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

[Madword]

WC4Life said:

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.

If it creates an acceptable level of immersion now, it's not suddenly going to be less immersive later on.

If PS4 is powerful enough now to do VR, it'll be fine in 2-3 years.You are saying it has limited specs... do you know its specs? Lots of people have played it already and have loved it (and the other two).

The biggest problem with VR is the issue with people being bored with it in 3 years time, just like how Kinect was the biggest thing sinced slice bread, but the follow up which was significantly more powerful was a sales disaster. Sony have predicted 1-2m VR sales, at $799 the number of PC VR headsets are going to be lower than that and spread across at least 2 competitors. That is not good. They need to make a postive sales impact now, not in 3 years time when people might have already moved on.

If you are a developer, very few (if any) big developers are going to make VR only products for PC, so its going to be left to indies to make VR only products, do you really think that Sony VR wont be able to run indie games in VR in 2-3 years.... Could someone make something that is unique and interesting for Vive using its room area system that it has, yeah of course, but if it sells so few, not many are going to enjoy it, and even if some great software comes along, its going to be a hard sell to get lots of new users on board. Could you see a minecraft level success game being a success if it had only come out on VR... no, it was a sucess because everyone already had PCs.