Their problem mostly is being way too early to the party.
Sony wasn't involved in Tetris Effect or The Persistence.
Sony's 2018 VR lineup was Astrobot, Bravo Team, Deracine, The Inpatient, Firewall, and Wipeout Omega Collection.
This was probably the Xbox One's worst year, and they had Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves, and State of Decay 2.
I mean, you're welcome to your opinion, but I'd say Forza Horizon 4 alone is a better experience than all those VR games, except Astrobot, combined. In terms of scope I would say Forza Horizon 4 is actually bigger than all of those games combined, so I really don't think it's far to say that PSVR has better support than the Xbox One does.
Lol, PSVR is non existent in the realms of gaming and it has no perception problems like the Xbox One has. Even with no perception problems, PSVR sells less than the Vita when it was in circulation.
Holy hyperbole, Batman. I don't doubt that asymmetrical VR multiplayer can be entertaining, but this is just fanboyish. You can't get 'more social' wearing a video blindfold, where you can't see the people sitting next to you. You can definitely feel more immersed in the game world (at least one of you can be), but to call it the highest form of social interaction in gaming is ludicrous.Okay, no. That is just plain false. VR can isolating, but only if you want it to be. Otherwise, you can play party games or asymmetrical games with people on your couch. Beat Saber in particular has probably been the main source of life at many thousands of parties worldwide. Not to mention that VR multiplayer is far more social than any other form of multiplayer gaming. So basically, if you allow it to be, VR is the most socially connecting technology on the planet.
I said multiplayer gaming, meaning online. It's objectively more social in that no matter what you say. The presence of another human being with tracked avatars and spatial voice vs voice chat on discord. Which is more social?Holy hyperbole, Batman. I don't doubt that asymmetrical VR multiplayer can be entertaining, but this is just fanboyish. You can't get 'more social' wearing a video blindfold, where you can't see the people sitting next to you. You can definitely feel more immersed in the game world (at least one of you can be), but to call it the highest form of social interaction in gaming is ludicrous.
Core audience or not, the low attach rate of PSVR suggests it's a hard sell right now.Kinect 2.0 was rejected by people because it was aimed at casual gamers and this audience had moved on to tablets and phones.
VR is aimed at the usual core audience.
If Xbox execs dont understand their business enough to realize that and make that distinction I would be very disappointed and have very little hope for Xbox when it comes to making the right decisions for the future.
But I also dont think its too late to jump on the VR bandwagon.
Either by supporting existing headsets on Xbox in the future or by going all in when second gen VR hits: Wireless, 4k displays, foveated rendering.
To become a mass market product VR will need all that at a pricepoint around 200$.
I knew this was the real agenda behind your thread, now you've confirmed it.
You aren't the first person saying this. I'm questioning OP's intentions too. LolThe oddness of this reply kind of feels like maybe this was your actual trigger to go ahead and create a disingenuous thread.
The Vita was built upon many handhelds that came before. It's a late generation device. VR is in it's first generation. Expectations are completely different because no one knows what VR is yet aside from a small group. Everyone (or many people) knew what a handheld console was when Vita launched.
Moss, Firewall Zero Hour, Astro Bot, Borderlands 2, Wipeout, Tetris Effect, Sprint Vector, Beat Saber, The Persistence. There has been plenty of great games released on PSVR this year.
Because it's only been 3 years. Did you see any such success in smartphones in less than 10 years? Or PCs in under 15 years? We didn't. Nothing gets there that fast.VR has some of the biggest and awesome companies backing it and its still floundering. I'll wait and see if the Oculus Quest can do anything but I just can't see it.
Plentiful refers to quantity. No one said anything about budget until you just mentioned it right now. Yes, budgets are not at that level yet, but that doesn't undermine the fact that the library is growing. If you're looking for a God of War budget game, then it's a good thing we have 5 AAA VR games on the way now.I never said ther wasn't any great games but that is not plentiful at all. How do we expect VR to really take off with such limited funding? You can add up all those games and that would still be less of a investment than a game like God of War had. It takes money to make money and as I said from the beginning it is being treated as a peripheral.
I have Oculus, I want bigger games. Most are just VR experiences. Once in awhile we get great titles like Lone Echo, Robo Recall and Astro Bot but for the most part they are small scale. It's never going to be a killer app until everyone is onboard.
I played VR 20 years ago
Not as it develops anyway. VR will likely be more convenient and easier than switching on a TV / Console as time goes on.Also you'll never get over the entry level being higher than that of consoles themselves.
Yet the Kinect was around 20 million in 3 years.Because it's only been 3 years. Did you see any such success in smartphones in less than 10 years? Or PCs in under 15 years? We didn't. Nothing gets there that fast.
20 years ago we had a VR push by a handful of small-time companies that no one really knows about. There wasn't a single big company supporting consumer VR back then. The first time a big company actually released a VR headset was 2015 with Samsung's Gear VR.I played VR 20 years ago
I wouldn't call this 'first-generation'
Again, he's been attacked by this "fan base" for playing PC and PS4 games. So if he is trying to help the console wars he's not doing a great job.I think you're kind of missing it there. Ybarra is simply disseminating a talking point for their online fan base to repeat. They do this all the time.
Which was far cheaper, wasn't a full-blown medium that takes lots of effort to convince people of, and was built on top of lots of similar devices that consumers have gotten used to over the years.
You were literally talking about house parties with Beat Saber and asymmetrical gameplay, not online multiplayer.I said multiplayer gaming, meaning online. It's objectively more social in that no matter what you say. The presence of another human being with tracked avatars and spatial voice vs voice chat on discord. Which is more social?
When you have people sitting next to you, you can either shut them off completely, shut them off slightly (have your microphone pick up their voice to relay to your headphones) or in the near future, don't shut them off at all, as they would be real-time scanned into your VR experience.
That's only when you play games that are meant to be for yourself. When you play party games or asymmetrical games, you are experiencing that with other people in the room. In a way this can be more social because instead of two people staring at a screen, one person would stare at a screen and see your body movements on the screen. As more of our bodies are tracked, this will feel more social.
Tons of people played those machines, they were in malls and public places everywhere. It doesn't matter what company produced them, many people experienced them. Owning the headset doesn't really make any difference in the experience20 years ago we had a VR push by a handful of small-time companies that no one really knows about. There wasn't a single big company supporting consumer VR back then. The first time a big company actually released a VR headset was 2015 with Samsung's Gear VR.
Again, he's been attacked by this "fan base" for playing PC and PS4 games. So if he is trying to help the console wars he's not doing a great job.
They are objectively game changers just by way of how much they change how gaming functions. Lone Echo / Echo VR in particular is a game that is unique in all ~50 years of gaming. How often can you say a game is so unique that nothing has ever been remotely like it, ever?
Both. You can tell that Mike Ybarra doesn't know about games like Astro Bot, Lone Echo / Echo VR, Beat Saber. I mean we still don't have a killer app, but those are close. His attitude would suggest there is nothing even close, which would make him uninformed.
Sony wasn't involved in Tetris Effect or The Persistence.
Sony's 2018 VR lineup was Astrobot, Bravo Team, Deracine, The Inpatient, Firewall, and Wipeout Omega Collection.
We are not worthy of your decency.between fans? sure. as someone representing MS? no way. that is in my opinion, but seems like most of era doesnt agree, so i guess whatever...
Both. You can tell that Mike Ybarra doesn't know about games like Astro Bot, Lone Echo / Echo VR, Beat Saber. I mean we still don't have a killer app, but those are close. His attitude would suggest there is nothing even close, which would make him uninformed.
if you're pursuing a new method to engage gamers, would you invest more into a streaming platform or a VR suite? Which would seem more lucrative and future-proof based on current market trends?
Astro Bot and RE7 prove it's ready. The tech needs to become higher resolution and wireless but it's difficult not to stumble across threads singing its praises.VR is not ready. It is that simple.
Spencer has talk about this many times. MS also is also investing in AR with a wireless technology.
No, your attempted derailing of your own thread by posting completely unrelated tweets does that.My views on VR's infancy, long-term potential, and hope, that Microsoft will get behind console VR is longstanding and predate the creation of this thread. Your accusation of bad faith says more about your reaction to this topic than about my continuing disappointment with Microsoft's standoffish stance.
No, I clearly separated the two if you look again.You were literally talking about house parties with Beat Saber and asymmetrical gameplay, not online multiplayer.
Regardless, an avatar will never be able to replace a human sitting next to you, talking to you. You're thinking of a LAN setup - I'm thinking games like Mario Kart, Jackbox, PlayLink, SingStar are more infinitely more sociable interactions than VR will ever hope to achieve, simply because of the hardware. "Body movement" doesn't necessarily equate to sociability - discussion and meaningful interaction increases that.
VR is great, don't get me wrong but you're deep down the rabbit hole, mate. It's not the cure-all for all our gaming ailments.
So this is talking about local play only, correct? This is still false. Because you have VR games with local play. Sure, the person with the headset cannot see the real world today but I already mentioned that the headset would reconstruct reality in a few years and let you see real life merged with VR. When that happens, VR becomes just as social if not more so since the person looking at the TV would see your body movement and be reacting to you as a person.I'm thinking games like Mario Kart, Jackbox, PlayLink, SingStar are more infinitely more sociable interactions than VR will ever hope to achieve
If you are looking at body movement on a TV, then you are still focused on them as a person and not some random character in a video game. If you are inside VR and seeing body movement, then you get spatial sound, eventually haptics, and most importantly you get social presence where you feel like you are literally together physically. Meaningful interaction is literally the domain of VR by the way."Body movement" doesn't necessarily equate to sociability - discussion and meaningful interaction increases that.
VR isn't a peripheral, which immediately breaks your whole argument. Likewise, a peripheral can still grow to be very large anyway. PSVR alone has had better support in 2 years with 3-4 million sales than Kinect had over 7 years with tens of millions of sales.
To be fair that's a problem with VR in general, not any particular publisher. But as far as promotions go - Sony has had PSVR bundle-promos at least once per quarter in 2018, and on PSN it's not even a contest in terms of what VR content has the most visibility.
Like with VR itself, seeing this game in video tells you nothing about the experience itself. Coming from perspective of hundreds of VR experiences, titles and other media as well as working in the medium, AstroBot doesn't just stand tall, it basically makes most of what's in VR to date look - uninteresting in comparison. And that's coming from someone that's not even a huge platformer fan.I've been looking at everything released since my initial post, and AstroBot certainly seems great, but not anything I'd want to buy a PSVR for(and this is coming from a mega platformer fan).
I've said it many times before - VR as a medium is competing with entertainment like amusement parks - not traditional gaming. It'll attract mainstream on its own terms when tech gets out of the way - not as a 'second screen'.I still don't think the technology is advanced enough(and cheap enough) for it to catch on and make people prefer to play that way over a traditional gaming method.
Reference them in what way? Just last month I recall shuhei and Shawn layden congratulating xbox /Phil on Forza Horizon 4 winning at TGA, which is way classier than what Greenberg did in the acceptance speech which was to advertise Game pass.You know what I find weird about the XB execs is that they constantly reference Sony/PS4 and I've never seen, or at least I don't remember, Sony referencing them. I'm sure if you look you'll find the odd tweet here or there throughout the span of this gen but Mike and especially Greenberg seem really focused on Playstation. The excuse used to be that someone asked them about PS in an interview but that's rarely the case on social media. It's a interesting contrast.
Just an observation...
You are confusing arcade VR / enterprise VR with consumer VR. The VR you saw in malls was not consumer VR. Likewise, the computers of the 1950s/60s were not consumer computers, aka PCs.Tons of people played those machines, they were in malls and public places everywhere. It doesn't matter what company produced them, many people experienced them. Owning the headset doesn't really make any difference in the experience
VR is not ready. It is that simple.
Spencer has talk about this many times. MS also is also investing in AR with a wireless technology.