It's a shame MQ wasn't around earlier to give Wii some serious competition but here we are so.....

Price: £180+ Wii Sports v £200+nothing v £100+piracy

Adjusted for inflation Wii still wins cos local multiplayer although MQ does come with it's own 100" 1080p HDTV

Controls: Wiimote +Nunchuk v head tracking, hand tracking and full motion control

Meta Quest wins but the controllers are £50 per hand and don't include Wii Play. If you ignore Motion+ then Meta Quest takes it however a quick Wii waggle still beats having to accurately press every single fucking door button at every single opportunity just cos muh VR tracking.

Comfort + accessibility: hand controllers v helmet of chaos

Wii wins. No motion sickness and no need for a backpack mounted to your head to play for more than half an hour. 3rd party headsets might be more comfortable but full motion controls are not suited to a headset that needs a fixed sweetspot to stop you from spewing up.

Portability: Draw. MQ wins for singleplayer. Wii wins for local multi

Graphics: Draw. (Technically MQ wins cos it does the same graphics but in 360 degrees)

Games

Why didn't 3rd parties try selling this 'immersive experience' crap on Wii? The controls are just as important as the visuals, I assume Zuckerberg was a lot more fast and loose funding 3rd parties compared to Nintendo and I can see why.

Walking Dead, trash. Jurassic Park, trash. Darth Vader thing, meh. Why tf do people buy these types of games? Stop encouraging them.

Walkabout minigolf - top tier. Easily beats Wii Golf if you have no irl friends/family.

Beat Sabre - meh, should've been on Wii. VR doesn't add much.

Tetris VR - why tho?

Warplanes v Wii Sports Resort Flying - If you can handle the nausea then Warplanes wins.

Resi 4 - Draw

Wii Sports v Wii Sports clones - Local multiplayer + not needing a HDTV strapped to your head + Nintendo = Easy win for Nintendo. It's funny how Wii Sports was a tech demo but here we are 20years later and nobody has been able been able to match it's charm and accessibility.

Ultimately I was left with the impression that VR is a solo affair and Nintendo could easily dominate every genre on there. If I'd never played Wii or VR before, I would choose VR for wow factor but Wii longterm (MQ's controls are amazing tho).

VR doesn't have to be a solo affair. It was great fun playing NMS together in VR and there are many multi player games for VR. With Quest 3's full color pass through you can also play AR games together. (theoretically, dunno if they have been made yet)

And yes Zuckerberg is throwing money at VR

Meta's Reality Labs Lost $13.72 Billion in 2022.
https://80.lv/articles/meta-s-reality-labs-continues-to-lose-billions-of-dollars-in-q1/

No problem for Meta as they make tons advertising to and selling the data of 3 billion monthly active users, 2 billion daily active on Facebook.


Zelda in VR is a dream, hopefully it will come true some day. Sure there was the cardboard experiment with BotW, but Nintendo can do better!
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/26/18517865/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-mario-odyssey-nintendo-switch-labo-vr


Anyway, Quest wouldn't have challenged the Wii. Simple motion controls for the blue ocean was the winning ticket and it turned out to be a fad. Nintendo failed to keep the audience they gained with the Wii, couldn't top Wii Sports themselves.

Nowadays everyone simply reverts to their smart phone to kill some time which is very much a solo affair. A better comparison than Wii vs Quest, Wii vs Smart phone. Could the Wii phenomenon still happen with everyone addicted to their smart phones... (Also a big reason holding VR back, can't browse/reply to my smart phone with a headset on...)

That dream became reality 9 years ago for PC VR gamers (Wind Waker VR)

https://evrydayvr.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/settings-for-wind-waker-with-dolphin-vr/

And that experience has gotten better and better over the years:

Honestly, no really sure what this "review" is about.

Quest 2, with its current price of $200 is a steal, and though it's old, tech-wise, and pretty much starting to get phased out by developers (quite a few upcoming bigger budget VR games are skipping Quest 2 and going only for Quest 3 in that eco system), it's still great entry level standalone VR with quite a few good games, with option to act as both tethered and WiFi PCVR as well.

Sure, the Quest 2 is impossibly mindbogglingly so cheap that their strategy of adoption with this system has gained traction with some chore audience of a few million, but they also ought to make that audience switch more willingly to the higher tier with Quest 3 so far, they've got some good updated apps for it, but doesn't have much native Q3 software which kinda brings down the proposition.

Thankfully, some games there have been solid gems or proposition that may last a good while yet.

Walkabout Mini-Golf, The Walking Dead Saint & Sinners, Beat Saber, Red Matter 1 & 2, Asgard Wrath 2 and other games have been quite the support backbone for the system software. Nonetheless, I fear it'll need to gain a new sleuth of strong native titles that can last a new generation to carry them over.

That's without thinking of what might happen, if Nintendo someday might be tempted to go a little further with it's VR ideas than they did with Labo VR back then. Could be a catalyst of entry for the medium.
Mario Kart in VR ? Basically, a megaton app that could immensely cool and drive sales.

It seems that general consensus on Quest 3 is that its SoC is not enough of the improvement and that it lacks eye tracking. Now, I'd be willing to forgive one, but not both, so that's the reason why I decided not to upgrade from Quest 2 and wait for their next thing. But indeed, there are some really great games on Quest (your forgot Moss), and it's still fantastic entry level purchase.

Would really like to see what Nintendo could do with VR, given that this has been a thing for quite some time now:

VR is more like the N64 or PS1 that feeling of playing 3D games for the first time, mixed in a with a bit of the Wii.

It can be a mind blowing experience, but no one has properly I think put together everything in a package that is appealling and affordable. Apple's headset is on the luxury end of the luxury electronics market.

I think the Meta guys are on the right track though, they just need to keep iterating and improving upon what they have.

Well I think VR will be the futue with Nintendo games in someway. But I think closer to the next decade.

Yeah, Quest 2 was exactly that thing (those 20 millions Quest 2 sold are testament to that) - technically good enough, not too expensive, both standalone and able to act as PCVR, with enough good games in its store. At first I was extremely skeptical about inside-out tracking, coming form VRs that all had base stations for tracking, but once I got it for my kids few years ago, all my worries went away - it is really good headset, and once you go no-cable in VR, it is really difficult to get back to wired headsets.

They messed up somewhat with Quest 3, not enough of an improvement over 2, but hopefully they've learned their lesson for the next one.

I'm looking forward to Quest 4, like I said I think they are on the right track with a lot of things.

If they could get 4K per eye with the Quest 4 and look at some of the things Apple has brought to the table and basically "iterate" on it (another word for copy) ... that would be great.

That will probably cost more than the Quest 3, but they should be able to sell it for far cheaper than Apple's Vision Pro.