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aLkaLiNE on 05 January 2017
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Mummelmann said:
aLkaLiNE said:

That's because VR is a big deal. It always would have arrived "too soon" unless you had multiple media conglomerate/corporations magically agreeing to all at once push for VR. That wasn't gonna happen though, so instead we're getting the first wave of companies making the plunge and laying the groundwork moving forward. It is too soon, but that's out of necessity. Tech has reached a level where the end result has become acceptable to the consumer. It's only up from here

Is VR a big deal? Global sales figures strongly disagree, and that's my whole point. For now, VR is having about the same impact as Kinect did on traditional gaming and all available VR sets between them have sold somewhere around 2 million through all of 2016, that's hardly earth-shattering by any measure.

VR isn't a sales incentive for console or PC gamers right now, and won't be for a few years when the hardware can actually utilize it properly and there's some actual implementation in traditional gaming. For now, VR is something quirky that you test in the store and tell your buddies about, but odds are that no one in this thread own a VR set, and won't any time soon. Groundwork? Perhaps, but there are no walls, roof, floors, electricity, plumbing or interior details yet, so it's far from a house, which is exactly the point I've been making all along. VR could very well be a major factor in a few years, but there is absolutely no reasoning that it is a major factor now, it's quite close to utterly irrelevant as it stands right now.

3D was also said to be the next big thing a few years back, but it flopped hard in the TV and DVD/blu-ray market and the demand for 3D in cinemas is not exactly sky high either, this is also mainly due to the fact that most 3D is quite poor, and thus has diminished value as a feature.

Groundwork being a satiable library size of games that pass the tipping point from a 'looks cool but nah' to an 'okay I need this now'. Groundwork being more clearly visible functionality that is spread across other markets. "Oh, this plays games, but I can use it for that, too?!" Same concept as a smart phone. "Oh I can use it as a phone but now I can choose apps that add more functionality". Now people have a reason to choose that over the archaic nokias we remember 10+ years ago because smart phones can do so much more today than before. Well, with VR a similar scenario would be first gen headsets playing games, but over time that same headset can be used to, for instance, participate in virtual reality house tours for people wanting to move across the country, or virtual reality porn which was a thing almost overnight, or on the job training exercises, or really about a million more creative, useful ideas that I'm not gonna take the time to list.

http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-applications/

 

The difference in comparison to Kinect which was through and through a gimmick is that A) each console manufacturer had a different vision of motion sensing/controls. Wii Motes, PS Move, Kinect. All different. No standard, all competing with each other. Instantly there's a stark contrast with VR which already has standards and a board in place. 

 

But yes, VR is a big deal. I can see that clearly now, it may not be a massive overnight success but it absolutely is a big deal which is obvious considering mankind has created fiction around the device decades before it actually existed.