a big urban myth that VHS won over betamax because Betamax limited the types of movies available for its system. While I believe the story is BS, it was a component of betamax's failure and there is undeniably a huge market for it.
Yet even so, of course you can still use a monitor, and of course that's good enough.
It's hard to imagine what a vr exclusive that couldn't be enjoyable on a monitor or TV might actually look like.
I can look at a PS5 game and decide to buy a PS5, because I know what controller based consoles are like, I know the types of games, I know what I like. I can't do any of that with a VR game because I don't know what sort of headset I like, how it feels, what's important in a VR game that isn't in others and vice-versa.
They have a Non-VR version now so people without headsets can get in on the fun, but it's just not the same.
Except you can zoom in to stick your face super close-up to the action to see it going down.
When you zoom out, you are, indeed, in someone's basement. When it's not your turn you can enjoy all the geeky easter eggs sitting around the basement.
It sounds cool like this, but I can assure you it's cooler than that. I first played it non-VR and enjoyed the game, and then played a game the second time in VR and literally said aloud, "Holy Shit!".