HTC Vive is $799/€899/£689, Ships ‘Early April’

[WC4Life]

Madword said:

In 2-3 Years time the PS4 will still be sold, and as its built for that its not a problem. Of course the same could also be said of PC, they will technically get more powerful in 2-3 years time, the only problem is that there are so many different solutions then its more of a hassle. A PS4 out of the box doesnt need any headscratching to figure out if its powerful enough to run it.

I would expect that Sony will replace the VR when the PS5 comes out, alternatively the console will be more powerful and so thereby wont have a problem running better games perhaps or at least off loading some of the items onto the PS5 CPU/GPU rather than the dedicated processor in the box.

Yes there are a lot of "if's and buts" but I dont think its as problematic right now as you are making out.

What is the killer app, unless it can be run on cheaper hardware which lots of people will buy, I'm afraid there wont be any killer app for VR... at the moment the killer app for VR is VR itself, its the idea of being in the world. Could VIve and Oculus be cheaper in 3 years time but the problem is the now... if developers cannot get a situation where they can develop a title soley for VR, then it will be a standard game which can do VR, which imho is not a killer app. While the PS if cheap enough will have a better chance of selling more copies and thus giving developers more chance to develop specific VR only titles without as much risk. Of course VIVE and Oculus could pay companies to develop titles, and I suspect they are going to have to to push people towards their products in the longer term if the price doesnt reduce drastically.

So if PS4 is not powerful enough to run evolved VR software in 2-3 years because of its limited specs it's not a problem, what? PS4 specs are another problem but I was not talking about that. I was talking purely about PSVR specs (displays, tracking, components etc.) it might not be able to create acceptable level of immersion in the next years compared to competition. I know there are a lot of assumptions like for example assuming Sony undercuts competition and does not take a loss from selling PSVR.

It's very unlikely there is going to be killer-app for VR right out of the gate. But I believe sooner or later a killer-app for VR with Minecraft levels of appeal will happen and my question was purely hypothetical. PSVR would be screwed if it could not run such a killer-app.

I'm just questioning if it's possible for first wave VR-hardware to be cheap price + good VR experience which a lot of people seem to take for granted. Like any first wave products, smartphones and tablets for example, back in the day they cost for a reason.