Virtual Reality

[fishbowlhead]

Just wanted to come back here and post this, as this is about the new MMORPG for VR releasing in a few days, comparing it on Quest to PC:

Very interesting cheers Asura.

[Asura]

So finished Battle Sister.



Generally, my opinion on it hasn't changed much since what I said on the previous page; it has a the feel of a scrappy PS2 game, but in a good way.

This continued right up until the very last moment, where the final boss has a long pre-fight monologue that you have to rewatch every time you die, fortunately it only took me two goes.

However, it did get better once you got into it. By the third level, when it actually got a bit challenging, it all clicks and you have some fights where you really feel both threatened and powerful. You have to get the best out of your abilities and weapons, and it's great as you're using weapons, tossing them aside, using your melee as you reload with the other hand...

It's a shame the game has no adversarial multiplayer, as I might've tried that. I'd play the co-op horde mode if I knew anyone else who had it

So on the whole, if you're a fan of Warhammer 40,000 and have a Quest, you should pretty much just get it. I think you'll love it.

For most people I think Star Wars: Tales from Galaxy's Edge and Vader Immortal will be better, but if you have a soft spot for these kinds of scrappy console FPS experiences then you ought to really like this. Definitely worth grabbing in a sale.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep, that was pretty much my experience with it too. A pretty average shooter hugely elevated for me by the combination of VR and 40K and, actually, a lot of fun at times. And a pretty meaty game experience that managed to throw some surprises at me along the way. There was one part where I felt the checkpoint was too far away but only noticed that because it was one section I struggled with (it had lifts and a load of enemies and I had very little ammunition). Otherwise, it did what it should and I just enjoyed it.

And in VR, I really loved the sense of scale, especially playing as a Battle Sister and having a Space Marine companion for some sections. He was huge!

[fishbowlhead]

This looks pretty cool.

[Neon Ignition]

https://uploadvr.com/meta-revenue-reality-labs-quest

The good news is that the part of Meta that is responsible for Quest 2 has now increased its revenue to $2bn per year thanks to the headsets success

The bad news is that the $2bn a year its now generating is offset by it bleeding $12bn per year in costs and expenses. The switch to the Meta brand has meant that Facebook has issued performance figures for the whole company for the first time, the results showcased misses across the board causing a 20% fall in share price.

[Asura]

The bad news is that the $2bn a year its now generating is offset by it bleeding $12bn per year in costs and expenses.

This is why there's no proper competitor to the Quest. Estimates vary on how much, but Meta definitely lose money on each headset sold.

[fishbowlhead]

Love it from big corps. Were generating 2b a year in revenue!!!!! Then in teeny tiny print, but we’re loosing 12b a year, no, Your LOOSING 10b a year.

On a serious note thats a staggering amount they are loosing on the quest division, how is it bleeding like that? I can’t get my head around it as its all being sold right? Headsets & games are all being sold?

[Neon Ignition]

Makes me curious about PSVR2 again as well, especially given Sony is going higher end on it. If Oculus is missing profits by such a margin it makes you wonder what Sony's endgame is with PSVR2 given the unlikeliness it will make money. Why is a PSP3 so hard then?

[fishbowlhead]

Psvr was quite expensive though and ran off the console, is the quest the one thats a self contained unit? Would certainly bump the cost up a lot putting essentially a computer in the headset as well.

But 12b worth of loss? Nope I can’t picture how the department could possibly loose that much even if every employee was burning cash every day in a field.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Makes me curious about PSVR2 again as well, especially given Sony is going higher end on it. If Oculus is missing profits by such a margin it makes you wonder what Sony's endgame is with PSVR2 given the unlikeliness it will make money. Why is a PSP3 so hard then?

A few things that differ with Sony is:

They already make high end TVs so they'll have contracts and connections with screen makers to get production cost lower.

They have the PlayStation brand and game production backing them up internally.

[Asura]

On a serious note thats a staggering amount they are loosing on the quest division, how is it bleeding like that? I can’t get my head around it as its all being sold right? Headsets & games are all being sold?

The general thoughts online are that Facebook are keen on the idea, funnily enough, for the same reason PSHome was actually a net positive for Sony.

Home wasn't a big seller, in that people didn't really spend money in it. It also failed in the sense that Sony wanted its lobbies to be the jumping-off-point for games; (you could actually go into Home and use it as your lobby for WipeoutHD and Street Fighter IV).

But it was a huge success in one specific way. Home was built around a series of hub locations; there was a city square (kinda like Times Square or Piccadilly Circus) with a mall, a cinema, other superficial attractions. However, all of these attractions sold their advertising space like for real adverts. Few companies bought advertising, but Sony themselves could advertise here for free. All of the "movies" at the cinema were trailers & promotional materials for Sony Tristar/Columbia movies. And critically, all of the users of Home were Playstation users who fit into a relatively tight demographic (apparently).

Facebook, like Google, are ultimately an advertising firm. I mean that's the product they sell. VR offers a possibility for them; they missed out on mobile phones (Facebook really wanted to be the mobile internet; that's why they released that dreadful Facebook Phone, bought WhatsApp and are sponsored that ill-fated internet satellite network for India & Africa that would be expensive, but free if you only used Facebook).

Their goal with VR is to not miss the boat next time, and if VR/AR become a mainstream thing we use every day, comparable to smartphones/smart TVs, that they will be the primary provider of that technology. They can sacrifice literally anything to be that company because the potential revenue, if the bet pans out, isn't just a lot of money but more akin to all the money.

[Neon Ignition]

Hail-Mary moment - Not to come across all ludite but I don't think the Metaverse drive is going to pay off for anyone involved

[wakka]

It feels hard to see how it could currently. There are almost no practical consumer applications for VR beyond playing games at the moment, and even then it's only a sideshow to mainstream TV/monitor based games.

It's one reason why I'm incredibly curious to see how Apple package their headset. It will be very expensive and yet Apple have no pedigree in games nor much interest in them. I don't know what it will really do that will be of much use. It's something that's obviously being developed for the same reasons that Facebook is burning piles of cash on Oculus - basically FOMO.

I'm of a view that down the line wearing a computer on your head will be a lot more common than it is now, but only as a more rapid and convenient method of meshing the real and digital (currently smartphone-bound) world. I find it hard to envisage a situation where something like a VR PlayStation Home could be truly mainstream. It doesn't feel like it solves a problem or makes anything easier.

[fishbowlhead]

VR is useless for anything other than a solitary activity, its never going to be EVERYWHERE and all encompassing. AR maybe will do, once it starts becoming useful on a daily basis but completely unobtrusive.

[Asura]

Hail-Mary moment - Not to come across all ludite but I don't think the Metaverse drive is going to pay off for anyone involved

It absolutely isn't, not in its present form.

VR headsets need to be much smaller and far easier to use before they're going to be as ubiquitous as a smartphone.

I don't know when/if VR's "smartphone moment" will happen. But I do know that the iPhone followed over a decade of people having various PDAs. I had a Palm-3, a Palm M130, a Psion Series 5, various feature-phones - they were all useful, to a point, but when using them you always felt like there was something not quite "there" about the experience. They were clunky. You had to kinda force yourself to use it; you knew that using it is useful, even fun, but there was a friction there.

When I got my first iPhone, which was the 4, my overwhelming feeling was that this device did what I wanted those older PDAs to do. Like it made good on all those features the earlier devices had, but just didn't quite deliver upon. Easy to use. No stylus. Easy to connect to a computer. Wifi. Apps.

Smartphones make some things just fundamentally better. Getting and using bus tickets. Listing items on eBay from a device which also has a camera. Tons of stuff.

One of the main problems I have with the Quest is that it's very difficult to jump in/out of. Like if I'm using the Quest, I'm going to use it exclusively for at least a half-hour. If I want to google something while playing, I have to take it off (typing using the in-headset browser is like pulling teeth). Taking it off puts it in standby, which usually means it has to lose and reinitialise the tracking. I've seen this break games, sometimes, so you want to avoid doing it.

It's also an intensely anti-social experience when you're not playing something like Keep Talking... and you just can't use it if someone else is in the room with you, which is the complete opposite of smartphones.

I really like VR. In fact I love using it, and love many of the games and experiences I've played. But while it might one day be mainstream, I guess my main concern is that when that happens, it'll feel like how I observe the freemium ****e on Android, as someone who enjoys classic handheld gaming. Similar, but different, and not made for me.