News GDC report points to growing Switch, waning VR interest

I have seen cases, in the Rift forum, of players complaining they have not got what they wanted after spending hundreds of $/£ on loot boxes. As long as there are idiots like that playing games, microtransactiions/loot boxes are going nowhere.

 

Isn't this because there is a smaller set of good games to choose from on Switch, so far?

Which will then will not be the case as more games are made for it?

 

Until VR is cheaper to do, I don't see how it can be sustainable.

Not only are the headsets expensive, you need to spend a considerable pile of cash on a machine to properly run everything too.

It's interesting, but the high barrier to entry has me thinking my next tech-purchase that isn't a camera will be a Switch - Purely for Doom at the moment.

 

Aside from Lone Echo and the Sim Pit crowd I haven't seen any VR games that made VR feel essential. It's like the Wii problem scaled up to a massive degree, perfectly good games that would play perfectly well on a normal screen. Or in the case of a lots of shooters would play much better on a normal screen.

The cost of it doesn't help either.

Why would anyone want to play Doom at 30fps? What's wrong with everybody!?

 

Yeah, I'm very probably going to be making more use of public transport, and well. The appeal of Doom on the go is very hard to ignore. Actually using it in the house is unlikely, though, so like you I'd probably never unpack the base station!

Doom on the train, without a 'luggable' laptop that lasts eight minutes. Basically.

 

I did wonder and post about the possibility of VR being a flash in the pan before the OR dev kit was released...

 

Owning a switch and wanting to use it as a console rather than handheld, I can't recommend it, I'd wait until Nintendo refresh it if you don't really need it, Joycon range is piss poor.

 

Got a Switch for Christmas and loving it. I'd recommend setting the base station up too, it runs faster and it looks decent on a big screen. It's been surprisingly good and everyone seems to like it. That little Tegra chip isn't too bad.

 

Some interesting stats from that report:
- 3x more games completed for VR than for switch (15% vs. 5%)
- More games in development for VR than Switch (19% vs. 12%)
- Marginally more games intended to be developed for VR than switch (17% vs. 15%)
- More than half of devs surveyed were involved in development for VR/AR in some capacity (47% listed as not involved)

That's pretty damn impressive for something that effectively did not exist for consumers 4 years ago, and only really started selling to consumers 2 year ago. The ridiculous hype is starting to die down (I still see "AR is nearly here" ******** abound, but the reality of how far away that is should set in when the real capabilities of ARKit/ARCore become more obvious outside those already familiar with AR research) but practical usage continues to be high and is shifting from shovelware to more full development.

 

I'm not sure i'd agree about waning VR interest, the last 6 months of 2017 had a load of great games released and this year is looking pretty good to. Also if interest was waning why were all those WMR headsets released at the end of last year ? I know Microsoft are rather crap these days but they must have seen growth in the market and opportunity to cash in.