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Comment by moffers | Hacker News Reader

I was one of those people that thought FOR SURE that the Kinect was going to change everything. I still have fond memories of playing with it.

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Same! I believe it's like VR: the lack of real commitment from the companies making them, which doesn't foster a community of creators will always be the death of any new technology.

Same applies to wearables (barely alive thanks to a few specific use cases and Apple).

It's like someone thinks they can create a TV, just let it be and it will develop into something bigger. Sometimes that's the case and sometimes you've got to fully be behind it.

Eh, fundamentally when people game they don't want to move. In the west the culture of leisure, particularly entertainment leisure, is sedentary.

The Wii was one of the most successful consoles of all time. Half the games had people standing up and swinging at something. That doesn't track at all.

The main problem for Nintendo was that countless Wii buyers never moved beyond Wii Sports and maybe Mario Kart. Despite having over 100 million units sold, staple franchises sold pretty badly compared to the Switch.

Smash Bros Brawl? 13 million sales. Smash Bros Ultimate? 35 million.

Animal Crossing City Folk? 3 million. Animal Crossing New Horizons? 47 million.

Mario Party 8? 9 million. Super Mario Party? 21 million.

Zelda Twilight Princess? 8 million. Zelda Breath of the Wild? 34 million.

Basically, the Switch has 50% more units in the world, but you can tack on 200%-400% more sales per franchise entry in general; and some extreme breakouts. For this reason alone, Nintendo is never returning to Wii-era gimmicks, and we’ll probably never see “Nintendo Selects” again.

You know that the wiimotes have IMUs in them and motion games are still a thing on that platform, right?

The thing that really made the switch sell was it's portability.

The Wii was also extremely easily hackable. Everybody I knew in college were pirating Wii games.

I think that was purely from the novelty factor and because it initially attracted a lot of people who weren't into gaming. Past the first few funny weeks when people would let visitors try wii sports and have a few laughs, the thing ended up collecting dust in most households with no kids.

Wii Sports 2 sold 30M units, 3 years post launch. That’s top 30 for all platforms all time.

Even 5 years post launch Just Dance 3 sold 10M units.

Just dance is for young children playing with their friends. That is not the core gaming market.

Let's stack up all PC games and all console games and let's see which ones involve physical movement and then see how long people stick with those games. Do you know any gamers? I do. They don't want to move.

'Gamers' are now everyone. 1.7 billion men and 1.39 billion women - essentially anyone with a mobile device. One of the biggest gaming hits of the last decade was Pokemon Go, which literally requires a walk.

'Gamers don't want to move', is just nerd bashing. It's 2025, even amongst hardcore D&D playing, JRPG stanning, con attending 'weeb' adjacent ubernerds, fitness is in. Sure Americans, and increasingly Europeans are tending toward obesity, but suggesting thats a characteristic of 'gamers' as a class is just factually incorrect.

1 - https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers

We’ve had widespread videogames for like a generation and a half or so, it is early to say there’s anything fundamental in our culture about them. If good VR were to come out, there’s every chance it could go in direction more like sport than game.

But “good VR” is this sense is really very far off. Like actually judging the devices as things you might want to use, instead of with the engineer’s perspective (yea we’re all very impressed by what Oculus pulled off with the limited tech of our day, but the devices actually kinda suck if you don’t grade them on that curve).

They need to be as easy to put on as sunglasses, need to be able to just pop them on without pre-analyzing your space, there needs to be good force-feedback (you can’t have a satisfying sword fight in VR). This isn’t possible yet, of course, so it continues to be niche.

Exactly, the point of egaming is to not move your fat ass. Otherwise you would be doing sports, most of them being just games.

FWIW, I like playing VR/MR games because they are "sports" that don't require me to drive anywhere or organize anything with other people. To me it's about equal fun as downhill skiing or skating at the roller rink but a lot cheaper than either, and without needing to travel.

Not really, that is a very limited view on why video games are different than other games.

Otherwise gamers could as well be watching TV.

While I don't disagree with your point, I think VR's issue is that most people don't want to strap things to their face.

More physically engaging video games definitely seemed to have some interest, though, starting with the Wii.

> I think VR's issue is that most people don't want to strap things to their face.

It's the whole package, not just one factor. Motion sickness, strapping something to your face, requirement for "free space" to move around and exercise of being up for an extended period of time.

Playing a shooter in VR is genuinely one of my favorite experience, it feels tactical, you have to crouch, reload, you hear the bullets wishling close to your ears, etc... but it's also an experience that is kept to the odd weekend, every once in a while, because it genuinely feels like work to setup everything.

it's literally game changing for flight simulators, especially dogfight simulators. Being able to very easily swivel your head to keep a target in your sightline is amazing. I put a ton of hours into Elite Dangerous that I wouldn't have otherwise.

> While I don't disagree with your point, I think VR's issue is that most people don't want to strap things to their face.

I'd go the opposite way. The problem with current VR is it is just some goggles. What you really want is a full exoskeleton to capture all your movement and add some force feedback. Put it on servos so you can add a little free fall here and there, some fans around to get the feeling of wind. Yeah it would not be cheap (at least at first).

Have you tried current gen VR? Honestly, the experience of playing VR Ping pong is SO much like the real thing on the Quest 3. Synth riders is also fantastic. But the best experiences don't really fit into the "video game" box imho; it's closer to buying roller blades / skates or ski equipment.

I was also surprised at how much mixed-reality made a difference for me personally. I'm much more likely to strap the thing to my head when I can have awareness of what's happening in the physical world.

The terrifying thing about Meta (and their large, connected world) is that, if you look at someone the wrong way and get reported, you lose access to all your games. Even single-player ones! It’s too dangerous to open, let alone engage with.

This is exactly the kind of thing the CFPB or FTC should go after.

VR is IMO the evolution of systems like the Kinect, but that aside, the various companies that made VR sets have spent billions developing the technology and I'm confident they are offering (game) developers money to make VR versions of their games or new IPs targeting VR; I think at this point every major developer and publisher has done one or more VR titles, be they exclusives or VR versions of games (like Skyrim VR).

But even then, VR never became the runaway success that they were hoping for. I think, anyway. Same with Apple Vision, it went real quiet around that after the initial release.

Looking around my neck of the woods (the Netherlands), VR / AR is basically nonexistent. You'd expect VR and VR titles to have their own section in gaming stores... no such luck. (mind you / caveat, we don't actually have many gaming stores like that)

I think it's in a similar situation to gimmicks that Nintendo sometimes puts into their systems. Most games are cross-platform. They aren't gonna change the game fundamentally to take advantage of the different input mechanism. If your system relies on it, chances are you might not get a port. That's why almost all games that take advantage of these features are first party. The few that aren't are usually shovelware or if you are lucky 1-2 cool indie games.

They really tried for a while with the bundling the second version with the XBox One but that didn't last more than a year so it wasn't long enough to really saturate the market which is what odd peripherals REALLY need to get people to make games for them. They either have to be very very cheap or wide spread for it to make sense to make a game that requires them.

They are still in use at some museum in the Netherlands. Probably connected to some Windows computer. I wonder how long they will keep working, given driver support.

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