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[FoxMcChief]

While I absolutely love my Quest 3, there's no way the medium will be more popular than it is right now. Not unless one of the big three ships a headset with every console.

I would love it if the Switch 2 was a portable/headset, instead of a portable/console. The name would still work too.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Meta was losing that because they were chasing the Metaverse dream. That's where the billions were going to in R&D.

There's no indication at all that they've lost lots of money on the Quest line of business, let alone billions per quarter.

They lost several billion Q4 2023, so this isn't some past tense thing. Their costs were nearly $5 billion that quarter. It's true some unknown amount of that is dedicated to metaverse but unless they are employing hundreds of thousands of people on metaverse (which is almost entirely software) I don't think the picture for just the Meta Quest business is all roses.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

While I absolutely love my Quest 3, there's no way the medium will be more popular than it is right now. Not unless one of the big three ships a headset with every console.

Given that Kinect is basically what killed XBox... I don't think anyone will try anything similar again any time soon.

 

[Resenge]

Given that Kinect is basically what killed XBox... I don't think anyone will try anything similar again any time soon.

No, it is not a given that Kinect killed Xbox, what are you smoking?

 

[FoxMcChief]

Given that Kinect is basically what killed XBox... I don't think anyone will try anything similar again any time soon.

Xbox failed to support their thing.

I don't think Nintendo would. Basically, the world needs Nintendo to embrace VR for it to be truly supported. I'd be 100% fine with Switch 1 level visuals, if it was available in VR. Which is kind of what the Quest 3 is.

 

[gothmog]

While I absolutely love my Quest 3, there's no way the medium will be more popular than it is right now. Not unless one of the big three ships a headset with every console.

I would love it if the Switch 2 was a portable/headset, instead of a portable/console. The name would still work too.

I still think the form factor isn't ready for general acceptance. Too bulky and weird even with the Quest being wireless. If any console maker bundled a headset it would probably bomb compared to a TV based console, especially if the cost of the console reflected the extra cost of the headset.

IMO, they really need some welding goggles sized headware or smaller before people will take it seriously.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Xbox failed to support their thing.

They put out tons of Kinect games, and none of them sold amazingly well and they launched with DEEP discounts. They sold an insane amount of Kinect units and people didn't turn around and buy the games en masse.

Pretty similar to VR really. It's not creating hit games.

The "they didn't support it" arguments usually boil down to "the company had an evidence that creating software for the device is a huge risk and potential money sink."

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Even if VR games replicated traditional games with bigger budgets and content, the games still wouldn't sell much. That's because the price of the games would zoom up to $70 US and you still got to buy VR hardware which is $500+, and most people dont want to play games with a brick on your face or pretending to shoot or crouch or pick up items like it's the Wii/Kinect/Move days.

And any kind of extra interaction like that isn't even VR hand/glove based where crouching down to turn on a tap mean you bend down and turn the valve. You bend down and press a button to simulate turning a valve. Which is no different than Wii.

 

[CitizenKratos]

As an owner, I wouldn't say PSVR2 looks dead overall.

Lots of third party is still coming out. Enough to keep me mostly off 2d gamers for another year. And it doesn't seem like Sonys plan was ever to support the system post launch with 1st party, they're also just having major current gen development slowdown, like others. These are different from reacting to low sales and pulling support. As a prime example, the new Astrobot was decided to be a 2d game long before PSVR2 went on sale. So at this point it looks like it's just part of their plan. They are however helping 3rd party support the system to a large degree and 3rd party is doing that. Year one being one of the best software years in VR history.

I'm looking forward to what PS5 Pro does for existing games and hoping for 120 FPS frame gen or whatever tech is tailored at VR2.

 

[Ozriel]

They lost several billion Q4 2023, so this isn't some past tense thing. Their costs were nearly $5 billion that quarter. It's true some unknown amount of that is dedicated to metaverse but unless they are employing hundreds of thousands of people on metaverse (which is almost entirely software) I don't think the picture for just the Meta Quest business is all roses.

A massive part of that loss is fully tied to their metaverse operation.

I'm not sure how you can imagine they're losing billions quarterly on Quest. They'd have to be selling 10 million headsets per quarter at a $100 loss per item to lose $1bn on hardware. They certainly aren't spending crazy amounts of money on making first party VR games.

Meta's Reality Labs has continued to work on Metaverse all this while, and Mark Zuckerberg confirmed their commitment to the Metaverse in the last Meta earnings call.

Meta stock sinks 10% because Mark Zuckerberg still spending and losing tons of money on the Metaverse

The Facebook parent company beat earnings expectations but issued weak revenue guidance for the next quarter

qz.com

 

[CamHostage]

Exactly this. About article, 2 Sony games in developmet for psvr 2? Its more than I thought by 2 titles.

2 new Sony games for PSVR2 would 2X the number of PSVR2 games they've made in 2 years of existence, so hey, proportionally, that's a lot!

*Sony also augmented its existing GT7 to play on PSVR2, but the only new games they have produced for it are Horizon CotM and Firewall Ultra; only one of these games was done in-house, too, so either caveat applies to get to only 2 Sony-made games for PSVR2.)

I'm going to guess there's a VR viewpoint option in two of the existing games like Marathon or Fairgames... you'd think Astro Bot would be one of the two if "VR Mode" was the plan, but I feel they would have confirmed it by now with all the demand/backlash over the option not being there. LEGO Horizon might be a good game in VR mode too, although I don't know if the environs have enough built space to work as a VR diorama?)

Sony PSVR, this decade's equivalence of Sony 3DTV.

Except that a 3DTV is a TV. I'd happily buy a 3DTV if I could get it today, because even if I only use it occasionally for that mode, the device wouldn't sit on a shelf collecting dust when I'm doing standard gaming the other 99% of the time.

 

[CamHostage]

They put out tons of Kinect games, and none of them sold amazingly well and they launched with DEEP discounts. They sold an insane amount of Kinect units and people didn't turn around and buy the games en masse...

The "they didn't support it" arguments usually boil down to "the company had an evidence that creating software for the device is a huge risk and potential money sink."

Microsoft also didn't have the audience for it. How much better would Kinect Disneyland Adventures have done on a platform that kids actually own? Kinect was pretty great for what it was trying to do (LOTS of problems, to be sure, and motion control struggles even now to provide the accuracy that gamers want to play with, but a camera with infrared projection to measure ToF for 3D positioning is an extraordinarily promising concept.) Also the always-on idea was conceptually smart for how much it could do with a mic and cam and motion sensor active at all times of the console's use (people balked at the privacy implication and whatnot, but now Alexas and home cams are in every home on all day long and they can't even make gaming more fun.) Kinect was ahead of its time and a bold investment in technology, but it was absolutely the wrong company trying to make it happen and it's hard to see how its potential as gaming technology would have been fully realized (and accepted by snooty gamers) even in the right hands.

VR has an even greater problem of the right company bringing it to market with proper content and audience to support it, because it still doesn't have a great answer for the question, "who is this for?"

It's fun new play technology for kids, except kids shouldn't use it because its bad for their eyes and development. It's cool technology for new gameplay systems, except gamers demand buttons/joypads/sticks for their accuracy over motion tracking and also aren't wooed by the lesser graphics. It's novel technology for new audiences to experience something they've never witnessed before, except who's going to spend this kind of money and rearrange their living spaces to play VR for however long it keeps their isolated interest? It's potentially useful technology in the remote work era, except it's still more videogame than real networking and it's still silly to run a meeting with a helmet on. (AR has more potential in the business world IMO, but that has its own challenges.) Unlike Kinect which could be analyzed as "right this, but wrong that and that and that...", it's difficult to even figure what "right this" cases VR has going for it to build upon if they even figure out the "wrong that" issues.

 

[CamHostage]

As an owner, I wouldn't say PSVR2 looks dead overall.

Lots of third party is still coming out. Enough to keep me mostly off 2d gamers for another year. And it doesn't seem like Sonys plan was ever to support the system post launch with 1st party, they're also just having major current gen development slowdown, like others. These are different from reacting to low sales and pulling support. As a prime example, the new Astrobot was decided to be a 2d game long before PSVR2 went on sale. So at this point it looks like it's just part of their plan. They are however helping 3rd party support the system to a large degree and 3rd party is doing that. Year one being one of the best software years in VR history.

That third-party support infrastructure was vital to the "success" of Vita when Sony quickly realized that it was not going to work out as well as PSP no matter how well they supported it. (People talk badly about Sony not caring about the Vita but it had 8 Sony-made/produced games on launch day and more in the pipeline, that's pretty extraordinary for a launch and will unfortunately never be achieved again probably.) Sony specifically beefed up its marketing and support efforts to make it as easy as possible for developers to support it (especially if they could cross-buy their planned console release) and got a lot of stuff signed, plus they marketed as well as they could towards the loyal fanbase that loved the platform even without Sony exclusives. It worked pretty well for as long as it could, and IMO if there had been a "Vita Pro" with some of the technical limitations of Vita ironed out, it could have kept going with some of the same games that got ported to Switch. (Developers were still producing games for Vita even when Sony pulled the plug.)

PSVR2 is a weird library and market; I don't get that same "Vita means Life" feel that there's a huge, unknown force of dedicated fans loving on the hardware and buying up the cool little games made for it. Maybe they're out there? (They're certainly not on GAF, but that's true of a lot of subfanbases, including huge stuff like Minecraft and Roblox.) It's hard to get a feel of it. I was shocked when somebody counted up how many PSVR2 games there are and it's over 200 games in just a year. I've never heard of almost any of these games (except for the more popular PC/Quest ports) and I know of nobody on the gaming forums I visit who talk about playing them, most of these games don't get promoted on the PS State of Plays or even usually the PS YT page, but there's a surprisingly high number of titles if you dig in.

PlayStation VR2 Games | Official PlayStation™Store US

 

[nial]

Yeah, I do agree in that they did more for Vita than those other pubs - releasing some good games throughout the lifecycle like the Digimon World: Cyber Sleuth series as well as that launch-day Katamari game - but I also can't stop noticing how they did a poor or not job at all when bringing their biggest series - all of which were there with multiple releases throughout the entire PSP lifecycle - to the Vita:

• Ridge Racer (2011) was an extremely barebones release coming off the PSP entries. In some ways, it does feel inexplicable, considering that Cellius - a studio co-owned by both Bandai Namco and Sony - was set up all the way back in 2007 for this specific purpose: developing PlayStation-exclusive titles based on Namco's rich catalogue of IP.
• The Tekken series were nowhere to be seen on the Vita, in spite of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 coming out in 2012, which needless to say wasn't ported.
• Ace Combat, an iconic PlayStation series, not only didn't get a Vita port of the 2013 PS3-exclusive F2P multiplayer Ace Combat Infinity which would've been ideal for cross-play between the two PlayStation systems, but also had its 2011 more Western-focused entry Ace Combat: Assault Horizon actually brought over to the Nintendo 3DS in the fall of 2011, instead of the Vita. Double offense.

I forgive BNE for their sins regarding PS Vita just because of this game.

It's not really that good.

 

[simpatico]

I wonder about the net P&L for the whole PS VR project since conception. XBox might have saved millions by simply not making a headset. I'm thinking about not releasing a VR headset myself. Wish me luck guys.

 

[kapshin]

I mean I think they care, as how much Sega cared about the 32X and Nintendo cared about the Virtual Boy...

 

[RavageX]

One big thing to improve, and already has been mentioned. Bring over a lot of PSVR1 titles. Wipeout, and there are several other titles that should move over without huge effort I would imagine.

 

[ThatOneGrunt]

I was always surprised that anyone would invest in a VR headset that was tethered to a console. Especially a Sony headset and after how they completely abandoned original PSVR titles.

 

[CitizenKratos]

PSVR2 is a weird library and market; I don't get that same "Vita means Life" feel that there's a huge, unknown force of dedicated fans loving on the hardware and buying up the cool little games made for it. Maybe they're out there? (They're certainly not on GAF, but that's true of a lot of subfanbases, including huge stuff like Minecraft and Roblox.) It's hard to get a feel of it.

The Vita was initiated by a riskier strategy in terms of building the ecosystem and competing with competition. It featured plenty of launch games, but not great ones. Had the games been great it would have been a different scenario. Vita had far greater sales numbers more-so as a result of the market segment (handhelds) being an established one. Vita faced tougher competition than VR2. The advantage to the VR market (especially VR2 in its first year) is that the experience is lauded as better than that of the flat screen versions. You'd be crazy to play any of the best hybrid games on a flat screen given the choice (RE8, RE4R, GT7). The difference is about 10x or more. The opposite is true of the Vita. And so as long as VR remains sustainable financially it won't just die off like the Vita as why would fans go elsewhere?

To your claim about there not being sufficient dedicated fans (on GAF) I disagree. The sentiment from GAF VR2 owners doesn't fit that claim at all. VR2 owners are generally massive fans and there are a decent number on this and other forums. Its not an easy thing to prove but as an example there are almost always VR2 threads showing up on page one of the gaming topics and one of which has over 7k responses. I can see how a non VR owner wouldn't notice these but as an owner you do.

In summary, whatever efforts Sony is making, it appears to be perfectly sustainable and enticing enough to us owners. Funding the odd big 3rd party AAA game and getting decent support from VR devs. Year one was phenomenal in terms of the software output and year two is shaping up quite strong as well.