It has been a bit over three years now that the major modern VR headsets, the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, were published. (Technically speaking the gaming industry had at least 2 to 3 years more time than that to prepare because the Oculus Rift Development Kits had existed for that long prior, but in practice they had pretty much no influence on subsequent events, so that can be safely dismissed.) It has been a bit less than three years since the PSVR was released, but one can say all the major VR platforms have now existed for about three years.
Although there's really no reason for it, VR became pretty much in essence its own gaming platform, almost its own separate "game console", at least by the fact that something like 99% of VR games are VR-only, and the "traditional" games have no VR support of any kind. There's extremely little overlap, and very, very rarely does the same game support both full VR gameplay and non-VR gameplay, even though this technically speaking wouldn't need to be so in many, perhaps most, cases.
From what I saw back in the day, it was primarily Valve who promoted most heavily this complete separation of VR games from traditional games (I didn't see any such promotion by Oculus), and for whatever reason most game developers believed them. There was a very strong belief back then that people just physically cannot play, for example, first-person shooters in VR because it would cause immediate and very strong nausea, within seconds. Ironically, the PSVR was in the forefront of proving this claim false, as many PSVR games are first-person shooters, with only slight compromises for the sake of comfort (primarily limiting the rotation of the camera using the controller to discrete large steps.)
There's not really much reason to keep VR games as their own separate independent category. Many, perhaps even most, games using 3D graphics could have VR support in one way or another, at least as an option for those people who want to play them like that. And most VR games could have non-VR playing support (with only few exceptions, in the case of the more gimmicky games that rely very heavily eg. on head movement as a gameplay element, which cannot be easily replicated with a normal controller or mouse&keyboard alone).
However, it is what it is. For whatever reason, VR is in practice its own separate and independent gaming platform, not very unlike a game console, when it comes to availability of games, with only very few games being "ported" between and having support for the two forms (one of the best, if not even the best example being Resident Evil VII, which to this day in my opinion remains the best VR game that exists. Although admittedly I haven't played every single one that has been made.)
So for all intents and purposes we can deal with the VR headsets as if they were their own independent gaming platform. How well has this platform fared, and matured, during these three years?
As you might remember, back in 2016, when the headsets were published, and earlier, VR was supposed to be a complete revolution in gaming (just like the Microsoft Kinect...) Many people envisioned VR to not only become as big as regular desktop gaming, but even surpass it, making the boring old games played from a flat screen obsolete and a thing of the past. Who would want to play games on a flat screen, when they could play them with ultra-realistic stereoscopic real 3D that fills the entire space around the player? People even envisioned switching to VR headsets as their primary display, even for just 2D applications, like browsing the internet or watching YouTube videos (after all, wouldn't it be cool to watch YouTube videos on a giant cinema screen rather than a small display on your desktop?)
Reality turned out to be quite less exciting. Resolution was poor, image quality was poor, and the whole of wired bulky VR headsets (no matter how lightweight they succeeded in making them) turned out to be much more inconvenient to use than people thought. You can forget about eg. browsing the internet with a VR headset (due to the low resolution and inconvenient screen-door effect). Even a 10 years older basic cheap 1080p display was still a hundred times better and more convenient for that.
For about a year or two, people were still gushing about it, and preaching how everybody who has tried it loved it, and that you just need to try it to "get" it, to become converted... Yet almost nobody was actually buying VR headsets. After the prepurchases were delivered, sales figures dropped like a lead balloon, at one point grinding to pretty much a halt (except maybe on the PSVR side, which did relatively OK.) What I think happened is that for most people VR was like a circus act or a fireworks display: Sure, very entertaining and interesting to see once or twice... but not something you would purchase for yourself. Too much of a gimmick, too specialized, too limited, too inconvenient, and way, way too expensive. I'd say most people understood, correctly, that if they purchased it, it would just end up gathering dust on a shelf, almost completely unused. Only the most hard-core fans would regularly use them.
The price of the headsets was undoubtedly one of the major hurdles for wider adoption. Heck, at the time of publication you could purchase an entire relatively decent gaming PC for the same price as a VR headset. Or a modern console at almost half that price.
After something like a year even the gaming press started finally publishing articles doubting the success of VR, and asking if it could be considered a flop of sorts. Yet, some people still didn't want to believe that VR would not become the next big thing. Heck, even to this day some people still believe that VR will become big. Any day now.
Anyway, after this (way too) long introduction, let's get finally to the meat of this article: What is the current status of VR as a gaming platform?
Three years is plenty for a new gaming platform (such as a new console) to mature. It can take some time, even with traditional consoles. For example in the case of the PS4 it took well over a year before its game library became significant and sizeable. However, I'd say that by year 3 the number of triple-A titles for it was healthy.
I myself own a PSVR, and all the controllers for it. I have to say that, all things considered, it has been more a waste of money than anything else. I only own a handful of PSVR games. Only a few of them have been actually good and enjoyable. Some of them have been rather meh, although I was able to finish them. Some of them I was unable to finish at all, due to boredom.
The main problem of VR is the lack of big triple-A titles. This was a big problem back in 2016, and this problem has persisted ever since. To this day there's only a handful of full-length original triple-A games for VR. Maybe the only one I can mention off the top of my head is Resident Evil 7 (and even that one was perhaps slightly on the short side, for a full triple-A title.) I suppose The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim counts as well, even though it's a 1-to-1 perfect copy of the original, so it's not a new game. But in terms of content and length, I'm completely willing to include it in the list of full triple-A games for VR.
Most of the other "big" VR games are either borderline, or just crippled variants of existing triple-A games.
By "borderline" I mean that while some resources may have been put into the game, I would still not consider what's commonly called "triple-A", in that it doesn't really compare to the huge traditional triple-A games out there (of the sort of GTA, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, and so on and so forth). Both in content and in length these "borderline" games feel a bit small. While not indie-small, still small.
And even then, there's only a handful of even such "borderline" games for VR. A couple dozen at most, I'd say.
The rest of the "big" titles are nothing but crippled versions of existing games. Whenever you see a familiar name in the VR section of the online store, the name of an existing game or game franchise, you can be almost certain that it will be a very limited or shortened version of that game, or a very short game within that universe, or in other ways limited (eg. in terms of story, content and/or gameplay). Time after time game companies will sometimes make a VR version of an existing game of theirs, and it will be highly limited. Perhaps it has just one very limited game mode, with no story or anything. Maybe it consists of just a few levels (even though the original game consists of dozens). Maybe it's original content set in the same universe of the original game or game franchise... but it will still be relatively short or crippled in other ways.
Perhaps the only exception to this that I know of is Skyrim (which is a perfect 1-to-1 carbon copy of the original, all the way down to using the exact same assets, 3D models and textures as the original. It doesn't even improve on those by eg. using higher-quality textures.) But if you have ever played Skyrim to completion... well, the VR version doesn't really offer much. It's the exact same game, just in stereoscopic vision. Many people don't mind playing the same game twice, especially in this case, but others don't find much replay value. But I'm willing to give this a pass: It's a perfectly fine triple-A VR game.
The vast, vast majority of the remaining VR games are small indie games, or comparable to them (in terms of budget, content and length). There are some small VR games that are really enjoyable and fun to play, and even really well made, but way too short. This is a grievance I have found again and again. Once in a blue moon I will stumble across a VR game that's actually really enjoyable... only for it to be like 2 or 3 hours in length.
Most of the other games, even the "bigger" ones, are just outright boring. I hate leaving games unfinished, but many of these are just so boring I can't play them.
The fact is that VR as a gaming platform is simply underdeveloped and crippled. Big game studios are not making huge triple-A games for it, instead releasing half-baked crippled games most of the time, or very small and short games. It almost feels like the mobile gaming scene... except there's only a really minuscule fraction of games overall, compared to mobile games. (Some would say that's actually a good thing, given how saturated the mobile gaming market is. On the other hand, if lack of quantity is not compensated with quality...)
In the end, I would not recommend purchasing a VR headset, unless you have too much money. Unless you are a real aficionado, it will just end up gathering dust, very rarely used, as there simply aren't enough good games for it. The actually enjoyable games are far and in between.
Yet, for some reason, they are still trying to drag the VR gaming platform along, semi-regularly releasing new versions of headsets, every one more expensive than the last, and selling less units than the last. This is worse than the Kinect.
Although there's really no reason for it, VR became pretty much in essence its own gaming platform, almost its own separate "game console", at least by the fact that something like 99% of VR games are VR-only, and the "traditional" games have no VR support of any kind. There's extremely little overlap, and very, very rarely does the same game support both full VR gameplay and non-VR gameplay, even though this technically speaking wouldn't need to be so in many, perhaps most, cases.
From what I saw back in the day, it was primarily Valve who promoted most heavily this complete separation of VR games from traditional games (I didn't see any such promotion by Oculus), and for whatever reason most game developers believed them. There was a very strong belief back then that people just physically cannot play, for example, first-person shooters in VR because it would cause immediate and very strong nausea, within seconds. Ironically, the PSVR was in the forefront of proving this claim false, as many PSVR games are first-person shooters, with only slight compromises for the sake of comfort (primarily limiting the rotation of the camera using the controller to discrete large steps.)
There's not really much reason to keep VR games as their own separate independent category. Many, perhaps even most, games using 3D graphics could have VR support in one way or another, at least as an option for those people who want to play them like that. And most VR games could have non-VR playing support (with only few exceptions, in the case of the more gimmicky games that rely very heavily eg. on head movement as a gameplay element, which cannot be easily replicated with a normal controller or mouse&keyboard alone).
However, it is what it is. For whatever reason, VR is in practice its own separate and independent gaming platform, not very unlike a game console, when it comes to availability of games, with only very few games being "ported" between and having support for the two forms (one of the best, if not even the best example being Resident Evil VII, which to this day in my opinion remains the best VR game that exists. Although admittedly I haven't played every single one that has been made.)
So for all intents and purposes we can deal with the VR headsets as if they were their own independent gaming platform. How well has this platform fared, and matured, during these three years?
As you might remember, back in 2016, when the headsets were published, and earlier, VR was supposed to be a complete revolution in gaming (just like the Microsoft Kinect...) Many people envisioned VR to not only become as big as regular desktop gaming, but even surpass it, making the boring old games played from a flat screen obsolete and a thing of the past. Who would want to play games on a flat screen, when they could play them with ultra-realistic stereoscopic real 3D that fills the entire space around the player? People even envisioned switching to VR headsets as their primary display, even for just 2D applications, like browsing the internet or watching YouTube videos (after all, wouldn't it be cool to watch YouTube videos on a giant cinema screen rather than a small display on your desktop?)
Reality turned out to be quite less exciting. Resolution was poor, image quality was poor, and the whole of wired bulky VR headsets (no matter how lightweight they succeeded in making them) turned out to be much more inconvenient to use than people thought. You can forget about eg. browsing the internet with a VR headset (due to the low resolution and inconvenient screen-door effect). Even a 10 years older basic cheap 1080p display was still a hundred times better and more convenient for that.
For about a year or two, people were still gushing about it, and preaching how everybody who has tried it loved it, and that you just need to try it to "get" it, to become converted... Yet almost nobody was actually buying VR headsets. After the prepurchases were delivered, sales figures dropped like a lead balloon, at one point grinding to pretty much a halt (except maybe on the PSVR side, which did relatively OK.) What I think happened is that for most people VR was like a circus act or a fireworks display: Sure, very entertaining and interesting to see once or twice... but not something you would purchase for yourself. Too much of a gimmick, too specialized, too limited, too inconvenient, and way, way too expensive. I'd say most people understood, correctly, that if they purchased it, it would just end up gathering dust on a shelf, almost completely unused. Only the most hard-core fans would regularly use them.
The price of the headsets was undoubtedly one of the major hurdles for wider adoption. Heck, at the time of publication you could purchase an entire relatively decent gaming PC for the same price as a VR headset. Or a modern console at almost half that price.
After something like a year even the gaming press started finally publishing articles doubting the success of VR, and asking if it could be considered a flop of sorts. Yet, some people still didn't want to believe that VR would not become the next big thing. Heck, even to this day some people still believe that VR will become big. Any day now.
Anyway, after this (way too) long introduction, let's get finally to the meat of this article: What is the current status of VR as a gaming platform?
Three years is plenty for a new gaming platform (such as a new console) to mature. It can take some time, even with traditional consoles. For example in the case of the PS4 it took well over a year before its game library became significant and sizeable. However, I'd say that by year 3 the number of triple-A titles for it was healthy.
I myself own a PSVR, and all the controllers for it. I have to say that, all things considered, it has been more a waste of money than anything else. I only own a handful of PSVR games. Only a few of them have been actually good and enjoyable. Some of them have been rather meh, although I was able to finish them. Some of them I was unable to finish at all, due to boredom.
The main problem of VR is the lack of big triple-A titles. This was a big problem back in 2016, and this problem has persisted ever since. To this day there's only a handful of full-length original triple-A games for VR. Maybe the only one I can mention off the top of my head is Resident Evil 7 (and even that one was perhaps slightly on the short side, for a full triple-A title.) I suppose The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim counts as well, even though it's a 1-to-1 perfect copy of the original, so it's not a new game. But in terms of content and length, I'm completely willing to include it in the list of full triple-A games for VR.
Most of the other "big" VR games are either borderline, or just crippled variants of existing triple-A games.
By "borderline" I mean that while some resources may have been put into the game, I would still not consider what's commonly called "triple-A", in that it doesn't really compare to the huge traditional triple-A games out there (of the sort of GTA, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, and so on and so forth). Both in content and in length these "borderline" games feel a bit small. While not indie-small, still small.
And even then, there's only a handful of even such "borderline" games for VR. A couple dozen at most, I'd say.
The rest of the "big" titles are nothing but crippled versions of existing games. Whenever you see a familiar name in the VR section of the online store, the name of an existing game or game franchise, you can be almost certain that it will be a very limited or shortened version of that game, or a very short game within that universe, or in other ways limited (eg. in terms of story, content and/or gameplay). Time after time game companies will sometimes make a VR version of an existing game of theirs, and it will be highly limited. Perhaps it has just one very limited game mode, with no story or anything. Maybe it consists of just a few levels (even though the original game consists of dozens). Maybe it's original content set in the same universe of the original game or game franchise... but it will still be relatively short or crippled in other ways.
Perhaps the only exception to this that I know of is Skyrim (which is a perfect 1-to-1 carbon copy of the original, all the way down to using the exact same assets, 3D models and textures as the original. It doesn't even improve on those by eg. using higher-quality textures.) But if you have ever played Skyrim to completion... well, the VR version doesn't really offer much. It's the exact same game, just in stereoscopic vision. Many people don't mind playing the same game twice, especially in this case, but others don't find much replay value. But I'm willing to give this a pass: It's a perfectly fine triple-A VR game.
The vast, vast majority of the remaining VR games are small indie games, or comparable to them (in terms of budget, content and length). There are some small VR games that are really enjoyable and fun to play, and even really well made, but way too short. This is a grievance I have found again and again. Once in a blue moon I will stumble across a VR game that's actually really enjoyable... only for it to be like 2 or 3 hours in length.
Most of the other games, even the "bigger" ones, are just outright boring. I hate leaving games unfinished, but many of these are just so boring I can't play them.
The fact is that VR as a gaming platform is simply underdeveloped and crippled. Big game studios are not making huge triple-A games for it, instead releasing half-baked crippled games most of the time, or very small and short games. It almost feels like the mobile gaming scene... except there's only a really minuscule fraction of games overall, compared to mobile games. (Some would say that's actually a good thing, given how saturated the mobile gaming market is. On the other hand, if lack of quantity is not compensated with quality...)
In the end, I would not recommend purchasing a VR headset, unless you have too much money. Unless you are a real aficionado, it will just end up gathering dust, very rarely used, as there simply aren't enough good games for it. The actually enjoyable games are far and in between.
Yet, for some reason, they are still trying to drag the VR gaming platform along, semi-regularly releasing new versions of headsets, every one more expensive than the last, and selling less units than the last. This is worse than the Kinect.
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