What strikes me as different from 1992-era games (and more like 1990s VR) is consistency of play. Even with the earlier generation of games, like NES titles or early Mac/PC games, you saw people putting in a lot of time over consistent periods. For many, video games replaced, say, board games. From what I see here and elsewhere, there are very few consistent VR users.
Maybe that's just down to the cost factors you describe. And maybe that's down to the competition being much better between modern consoles and the vast array of mobile games.
So I can believe you're right, it might be another way of gaming, coexisting in the same way that the PS5 and the Switch and phone games all coexist happily. But given the extra cost for both users and developers, it seems to me that it's also possible that there's a vicious circle ahead: High costs mean fewer games and fewer users. That leads to lower revenue, which means even fewer games, and therefore even fewer users.
At this point we must be somewhere near $50 billion invested in VR. If that level of subsidy isn't enough to get things going, I'm sure there are lots of CFOs asking exactly what it's going to take their VR units to become cash positive.
What strikes me as different from 1992-era games (and more like 1990s VR) is consistency of play. Even with the earlier generation of games, like NES titles or early Mac/PC games, you saw people putting in a lot of time over consistent periods. For many, video games replaced, say, board games. From what I see here and elsewhere, there are very few consistent VR users.
Maybe that's just down to the cost factors you describe. And maybe that's down to the competition being much better between modern consoles and the vast array of mobile games.
So I can believe you're right, it might be another way of gaming, coexisting in the same way that the PS5 and the Switch and phone games all coexist happily. But given the extra cost for both users and developers, it seems to me that it's also possible that there's a vicious circle ahead: High costs mean fewer games and fewer users. That leads to lower revenue, which means even fewer games, and therefore even fewer users.
At this point we must be somewhere near $50 billion invested in VR. If that level of subsidy isn't enough to get things going, I'm sure there are lots of CFOs asking exactly what it's going to take their VR units to become cash positive.