Did Sony Doom the PSVR?

[Nautilus]

RolStoppable said:

Nautilus said:

Hmmmm maybe.It sure does remember the Vita in many aspects.But I still stand by my idea.The people that were thinking that PSVR would sell millions upon millions and would push PS4 sales at this price for an unproven tech that still has many problems(Motion sickness, motion with the VR headset is somewhat limited and so on) were simply being delusional.And Sony knew this.They knew they wouldnt be able to sell to people that had no PS4 and it would be a hard sell for the ones that do have a PS4.I mean, they are not a young company and they have at the very least an idea of how the market works.So why waste resources(by that I mean make big budget games, not glorified demos or small experiences like rush of blood) on a tech that wont catch on fire, or even sell 5% of what the PS4 will eventually sell.I personally think, and I know this is a long shot, a kind of "brand awareness" for an eventual PSVR 2 that will launch alongside a new console generation, not necessarily PS5, much like the XOne launched with a Kinect, but without it being necessarily required, just deeply integrated.

And about the the motion sickness and all the negative symptoms that the VR has, I dont think that it isnt fixable.Its just a matter of improving the tech.If Im not mistaken, one year or two ago, the motion sickness problem was more severe than it is now.It is simply a matter development catching up, and discovering how to do a better eye tracking or whatever that causes the motion sickness.This ties up with the fact that the tech is simply not ready for the market, as the price is simply not the only problem.Of course there will always be people that will have motion sickness, much like some cant handle playing FPS games that involves alot of movement, but that number is minimal.I think the same will happen to VR.But that is something that only time will tell.

Brand awareness only works if you provide good products. VR on the whole is going the way of the Vita, but with lower sales and fewer games. If you now looked at the Vita as raising brand awareness for a future Sony handheld... well, it just doesn't work. There's virtually no positive reputation here, but you have lots of consumers who got burned by their purchase, and many more people who are glad that they held off and who will not buy into the next generation, unless there's ample proof that the new product won't go the way of the previous iteration.

As for experience of knowing how the market works, that simply doesn't hold true in the video game business. Every console manufacturer, past or present, has committed big blunders and launched products that fell way short of original expectations. It also isn't uncommon that companies work on vanity projects, meaning there is no reason whatsoever to believe in widespread success, but something gets made anyway, simply because the developers are so fascinated from making it. VR is definitely such a thing, because that fantasy has been floating around in people's minds since at least the early 1980s. If Nintendo didn't have the failures of the 3DS and Wii U on their hands, there would be a good chance that they pursued VR as well, despite knowing that the chance for success is minimal. But their recent financial woes force them to do things that can sell instead of making whatever they want.

Regarding the health of people, the tech for 3D is at a better level than the tech for VR, and 3D is also less of a hassle as far as equipment goes. Regardless, health problems still persist. Based on all the precedents, I see no reason to believe that advancing the technology will eventually solve the problems. The strain that 3D and VR put on human eyes and brains is a very different beast than the motion sickness a minority experiences from FPS games.

Humans werent supposed to live more than 40 years, and yet we managed to create medicine and treatments that let us now live for more than 80 years.We built rockets and that us go to space.We created the Tv so that we have TV shows with people saying that aliens exist evry five minutes.Fixing motion sickness dosent sound that far off!

But yeah, I will partialy agree that VR was born more out of love rather than innovation from Sony part.But history has proven that such things could succeed.The Wii and DS are there to prove it.The only problem is two:Sony is not Nintendo.When Nintendo gets behind an idea, it usually goes with it to the end.Sony drops a failed idea faster than anyone else, which could make people afraid ofm buying the system early on.But the most important part is that all of this seems like you said:This seems like the second comming of Vita.They didnt announce more first party games for the future(as far as Im aware), on top of the system already having its own Nausea and Motion sickness problems.

I still think that Sony is going for the long game here, but I agree that it could go the other way.