But it's clearly not a mass market thing either— mass market is mobile games raking in millions, Switches selling out during quarantine, the upcoming PS5 launch, and Epic having splashy platform wars with Apple and Valve. Those are billion dollar gaming events which all have nothing to do with VR.
There's no non-nerd out there who thinks "maybe I'll try VR", and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends. No, it's Linus Tech Tips upgrading his water-cooled living room PC with a special USB3 card just to get enough bandwidth to all the peripherals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c
Others have said this, but I'll reiterate: your description of mass market is precisely what's happening with Quest. Your view of VR seems rooted in pre-Quest (i.e., exclusively PC-tethered) VR and not the stand-alone world.
In fact, so many people literally went to Best Buy or Walmart to purchase a Quest that it has been sold out since the beginning of the year, online and off, with eBay pricing at 50%+ premiums.
You literally open the box, run an app on your phone (for configuration), put the HMD on your face and you're in VR. People not only tell their friends, but buy multiple versions to give to friends and family.
With Quest 2 at a $299 price point, the non-nerds saying "maybe I'll try VR" will happen even more often. The OculusQuest subreddit has a constant stream of questions about this very behavior. It is currently the ~2,000th most popular subreddit, with an impressive growth curve[1]. Some are literally buying the Quest 2 instead of the PS5 (though clearly a small number).
So far, 35 games have made over $1m on Quest alone, with one clearing that figure in 4 days and another in 8 days. Top games have made over $10m, not even including revenue from Steam, PSVR, or the Oculus PC VR platform. These aren't Epic / Apple level mega-wins, but many mobile developers would be happy with $5-10m revenue figures.
Upcoming VR games are coming from top tier publishers like Respawn (Medal of Honor), Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell), and Rockstar (unnamed AAA open world game)[2], Crytek (The Climb 2), and EA (Star Wars: Squadrons).
Additional games include Sniper Elite, Warhammer 40,000, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, Jurassic World Aftermath, and Myst. And this is just the tip of the iceberg from brands/publishers you may know.
Point being, stand-alone VR has really addressed many of your (and the market's) concerns.
And, to be fair, in your linked video Linus was trying to use optional, expensive peripherals for full-body tracking while streaming - not exactly a mass-market use case.
Great perspective! I think things are early stage, but that the next couple of years are going to be the most exciting period for VR with possibly several of the upcoming games you mention hitting very large sales numbers. There's no guarantee, but just like the Wii was the must-have console of its generation, the Quest 2 has the potential to be a runaway success with sales numbers simaler to the consoles. As technology watchers, sometimes we watch these incremental improvements over many years and its hard to recognize the moment something is about to pass into the mainstream.
The problem is, those numbers are nowhere near close to the price of making triple-A games. I heard Assassins Creed Origins cost 80 mio and Odyssey was 100 mio. With that in mind, "Top games have made over $10m" sounds like we won't be seeing high quality VR games anytime soon.
1. Facebook funds many of these games; think of it like a first-party game made to drive sales of a new console. The developer gets paid up front, Facebook recoups the revenue via incremental sales of HMDs and software on their store.
2. Note that many games are VR offshoots of existing IPs. This means the opportunity for asset re-use and consequently lower costs.
3. "High quality" and "big budget" are not equivalent. There is a huge spectrum between a tech demo and a flagship title with 400-500 people working on it (as is the case of AC). AAA-caliber, lengthy games can be made by teams of 50-75.
4. Again, those revenue numbers are on Quest only. PSVR is an even larger market, and PC VR (Vive, Index, WMR, Rift) is probably about the same size.
The most important point though is that if your entry point requires Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, or The Last of Us, then it is indeed too early.
However, the two hottest non-VR games right now are Fall Guys and Among Us - great, high quality games come in all sizes.
> "..."maybe I'll try VR", and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends."
This is definitely a thing that happens with the Oculus Quest already. The hardware is easy to use and the software library is pretty much in place now. A major marketing campaign could make it really take off.
I don't have any insight into FB VR's decision to require the login on Oculus devices now, but my guess is that they consider the device to be ready for a mass market, and believe that the gains from the social graph will be worth the short-term pain of leaving early-adopter money on the table from here on.
Yes, really agree with this perspective. Last year Carmack's talk was equally interesting and he stated that they had all the usage data on several different visions of what VR could be (Rift, GearVR, Go, Quest) and that the data showed the Quest had the most engaged users and the product finally showed signs of being sticky. At the time it convinced me not to buy because their v2 was clearly going to get a big investment now that they had plausible product market fit.
I think the Quest showed FB that they had a potential winner on their hands and the Quest 2 is moving out of MVP phase to mass market phase. They are gambling that this is going to take off in a big way and they pushed hard to get an improved version out there and ramp up their manufacturing faster than most thought they would. They clearly want to be first to the "Oasis" with Horizon if that's ever going to be a thing and the FB login is a piece of that. If this is a flop, it will be a huge disappointment to the execs. If it's a win then FB may have been first to plant their flag in our VR future, for better or for worse.
The PSVR has sold 5 million units or so to date, and there's going to be a second generation. There are a lot of games which support it due to this install base. That's pretty mass market.
(It's popular enough that Sony actually has made a second iteration of the headset, but it's not an upgrade.)
It's not as accessible as the Oculus Quest, but the PS4 has sold roughly 106 million units to date, and gamers are probably the biggest market at present for VR devices.
I completely disagree. Quest and a game like Beat Saber are about as broad as you can get. Right out of the box you're swinging your arms around to popular EDM music. The price point is low enough to make it a solid holiday buy for a good amount of people as well. VR is also one of those things that you can show anyone and really wow them. It's not like handing a controller to a non-gamer and having them discouraged because they don't know how to use 2 joysticks.
Many games like Beat Saber, in which you move with the beat, have been popular fads, but home hardware for those games (like Dance Dance Revolution dance pads or Guitar Hero guitar controllers) has never been more than a niche product.
Half-life alyx is wonderful. I cannot praise it enough.
I played too much half-life in my college days and think of it as fun campy sci-fi. Stuff like press e to move this dead body is suddenly this viscerally horrific experience.
You picked up a box of matches accidentally? Read the label. Found a pen draw something.
Right. Beat Saber works because the virtual world does not rotate relative to the real world. That rotation is what induces nausea. The player is confined to a small box in the virtual world; they never move very far, and the virtual world is locked to the real world.[1]
Games with that constraint are limited. You could do ping-pong. Shooting galleries.
Ok but it's not a tech demo or some proof of concept. It's a fully fleshed out game with high profile DLC and a strong mod community. Nausea has nothing to do with this.
I'm not sure your understanding of VR motion sickness is quite right. Most people are completely fine with teleport locomotion which is sufficient for a huge class ofs games.
Also cockpits seem to reduce nausea thus opening up another broad category.
It's mostly smooth first person motion with strafing and smooth turning that is problematic.
There's no non-nerd out there who thinks "maybe I'll try VR", and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends. No, it's Linus Tech Tips upgrading his water-cooled living room PC with a special USB3 card just to get enough bandwidth to all the peripherals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c