VR/AR investment = new original franchise?

In before you tell me to gb2 /biz/

Do you guys seriously think that it's possible to put out VR titles that can build new franchises?
Currently, Facebook and Valve and positioning themselves as the dominant platforms, and people think of platforms not gaems or studios with regards to the VR and AR.

The examples of 3DS and Android lead us with Niantic at best, and guess what? They didn't create a new franchise. It's just piggybacking from Pokemon.

Square has come out to support VR as we know in the PSVR demo for FF15, and it may be that Square can break away from being identified only via platform in their VR titles, but does that translate to other studios that are now getting into this sector?

VR will blow up from the release of PSVR

>PSVR

at that price? The console audience balk at even the price of the PS4 Pro, which is likely going to be what you really ought to use for PSVR (or be prepared to go to vomit town since 90fps per eye is no joke when it comes to 3D)

Apparently PSVR is really good, it just doesn't room scale which is what gives the Vive so much of an edge

>roomscale
Roomscale implementation requires 2 full featured sensor suite (lighthouse) which you don't have with PSVR. PSVR doesn't even have 2 cameras to give 3D depth perception telemetry.

Exactly, i tried both(own a vive) the PSVR isn't Room Scaled even though it says it is. It's more of a standing scale as in if you move or rotate too far it fucks up. But playing the PSVR was actually very fun cause of the games it will bring. If we just combing the hardware of a Vive and the Game Library of the PSVR, VR will take flight easily

>so much of an edge
No its opposite.
People don't want to dedicate full rooms for their VR experiences. Remember most people who buy these just have simple appartments.
PSVR is perfectly fine for seated experiences.

But how's that any better than 3DS which is horribly limited (to one fixed pov)?
Do you really think that the way forward is to target just that singular POV for VR and AR? If you do this, then you couldn't make the jump to have a 'social' experience that console gaming supposedly offers in comparison to say PC.

But PSVR doesn't just have that man don't be thick.

Its just a good target. Vive literally requires you to have a suffecient lighthouse area or whatever the fuck its called.

Roomscale requires the size beyond a closet, around a proper living room at the very least.
It's not that I don't understand what you mean here. 'Core gamers' have made valid argument about how the idea of moving around kinect or wii style isn't how gaming ought to be, but I don't see how you can offer a great VR experience for multiple players if you can only offer one fixed perspective for everyone involved.

yes, that's 4 players as consoles rightly ought to have.

Doesn't literally require you to use room scale, but whats the point of buying a Vive and sitting and playing games

Until someone makes some actual good games for VR, it won't be selling much
Right now everything is sub 1 hour "experiences"

honestly I think VR could bring a new renaissance of adventure games/walking simulators if done right

I would pay good money for an immersive fully 3D game in the vein of Captain Blood

> but I don't see how you can offer a great VR experience for multiple players if you can only offer one fixed perspective for everyone involved.

I believe they said that PSVR has 60 square feet of tracking 10ft by 6ft with 6ft being the width. Do with that what you want.

Because walking around is not the only way to enjoy VR. The simple task of standing and being able to move freely in a small standing area is enough for most current experiences. At least for consumers who doesn't have that much room.
Like say if you watched VRporn, there is no reason to have full room VR for such a simple application.

You don't seem to know what you are talking about son. Multiple games have been confirmed to go 5 hours+ like Farpoint for instance.

10' x 6' is enough for your typical living room I guess. However, you get a 2D tv pov and then the 3D specs pov, and that's it. You can't have all 4 players hooked up to PSVR.

I am not sure i follow. Are you talking about having multiple people tracked by the same hardware?
I am not sure i follow. Remember in VR people don't have to be within the same confines. Their playspace-footprint can change in accordance to what happens in the game.

>Multiple games have been confirmed to go 5 hours+ like Farpoint for instance.
Yeah, you go ahead and believe what publishers tell you. I'm sure they said the game is going to be 10/10 too

Until one of these games actually comes out, is actually a proper long game and is actually a good game, VR will have a hard time selling

I agree. There's some promising demo such as Brookhaven but there's not really a title that we'd call a definitive game like how Descent was or the original Doom was to the gaming community.

??
The main campaign can surely be that lenght no?

I don't get why you are questioning that. They were asked if it was a full on 20 hour game as said no it was more along the lines of 5 hours.

It's understandable why we'd be skeptical, if we think of the example of No Man's Sky.

So how long was no mans sky? What was the fastest playthrough?

I mean for fuck sakes the very nature of no mans sky was to be a time waster.

I think its unfair to compare a singleplayer campaign to no mans sky.

The danger here is that VR is a realm where a lot of companies are talking up a storm when they are little better than Wii era shovelware, and that Sony had demonstrated that it's willing to back such corporations as with Hello Games in the sales pitch.

I hate to put it this way, but VR and AR face an uphill battle to get out of the glorified techdemo phase, especially after Murray's lies.

Hmmm i mean these things are measurable.
You are allowed to not believe the words of the developers now and ask people who have played it after its come out how long it is.

I just don't see the point of saying VR in general isn't worth it because X length game won't exist or doesn't exist, even if there are developers out there saying they want to break that cycle.

I mean when someone says that they are making a cheeseburger i don't just assume that they are lying and giving me a normal hamburger right?

Look around Cred Forums whenever an AR/VR thread pops up, and we see this skepticism abound aplenty. We are in a situation where only Pokemon Go has demonstrated AR as a valid component in gaming experience, which really isn't a good thing.

>when someone says that they are making a cheeseburger i don't just assume that they are lying and giving me a normal hamburger right?
Devs and publishers lie constantly unlike the guy at mcdonalds making your burger

Obviously someone is going to make a longer game for VR at some point but that doesn't mean you have to believe the devs before the game is out. Also the game might be bad at which point the lenght is irrelevant

I understand but that is the main thing they are trying to convey about the full-length thing.

Until proven wrong i would say that its a candidate atleast.

Remember no one has to buy it until we know for sure.

Which leaves the whole industry stuck with getting past the early adoption inflection point. Sales of Oculus and Vive have plateaued for one because the whole AR/VR has reached this impasse.

Nah those sales have plateaued because its not for your average consumer. Its an enthusiast thing.

PSVR is the closest we get to average consumer reach and when PSVR fails then you can say VR as a novelty has kind of died down.

Until the next generation that is 10 times better and no one wants it.

But is it really the hardware sticker shock, or is it the experience?
People were sold on 3D accelerated graphics when it really was worth thousand bucks a card back in the days of Quake and Tomb Raider. It's not just a 'niche' thing even then, but a must have.

I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who have the money for VR but are waiting for something actually worth playing before buying

(sorry, meant thousand in today's money. It was $200-$250 just for that card alone, basically $400 for entry level card alone, without a 2D graphics card)

Well VR isn't a "you can still see it on TV" type of thing. You have to try it to see it, right now VR has the mystery of "what is actually going on in those goggles" going for it.
Id say its fair. To be honest i think you should maybe try it out somewhere before even thinking of getting it. The thing about VR is that even the most mundane things feel like they are something in VR.
Like just the fact that you look to the side or look at the rear view mirror feels so different from all other games, and in a positive way too.
Yeah the thing is just that they are not marketing this to the enthusiast but instead anyone and everyone who has a console.

I for one could imagine playing a Fifa game in VR might actually be something worthwhile (for the people that play it normally)

It's a $400-500 investment to buy into PSVR though. Not everyone have the play controllers and the camera so they must pay the upfront cost before even considering plunging $60 on a AAA VR title.

PSVR is just Sonys requisite me-too vanity project of the generation. Every generation has one, they're all shit, they all vanish quietly a year after release. Do not expect anything more from PSVR.

Vive and Rift CV1s are basically still Developer Kits, and both companies know this. Adoption won't pick up until price drops and convenience rises, which they both consider second-gen issues. When will that be? Impossible to say, but;

Oculus is in a lot of trouble because of their stupid decisions. Touch is a bomb, it will be dropped. Their marketplace is a bomb, but that's basically their entire raison d'etre, so they'll have to totally reinvent and relaunch it. I don't think they're going to give up, but all of this shit they've buried themselves in I think makes them very likely for a total relaunch with an early Gen 2, to try to leap-frog the Vive. They don't have a large enough current consumer base for any bad blood from it to really matter, and many of those people wouldn't care anyway.

The Vive is an overwhelming success for Valve, even with the stagnant sales, just for the successful early-access games it's spawned on Steam (H3, Raw Data, etc.). They've successfully ensured Steam will be the Home of VR. Their hardware is essentially unchallenged, even by the pitched ideals of prospective future entrants. If they do a Gen 2 it would piss off a lot of the existing user-base, for whom the 'feature complete' nature of their offering was the significant appeal over Oculus.

I mean the install base is already 40 million+ for VR ready pc's the install base is approx 13 million and ontop of that just to get the oculus headset in your home you have to shell out $599 and $799 for Vive.
So id say its much more lenient with the $399 for PSVR with an additional $49 or so for a camera which is said to be owned by millions already.
The controllers are not mandatory as many games will come with just ds4 support aswell.

You must be one of those who doesn't understand why people would buy a monitor and a PC because both the PC and TV has a high cost each.

VR headsets aren't much more expensive than a normal monitor man.

hurf durf /biz/ get off mai vidyer

I am not sure if PC customer base is a good metric to gauge console audience. It is very rare for any console owner to purchase a HDTV for the console's sake, whereas the PC player base will invest in a monitor for the sake of PC usage scenario.
VR headsets demand PS owners to make that upfront investment just for the sake of that experience. That's not usually how things go when it comes to what people expect from consoles.

Kinect and PS Move are on the back of my mind when I look at PSVR's situation. This isn't like how Valve and HTC have gone forward with Vive. Valve is heavily invested in really making that pitch and developing everything from ecosystem to user interface. Facebook is definitely trying to get their own ecosystem going with Oculus.
I don't know if I can say the same for Sony. Is Playstation Network really developing a completely unique and standalone ecosystem with regards to VR?

Yes. It is as you said. We have a situation where multiple individuals should be tracked by one set of hardware ideally. If you have a single camera, then your depth perception is extremely limited so that you can't project 4 unique calculated pov depending on the player's vantage point.

>If they do a Gen 2 it would piss off a lot of the existing user-base

They should at least consider making a revision of their current model that is more compact and less front heavy with a better head mounting system.

And replace those stupid controller straps that snap if you so much as look at them funny. They haven't learnt from Nintendo's blunder with the wii.

Similar to how Sony releases slimmer models.

Putting price aside, the hardware is at a level where it is barely acceptable. Just about good enough to fool you into thinking you are there. It has room to improve in the future but is good enough for the time being.

The problem is as you have stated, the software isn't up to scratch. You have a lot of it but most are shovel ware or bite sized over glorified tech demos showcasing what is possible in the medium.

I only fuck around in H3VR these days, because unlike USofA I cannot legally own firearms in this country to shoot at a firing range.

Of course firing a real gun would be more enjoyable since you don't feel the weight or recoil. But it is good enough to enjoy and give you an idea as it is fairly mechanically accurate.

My biggest turn off besides lack of meaty software is the HMD being front heavy making my neck go sore an hour in especially when tilting your head a bit to aim down sight.

I wish they or someone would release an oculus-style rigid frame (actually made for it, not a fucking DIY mod of strapping the HMD to a welding mask with legos), but that would not require a revision of the HMD proper. More than anything they need to get 3rd party Lighthouse-enabled hardware much more active.

Japanese porn games is the other place where we've seen VR offering an unparalleled experience. Simulation titles are also like that, but the problem with these titles is that we don't have the hardware yet to make the leap and make them into a truly social experience at all. Hell, you can't plug in several VR headsets to any PC, let alone console, in order to get splitscreen gaming experience out of it.

I can see this emerge for Vive much earlier than any other VR platform.

Have they even released the Lighthouse sensor placement tool and what have you to the public?

What is taking Valve so long, a glove with lighthouse tracking would be incredible. It would eliminate many of the shortcomings of using leap motion as you can make gestures with significantly lower change of occlusion such as pointing you fingers forward away from the camera without issue.

Valve does allow for this and you can develop Vive hardware for about $1400 or something like that since you need to pay Valve for the training (devkit comes with it)

>Hell, you can't plug in several VR headsets to any PC, let alone console, in order to get splitscreen gaming experience out of it
That would be tough but not very practical these days especially considering that the Lighthouse tracking system requires Line of sight. I have to tell other people to sit on the sidelines when demoing so they don't block the sensors.

Online multiplayer is more practical
>AltspaceVR
>Bigscreen
>PoolNationVR
>RetroArcadeNeon
>RecRoom
All interesting examples of social interaction in VR that I have tried. Some are fairly bandwidth intensive and need some more work on netcode though.

>Japanese porn games is the other place where we've seen VR offering an unparalleled experience
I have tried CM3D2 and it is pretty good proof of concept considering that it was not designed for VR from the ground up. Honey select UI was way too convoluted I never bothered but has a lot of tweaking options available.

SBS 180/360 porn is pure unadulterated gimmicky fucking shit.
Rendered so far is better looking but requires a lot of work to get the animation to look fluid.

They need to figure out how to make proper roomscale video for porn with proper depth perception instead of wrapping a 2D image around an object for each eye.

Yep. Even so, online play is very much PC-esque and that kind of console experience at all.
We can't offload the graphic processing power to the cloud at that. Streaming VR is way off, even if we got 5G infrastructure going.

VR games funkin blows

Maybe Tim Cook is right. AR has more legs than VR as things stand. He's not cutting into this from a gaming pov, but AR is not as restrictive or hardware intensive as VR.

>AR is not as hardware intensive as VR.
This is only the perception because AR is, at the moment, defined by TCG-to-life shit and Pokemon GO (the latter of which isn't really AR rendering at all), and so far nothing stereoscopic. AR definitely does have more immediate marketability than VR, but it's not because of how resource intensive or 'restrictive' (by which I presume you mean burdensome to use, cables and whatnot?), it's because of very important and powerful non-entertainment applications - which don't NEED to be graphically rich to be effective.

Do we even have AR rendering with complete collision detection today? Right now, there's HUD like applications for it, and maybe some data visualization work that can be presented to the general audience.

computer vision is a difficult problem, and very much primarily the domain of the military. the commercial AR applications are pretty much limited to fiducial tracking, but there have been constant neat little uni projects for the past decade. basic surface-detection is absolutely viable on smartphone-level hardware, but making a compelling game out of it is a whole other huge can of worms. hyping this coming to fruition was the whole point of Microsofts Hololens, and the fact that it's since gone vaporware is absolutely unsurprising.

Couldn't pong style AR games be where we see this breakthrough first? Focus on the experience first and foremost.

That or using AR as an aid to traditional gaming experience, such as essentially a HUD add-on if we think like how military application would go.