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HTC has hit back against claims of declining VR sales figures:
The blog post in particular references a report from Digital Trends which talks about VR sales figures from Amazon, and proceeds to point out a number of ways which the data presented could be misleading.
Several points made by HTC Vive are ones that have also been addressed by VRFocus, as seen in an article about the modern VR cycle, and some comments in the weekly VR vs. article. HTC Vive were not pulling punches right from the very start, evening saying in the introduction: "Analyst reports are in and apparently, it's curtains for Virtual Reality (VR). Pardon us if we're not heeding the alarms. News of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated."
From there, the blog post proceeds in a point-by-point fashion, discussing how early consumer VR was largely driven by smartphone-based devices such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Not only have these devices been superseded by standalone units like the Oculus Go, which offer a better visual experience, but the promotional offers which were available for phone launches have now long since passed. HTC Vive also point out that PC-based VR companies are yet to release any solid sales figures, and that much of the growth of premium VR has been centered around location-based VR centres, something which the Digital Trends report did not address.
Related: HTC's Vive Pro to Launch on April 5
Facebook Launches Oculus Go, a $200 Standalone VR Headset
VirtualLink Consortium Announces USB Type-C Specification for VR Headsets
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Friday July 27 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
I personally can't get my head around why game designers, as soon as they want to make something for VR, seem to feel the need to throw out many of the things that make a game great: realism, longevity, expansive environments, depth and detail. Instead we have lots of overgrown tech demos and ultra short casual games. Actually, I do know some of the reasons. I know they've got to appeal to the pukers that feel too sick to play if the game goes on for too long or moves about too much -- and that rules out most of the things I listed! Add to that the fact they don't expect VR gamers to want to use their keyboard and you have ultra simplified controls as well which is almost certainly going to dumb down the game.
The problem with the above is you've then relegated VR games to the casual gamer, which is kinda stupid because the hardcore / power gamer is more likely to splash the big bucks on a VR setup. About the only saving grace is the fact that quite a few originally non-VR games can now be made to work with it.
This kind of narrow minded approach -- it's for VR therefore it has to be limited to this, this, and this -- reminds me of the same kind of philosophy that crippled so many websites, user interfaces and in some cases applications because it was supposed be better for mobile -- even though many of those things were crap even on a mobile and in the past a link to a Desktop Site was a blessing but sadly their days are numbered.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday July 27 2018, @08:59PM
Might be why Skyrim VR did so well [venturebeat.com]. It was just a port of an existing open world game. And the voice recognition for shouting gimmick was added years in advance.
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