So the fact that while it was being sold the fact that the Virtual Boy sold around the same rate as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive is irrlevant to you because you consider total sales more important than rate of sale? I just want to confirm that for future reference.

My "0.0001% number" represents an insignificant portion of the market in which VR devices exist. There's a difference between 1 in every 10 Playstation 4 owners bought God of War, and 1 in every 2 console gamers bought a Playstation 4 and 100 in every 100 PS4 Owners bought a PS4, or 1 in every say, 1000 owners of VR capable PCs bought a VR headset. If you can't recognize the difference between the two, that's on you. If you want to blow the term "niche" beyond "represents a comparatively small percentage of the potential market it exists in due to its limited appeal", that's fine. I really don't care how you define words, but I'll stick with the common vernacular.

I really don't think you realize how cheap VR ready PCs are getting, both in the laptop and graphics cards spaces. $650 desktop PCs can run VR reasonably well, and those prices will go down by $100 or so now that nVidia launched it's latest family of graphics cards.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/dont-look-now-but-oculus-ready-pcs-are-getting-relatively-cheap/

Also, I didn't say anything about Nintendo's analysts. You did. You misinterpreted me saying "I can find plenty of analysts that make no such insistence that the Wii U failed because it didn't include upgrades Wii remotes as the primary controller" to mean Nintendo analysts. I did not. So what's that about winning arguments? Have you noticed I'm the only one of the two of us actually sourcing my points?

Just because 2 billion people enjoy a luxury doesn't mean it isn't still a luxury. I don't see why this is so hard for you. Cars are also luxuries, so are televisions, so is the internet. I don't see how this is even remotely controversial.  Just because you "feel you need something" doesn't mean you actually need it, it just means you're so comfortable with it you forgot how to live without it. There are millions of people in the USA alone that get along just fine without smartphones. How do they do it?

So Sony creates a motion control system, pushes support in a variety of games, creates peripherals like Wonderbook that make specific use of them, and then with their next console scales back the use of motion controls to literally just VR games, and you don't see that as a step backwards? As for MS, you're flat out wrong with the Kinect 2. The Xbox One was on the Market for eight months before they sold an Xbox One without the Kinect 2. Every single Xbox One sold up to that point came with one. Many people didn't even hook them up but bought one anyways just to get their new Xbox. No only that, Microsoft mandated that developers build in some sort of Kinect 2 support into (I believe) every game that came out for the system until that point. It took months of terrible sales, MS claiming that the Kinect was an "essential and integral part of the platform", or that "Xbox One is Kinect, they are not separate systems", and all kinds of other nonsense before they finally relented. Read here:

https://www.polygon.com/2014/5/13/5713634/xbox-one-kinect-integral-add-on

Tell me, what kind of benefits do VHS tapes offer over Blu-ray? What kind of benefits do 5 1/4" floppies offer over thumb drives? What's that? None? SO PESSIMISTIC!

PS Vita numbers were always bad. They stopped showing them when they got outright embarrassing. They released unsatisfactory numbers for the Vita multiple times before they finally started lumping sales. The mere fact that they're still releasing numbers does not indicate that the numbers are meeting expectations, that is, unless you think Sony announcing the Vita sold 4 million in 2012 as "meeting expectations" of selling just 2.8 million units from February to December. And yes, while it wasn't intended, the Vita turned out to only cater to a niche audience.

For the last time, I really, really don't care what you think of my credentials. It doesn't matter if I'm actually Phil Spencer, Shuhei Yoshida, or Miyamoto himself. If my arguments are out there to stand for themselves, and I don't try to lend any authority to give them credibility. I'm not asking you to take my word for any of it. So please don't. If you don't want to respond, don't respond. That bothers me none.

Nah, my criteria has been pretty clear from the beginning, and has not changed. If you want to point our how my criteria has changed about whether something is "niche" or "selling well" or "a VR system", I'd be happy to listen, but as far as I know I've held the same stance in this thread the entire time.

Your example doesn't hold any water. Graphics cards have been on the market for more than 20 years, there are already hundreds of millions of them in homes worldwide, their function is well defined and at no point in the near future (next 100+ years) will a 1050 be not called a graphics card - it's literally a card you put into the PC to be able to display graphics. A much better example in the future will be the use of "lighting" in game graphics/graphics discussions.

Nintendo used "Virtual Reality" as a buzz word to market the Virtual Boy and was able to do so with hardly anybody rejecting that is because: 1. hardly anybody had been able to try (let alone having in-depth sessions exploring the possibilities and limitations of) existing VR headsets, as in 1995 there were only a few thousend in use around the world and probably only a few hundred in public spaces or otherwise accessable to video game magazine writers - and not all of the writers had access to a VB either  2. video game magazines weren't in any way critical about the hardware or it's functions, expertise in these things was extremely limited in "the media" and specs were simply copied wholesale from PR without any commentary ("64bit Atari Jaguar" anyone?)  - the "consensus" you speak of was formed by Nintendo PR, not by an in-depth discussion by industry/technology experts weighing in about how VB differentiates itself to the already well known concept of stereoscopic 3D (mostly realized through anaglyph at the time though) and lives up to the lofty promise of "virtual reality".

While stereoscopic 3D is an essential part of Virtual Reality, it alone simply isn't VR and saying "back then VR was vague enough to call S3D VR and get away with it in a space that was basically technology analphabets having fun with technology, so we have to accept that for all eternity" is not a convincing argument.

Well I guess my TV is VR and 3DS is also VR since both have 3D... that now makes the market much bigger and not niche anymore.

After all on the TV you use a glass and see in 3D, seems like the Virtua Boy made lighter =p

yea, don't forget all the magazines with anaglyph pictures+glasses, VR was mainstream all along !

Your example doesn't hold any water. Graphics cards have been on the market for more than 20 years, there are already hundreds of millions of them in homes worldwide, their function is well defined and at no point in the near future (next 100+ years) will a 1050 be not called a graphics card - it's literally a card you put into the PC to be able to display graphics. A much better example in the future will be the use of "lighting" in game graphics/graphics discussions.

Nintendo used "Virtual Reality" as a buzz word to market the Virtual Boy and was able to do so with hardly anybody rejecting that is because: 1. hardly anybody had been able to try (let alone having in-depth sessions exploring the possibilities and limitations of) existing VR headsets, as in 1995 there were only a few thousend in use around the world and probably only a few hundred in public spaces or otherwise accessable to video game magazine writers - and not all of the writers had access to a VB either  2. video game magazines weren't in any way critical about the hardware or it's functions, expertise in these things was extremely limited in "the media" and specs were simply copied wholesale from PR without any commentary ("64bit Atari Jaguar" anyone?)  - the "consensus" you speak of was formed by Nintendo PR, not by an in-depth discussion by industry/technology experts weighing in about how VB differentiates itself to the already well known concept of stereoscopic 3D (mostly realized through anaglyph at the time though) and lives up to the lofty promise of "virtual reality".

While stereoscopic 3D is an essential part of Virtual Reality, it alone simply isn't VR and saying "back then VR was vague enough to call S3D VR and get away with it in a space that was basically technology analphabets having fun with technology, so we have to accept that for all eternity" is not a convincing argument.

My example is fine. The way Virtual Reality systems were defined when the Virtual Boy came out meant that at the time it was widely considered to be one. You even admit that. It doesn't really matter why it was considered a VR system. It doesn't change the fact that it was. Just because the bar has been raised since then that devices with similar feature sets are not considered to be VR today doesn't mean that the Virtual Boy wasn't a VR system. If you made a similar device today it almost certainly wouldn't be, but at the same time, when the Virtual Boy was released, it was.

"Virtual Reality" is STILL a buzz word. Do you know there's people that do not consider any VR system that doesn't completely hijack your senses (think Matrix style) to NOT be "real VR"? To this day Virtual Reality's definition is still evolving as technological boundaries push the boundaries of what's actually possible.  Who knows, perhaps in 100 years we will have the ability to hijack our senses and people on message boards will be whinging "The PSVR wasn't really VR! Sony just used "Virtual Reality" to market the PSVR because there wasn't people like me around telling them they're wrong!"

Jim Sterling would have a field day with your comment.

It's complete horseshit that PCVR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are the first viable consumer VR devices. The fucking Sega Genesis had a VR headset planned for it for fuck sakes. Nintendo actually released the Virtual Boy, and as it turns out "the future" wasn't worth only gaming at 20-30 minutes at a time until they got used to it? How can you possibly keep pretending that the gaming industry hasn't been pushing VR in one way or another since the 90s? Current VR headsets are just the first ones to benefit from internet hype. They are as mass market ready as any VR headset will ever be. All PSVR requires is putting a camera on top of your TV. It's as complicated to set up as a Wii. Somehow they managed to sell 100 million of them, while might I add, many people advocated that motion controls were the future of gaming, and how that was going to change the industry as we know it going forward. Yet here we are a decade later, and the only gaming experience that consistently uses motion control is.... VR.

VR has zero excuses, and that doesn't change no matter how many frail excuses you try to make. If VR was going to make it mainstream, it would have done so by now.

No the irrelevancy comes from not mattering if it was done in 1 day or in 7 years since that is the total sales and the company cut it out after that because it would just keep dropping sales until it became 0. That is aggravated by the fact that Virtua Boy was a gaming system not an accessory, so any console, handheld or whatever you want to call Virtua Boy selling 700k have been considered a flop, not so much for very specific accessories. The rate of sales of Virtua Boy would be irrelevant closely after they the period you want to consider (as pointed out by another user here, that 700k shipment was largely over supplied and the system kept selling 10k a week months after there were no more shipments, that is why you trying to cut it to a specific period is irrelevant). Another thing that makes it irrelevant is the fact that Nintendo wasn't happy with the sales and cut it out, while Oculus and Vive are keeping it.

You do know that 1 in 1000 is 0.1% instead of 0.0001%? That is the main reason for me calling the BS on your 0.0001% marketshare that you were so proud to give.

I won't dispute your point of 650USD PCs being VR ready, but I want you to provide credible sources that there are 200M PCs that are VR ready at homes as you have claimed. Last I heard from Pemalite there were close to 100M close to PS4 (regular) PCs on the market and those are still not capable of running Oculus and Vive VR at any decent capacity. There were already sources on this thread putting it closer to the 20-50M bracket of PCs that really can do VR with these units. So you better have a source to contradict them, because if not it will be only your assumption that exist over 4x more.

So ok, don't bring the analysts responsible for the system, but please bring an statistic among analysis from credible people showing the reason of failure for WiiU (like 10% of analysts pointed to this as biggest reason, 40% for that, etc) that shows there wasn't a higher percentage of conclusions going towards a high representation of WiiU having the tablet as one of the biggest problems the system faced. I will wait laid down for your sources, if you can't provide then stop trying to say you can find them.

You clearly doesn't know what luxury is. When someone that doesn't even have enough money for food or housing but can buy a smartphone you are clearly not talking about luxury. Car and internet also aren't luxury. Or are you going to consider everything over water and food as luxury? But even so, if you want to call smartphones a luxury, regular cellphones would be on the same class as well so your differentiation would crush under their own weight. Let me help on what can be considered luxury, things that less than 0,1% of the population can afford, that doesn't have any relevant functionality, serves for status over anything else, etc, that is where jewelry, mont blanc pens, gold platted consoles, diamond pierced smartphones, personal 50M USD business jet and other things like that are classified. You wanted so much to use dictionary for niche (even though you can't use basic math) but for luxury you gone for a self coined term.

I'm very wrong on Kinect 2? On the over 6 months in the market please list how many games did MS release that had kinect as the main form of play, because having it hearing a "duck", "reinforcements" or whatever command from the phone isn't really motion control input. I have some games from Move for PS4, including one that came with the system. But yes Sony diminished the support, that isn't coming back, you are very terrible at analysis. If something didn't became standard (as did touchscreen) then removing it isn't really going back technology. But since you brought it to the table, what are your analysis of the sales Blackberry is going to do and by how much will the coming back of qwerty keys will win against all the touchscreen systems?

What benefits of qwerty keys will bring over full screen smartphones with touch bring that weren't there before it got outsold by it. VHS and K-7 brings the benefit of direct capture of TV and radio feed, much easier and direct than BD or CD, satisfied? But since you think Blackberry will come back to win the smartphone fight, why don't you also place your odds for VHS and K-7?

No I didn't say just releasing numbers shows they are meeting expectations. I point other 2 factors of being positive, and that when sales were bad the stopped putting them straight. Don't spin and strawman my argument. Please show your source for Sony not being satisfied or not meeting projections with PSVR.

Credentials =/= names. You pretend to be doing a good analysis, but haven't show anything useful, real or relevant. You want to say you are not being negative, but that is all you have done. You have spined definitions, arguments and all just to try and fit a narrative of your choice.

Atleast ppl in the future will have to recognize that a tangible definition was established for VR during this time. I imagine a revolutionary next step like audiovisuals and maybe more senses being induced into your brain will get a new word, like "induced sensual reality" or sth like that.

As I said before, stereoscopic 3D was an established and well defined entity in 1995 and the VB doesn't differentiate itself from that in any way, meaning the vague "virtual reality" moniker wasn't it's "definition", s3D was.

It’s you who doesn’t get it. No other VR system before the current generation was anywhere close to being a market ready product with a suitable softwares library with continuous support. For someone who claims to be have lots of experience with VR you seem to be pretty ignorant on that account.

It’s continuously growing and it’s pretty childish to assume it would just get mass market adoption all of a sudden, especially with the wide majority of people not even having the chance to even try it out yet. It requires much more time and dedication than any smart phone, so it’s only natural market growth will happen much slower in comparison.

Stop acting so pretentious as if everyone was claiming VR will conquer the whole world by storm. There are many improvements to be made before it will ever be a mass market product, if ever.