In my opinion indie games don't sell platforms, AAA titles do.
1,010 karma · joined January 18, 2009
Another way to look at it is that the Oculus isn't just a peripheral, it's a platform. Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base, which in turn draws developers and subsequently a larger library which leads to more platform purchases.
Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR. The best experiences, and the ones that will drive sales will be designed specifically for VR.
Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.
The quality of a user's experience with the Oculus is going to be directly correlated to the quantity and quality of games/experiences available for the device. Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem. Quantity/quality are even more important to the user after making such a significant investment.
The problem here is if developers will be able to make money creating quality experiences for Oculus if the userbase is tiny because no one can afford one. The user market is already being fractured by the different units available - if I develop a game for the HTC Vive (which supports room tracking) is it easy or even possible to port the experience to the Oculus?
Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base (XBOX/PS4/PC/etc). Due to the nature of VR a quality experience is going to require a significant investment to build. If companies can't recoup that cost they'll stop developing and if there aren't any killer experiences people will stop buying the Rift.
For Oculus (or any of the upcoming units) to be successful they need to walk the line between quality and price, and I'm not sure they've done it.
I'm starting to think Sony is in a better position even though it's looking like they have inferior hardware.
This could be a bad sign for VR.
Maybe use it as a time waster but avoid it as a resource for useful information.
There's something mystical and very powerful about this book and the theme of conquering fear. It also reads surprisingly well considering how dense some of the political and technical descriptions are.
Then the real question becomes how much time did he invest into the whole thing and what was the resulting hourly rate.
Not sure why there's so much hate here, I don't know that selling animal silicon bracelets is any less noble than most of the social startups out there. At least the article wasn't about how he resold buyers shipping information and product purchase history to Walmart...