Today I read this month's issue of the Finnish Pelit gaming magazine. The main editorial article in the magazine is about the failure of VR.
It seems that, finally, even the gaming press has awakened to the harsh reality. HTC has announced that they might be selling off their VR department (undoubtedly because of poor sales, which have been dropping like a lead balloon). The library of triple-A VR games is ridiculously small. Almost no game developer company is showing any sort of interest in VR games, which is creating a vicious cycle (it's not economically feasible to make triple-A games for a system with abysmal adoption rates; a lack of triple-A games ensures that the adoption rates remain abysmal.)
In the upcoming months there might be a bit of a resurgence, perhaps hope, because three triple-A VR games based on famous existing games will be published: Doom, Fallout 4 and Skyrim. However, even the writer of the editorial doesn't seem to show much enthusiasm and optimism about it (especially since none of the three is a free upgrade for people who already own the games, but are full-priced independent releases.) The writer predicts that if these games fail in reviving interest in VR, that may well signify the death of the entire platform (at least on the PC side), since other developer companies will take it as a sign that VR is a failure and it's simply not profitable to make anything for it.
(Personally I doubt they will be very successful, especially if the developers have stayed with their original plans of making them "room-scale" and using the teleportation mechanic. Skyrim might see a bit of success if it uses the same controls as eg. Resident Evil 7.)
So why did VR fail?
* Firstly, and by far most importantly: Price!
The VR goggles are way, way too expensive. Even after a year and a half, the prices have not come down one iota (which is yet another entry in the long list of failed predictions that people had about VR.) People are not going to make such expensive purchases for such a niche application. When the VR goggles are more expensive than their entire PC (or even console), they aren't exactly eager to spend that money on an unproven technology.
I guarantee with absolute certainty that if they had priced the goggles at $200 apiece, there would right now be tens of millions of units sold (and most probably dozens of triple-A games for them). I don't know nor care how they would have managed to drop the price that low, but that's what was needed, and they failed.
Tellingly, can you guess which of the existing VR platforms is the most sold one, by a long shot? The mobile phone ones. Why? Because everybody has a smartphone, and you can get VR goggles for them starting from something like $10. Even the official Samsung Gear VR is priced at something like $50. That's why they have sold like hotcakes: Because people can afford them. (Again, I don't care how much more expensive the PC VR goggles are due to having to have a display of their own. That doesn't change the fact that being too expensive has killed them.)
* Secondly, not concentrating enough on sit-down game mechanics, and emphasizing "room-scale" VR way too much. So much so that the HTC Vive was pretty much designed for "room-scale" VR, sit-down VR being just an ancillary secondary form of possible use.
I think especially Valve dropped the ball completely with this one. By concentrating so much on advertising the "room-scale" features, they essentially made the whole VR platform a gimmick. A technology demo. A circus act. Something to awe random people for 10 minutes, who will then praise the experience like it had been a religious one... but then shrugging it off. People got impressed about it, but deep inside they weren't impressed enough to actually go and buy one themselves. You might be impressed by a laser show, or an aquarium, or a 3D movie, but that doesn't mean you will rush to the store to buy yourself one. It's a one-time experience, just like a circus act or an aquarium.
Add to that the space requirements for "room-scale" VR, which was always one of the major reasons cited for not purchasing the system. (Space requirements that a sit-down VR system does not have.)
"Room-scale" VR didn't convince the most important segment of the public: Gamers. (Even though, quite ironically, large part of this segment maintained how great VR must be, and that VR is the future, and might even obsolete normal traditional gaming. Yet they themselves didn't believe their own rhetoric enough to go and buy it.) I seriously think that Valve pretty much single-handedly killed interest in VR.
* Thirdly, completely dissing the idea of upgrading existing games, or making dual games.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of triple-A games in existence that use 3D graphics. Of course not all of them (not even a majority of them) use game mechanics that would be easy to transfer to the limited VR control system. However, quite many of them could be adapted for VR gameplay with moderate effort (especially since PSVR quite clearly demonstrated that you don't need a stupid "teleportation" mechanic to move).
Even if only 1% of all existing triple-A games that use 3D graphics use a form of game mechanics that could be adapted for VR, that would mean literally thousands of triple-A games for VR, right there. Sure, many of them would be relatively old games, but better old games than no games at all.
Some existing vehicle simulators did this (because VR support is a very natural extension to them), but other than those, I am aware of only one single old triple-A game which the developers adapted for VR (Serious Sam). Just one. From the literally hundreds of thousands of existing triple-A games. (There might have been a few others, but I'm not aware of any.) Curiously, and sadly, during the Oculus Rift Development Kit years many developers had announced that they would be adding VR support to some of their existing games, but pretty much all of them later abandoned the idea.
I think (as described earlier) Valve played a big role in this. (Even Valve themselves initially planned on adding VR support to their existing games. In fact, Half-Life 2 was playable in VR during the OR DK era. Valve later disabled the support, for reasons known only to them. Nowadays you can only re-enable it via modding. They have absolutely no plans to add support to any of their existing games anymore.)
Also, it seems that game developers have completely dismissed the idea of adding VR support to new triple-A titles intended for normal gameplay. The only exception I'm aware of is Resident Evil 7 (which beautifully demonstrates how a game can support both VR and non-VR playing. A lesson that few other developer companies seem to want to learn.)
So, in summary: Make the VR systems cost about $200 (I don't know nor care how), forget the whole "room-scale" thing, and add support to a sizeable portion of existing and new games (so that there would be literally thousands of triple-A VR games out there), and I guarantee that VR would be much more of a success. Also, drop those stupid VR controllers; they are as much a gimmick as "room-scale" VR. (Dropping them would also lower the price, so there.)
I think Resident Evil 7 is the perfect example of how VR games should be like: Support VR and non-VR playing, sit-down experience, no stupid VR controller gimmicks (it's controlled with the regular gamepad in the normal way, without any motion tracking).
It seems that, finally, even the gaming press has awakened to the harsh reality. HTC has announced that they might be selling off their VR department (undoubtedly because of poor sales, which have been dropping like a lead balloon). The library of triple-A VR games is ridiculously small. Almost no game developer company is showing any sort of interest in VR games, which is creating a vicious cycle (it's not economically feasible to make triple-A games for a system with abysmal adoption rates; a lack of triple-A games ensures that the adoption rates remain abysmal.)
In the upcoming months there might be a bit of a resurgence, perhaps hope, because three triple-A VR games based on famous existing games will be published: Doom, Fallout 4 and Skyrim. However, even the writer of the editorial doesn't seem to show much enthusiasm and optimism about it (especially since none of the three is a free upgrade for people who already own the games, but are full-priced independent releases.) The writer predicts that if these games fail in reviving interest in VR, that may well signify the death of the entire platform (at least on the PC side), since other developer companies will take it as a sign that VR is a failure and it's simply not profitable to make anything for it.
(Personally I doubt they will be very successful, especially if the developers have stayed with their original plans of making them "room-scale" and using the teleportation mechanic. Skyrim might see a bit of success if it uses the same controls as eg. Resident Evil 7.)
So why did VR fail?
* Firstly, and by far most importantly: Price!
The VR goggles are way, way too expensive. Even after a year and a half, the prices have not come down one iota (which is yet another entry in the long list of failed predictions that people had about VR.) People are not going to make such expensive purchases for such a niche application. When the VR goggles are more expensive than their entire PC (or even console), they aren't exactly eager to spend that money on an unproven technology.
I guarantee with absolute certainty that if they had priced the goggles at $200 apiece, there would right now be tens of millions of units sold (and most probably dozens of triple-A games for them). I don't know nor care how they would have managed to drop the price that low, but that's what was needed, and they failed.
Tellingly, can you guess which of the existing VR platforms is the most sold one, by a long shot? The mobile phone ones. Why? Because everybody has a smartphone, and you can get VR goggles for them starting from something like $10. Even the official Samsung Gear VR is priced at something like $50. That's why they have sold like hotcakes: Because people can afford them. (Again, I don't care how much more expensive the PC VR goggles are due to having to have a display of their own. That doesn't change the fact that being too expensive has killed them.)
* Secondly, not concentrating enough on sit-down game mechanics, and emphasizing "room-scale" VR way too much. So much so that the HTC Vive was pretty much designed for "room-scale" VR, sit-down VR being just an ancillary secondary form of possible use.
I think especially Valve dropped the ball completely with this one. By concentrating so much on advertising the "room-scale" features, they essentially made the whole VR platform a gimmick. A technology demo. A circus act. Something to awe random people for 10 minutes, who will then praise the experience like it had been a religious one... but then shrugging it off. People got impressed about it, but deep inside they weren't impressed enough to actually go and buy one themselves. You might be impressed by a laser show, or an aquarium, or a 3D movie, but that doesn't mean you will rush to the store to buy yourself one. It's a one-time experience, just like a circus act or an aquarium.
Add to that the space requirements for "room-scale" VR, which was always one of the major reasons cited for not purchasing the system. (Space requirements that a sit-down VR system does not have.)
"Room-scale" VR didn't convince the most important segment of the public: Gamers. (Even though, quite ironically, large part of this segment maintained how great VR must be, and that VR is the future, and might even obsolete normal traditional gaming. Yet they themselves didn't believe their own rhetoric enough to go and buy it.) I seriously think that Valve pretty much single-handedly killed interest in VR.
* Thirdly, completely dissing the idea of upgrading existing games, or making dual games.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of triple-A games in existence that use 3D graphics. Of course not all of them (not even a majority of them) use game mechanics that would be easy to transfer to the limited VR control system. However, quite many of them could be adapted for VR gameplay with moderate effort (especially since PSVR quite clearly demonstrated that you don't need a stupid "teleportation" mechanic to move).
Even if only 1% of all existing triple-A games that use 3D graphics use a form of game mechanics that could be adapted for VR, that would mean literally thousands of triple-A games for VR, right there. Sure, many of them would be relatively old games, but better old games than no games at all.
Some existing vehicle simulators did this (because VR support is a very natural extension to them), but other than those, I am aware of only one single old triple-A game which the developers adapted for VR (Serious Sam). Just one. From the literally hundreds of thousands of existing triple-A games. (There might have been a few others, but I'm not aware of any.) Curiously, and sadly, during the Oculus Rift Development Kit years many developers had announced that they would be adding VR support to some of their existing games, but pretty much all of them later abandoned the idea.
I think (as described earlier) Valve played a big role in this. (Even Valve themselves initially planned on adding VR support to their existing games. In fact, Half-Life 2 was playable in VR during the OR DK era. Valve later disabled the support, for reasons known only to them. Nowadays you can only re-enable it via modding. They have absolutely no plans to add support to any of their existing games anymore.)
Also, it seems that game developers have completely dismissed the idea of adding VR support to new triple-A titles intended for normal gameplay. The only exception I'm aware of is Resident Evil 7 (which beautifully demonstrates how a game can support both VR and non-VR playing. A lesson that few other developer companies seem to want to learn.)
So, in summary: Make the VR systems cost about $200 (I don't know nor care how), forget the whole "room-scale" thing, and add support to a sizeable portion of existing and new games (so that there would be literally thousands of triple-A VR games out there), and I guarantee that VR would be much more of a success. Also, drop those stupid VR controllers; they are as much a gimmick as "room-scale" VR. (Dropping them would also lower the price, so there.)
I think Resident Evil 7 is the perfect example of how VR games should be like: Support VR and non-VR playing, sit-down experience, no stupid VR controller gimmicks (it's controlled with the regular gamepad in the normal way, without any motion tracking).
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