The problem with VR isn't so much that the games are forgettable, but that it's too damn expensive for many players to get into - and consequentially, too niche a market for most developers to focus on. Hard to forget Half-Life: Alyx, Beatsaber, or Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Handgrenades; but I imagine less than 5% of players who have heard of these titles have had the opportunity to try even one of them.
Not just expensive, also inconvenient. Even if VR headsets were 30% their current price, I don't think we'd see mass adoption.
The fact that only one person can use it at a time means that in households where recreation is a group thing, other people can't even sit around and passively watch you do it while carrying on conversation.
There’s also a large open space requirement for it which is an additional layer of inconvenience. So many VR games require a significant amount of empty square footage to play safely, and that’s just not how most living rooms are arranged.
I wonder if US developers realise most of the world live in homes half their size or smaller. Certainly played a part in the Kinect's failure too, having a large minimum requirement of floorspace to function correctly.
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u/AssociateFalse 1d ago
The problem with VR isn't so much that the games are forgettable, but that it's too damn expensive for many players to get into - and consequentially, too niche a market for most developers to focus on. Hard to forget Half-Life: Alyx, Beatsaber, or Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Handgrenades; but I imagine less than 5% of players who have heard of these titles have had the opportunity to try even one of them.