Agree to disagree. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Wednesday, January 06, 2016, 23:52 (3041 days ago) @ Cody Miller

VR definitely has an uphill battle ahead of it, and I'm not sure it'll ever have the install base of an Xbox or Playstation console (in the foreseeable future anyway).

But VR offers a truly amazing experience. Yes, there's probably going to be a lot of crap to wade through. But there's going to be a lot of amazing things to come from it, too.

I listened to a recent GameInformer Podcast with Jason Rubin talking about VR. It's a really interesting listen, and it goes a long way to show how excited a lot of developers are for VR. He compared it to videogames in the late 80s and early 90s. There weren't any established rules for making videogames; it was one giant experiment with developers just trying random, crazy things and seeing what worked. VR is the same way right now. No, we don't yet know how to make more traditional games (like a FPS) work really well in VR, especially without making people sick. I don't think that can't be overcome, though, and a lot of really intelligent, really passionate people are really excited about the technology, and that's a good sign.

I don't think the $600 price point is death knell you think it is. We always knew it was going to be expensive (I'm frankly surprised by how surprised people seem to be that it's $600. A lot of people have been throwing around the $300-$400ish price point with no basis, and we were straight up told it would be more expensive than we might be anticipating). Let's face it; if you have a PC that meets the recommended requirements for VR, $600 isn't that much extra money after building that PC. Hell the GPU required is at least half of that.

I think it depends on how good the Playstation VR is, and at what price it arrives. Its a double edged sword, as I think hardcore PC players are more likely to be interested in VR, but there are more people with PS4s than with the PC required to run VR. If Playstation VR hits the right price point, I could see it being adopted by more people than the Oculus.

We'll see. I'm still optimistic.