I'm a bit late in replying, but hopefully you'll still see this. My current reasoning goes something like this:
The Oculus is aimed at high-end PC gamers. I know this because I have a desktop running an i7 3.5GHz quad core processor with 16GB of RAM and a £200 NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card, and my PC still struggles occasionally to keep frame-rates high enough for VR. And that's just the DK2; expectations are that the consumer version will have a higher resolution and require even more oomph to work. Your average person that plays computer games on a PC is unlikely to have the resources available to commit to that kind of hardware expenditure.
My flatmate for instance plays a lot of games on steam, but they're mostly older games. If he wanted to get an Oculus he'd have to pay £300 for the headset, then another £200 (at least) for a new graphics card, more for a new processor (apparently some of the demos can be quite CPU intensive) and then he'd need to make sure his PSU could cope with all that extra hardware. That's a lot of money up front to make VR work. I should know because I just went through it.
Sony on the other hand has over 10 million PS4's in the wild, all running the same specs, and all with no upgrade path. If Sony can make a VR headset that runs against the PS4 specifications, even at lower graphics levels, then for PS4 owners the road to VR costs whatever Project Morpheus costs, and no more. Lets put it on equal pegging with the Oculus at around £300. That's a much easier sell.
Further to that, people own computers for a whole bunch of reasons. People work on their computers, they code, and they edit videos on them. Being able to play games for them is only part of the value they paid money for. Some people do have PC's purely for games, but I'd be surprised if most people used their PC's primarily for gaming. PS4 owners on the other hand have already shelled out money for a dedicated gaming device. People in that situation (so my theory goes) should be more easily sold on a VR gaming accessory.
The way I see things panning out is this. The Oculus will likely continue to provide the state-of-the-art in VR experience for the real VR fanatics or the hard core PC gamer crowd. They will also probably scoop up a whole bunch of professional users too, in the form of architects or engineers or the like. But the costs of all the peripheral PC equipment you need to make the Oculus a decent experience will see off the "mainstream". In my view, it'll take someone like Sony (or an xbox equivalent) to offer a lesser, but good-enough, product to a large audience of people who are already bought into "gaming" to really make VR a viable and mainstream gaming platform.
I think Sony stand a pretty good chance of "winning" for those reasons.
Oh, damn. I've been drooling over an oculus for a while, but I didn't know it needed a beefy pc. Isn't it just full HD? That's the same resolution as my screen. Why would it need more power than driving just the screen?
As I understand it (by reading up on the subject over the last few months - I'm no games professional), the DK2 uses one 1080p screen split across both eyes, but the sticking point is that it has to render each frame twice from slightly different positions in order to get the image right for each eye. Add to this that the DK2 needs to run at 75 frames a second for the experience to smooth, it means that your computer needs to be effectively running the game or demo at 150fps. It also has to have enough in the tank left over to power your computer monitor.
It's a great product though. If you can afford to upgrade your computer to accommodate it then I can't recommend the experience highly enough. Money well spent in my opinion.
The Oculus is aimed at high-end PC gamers. I know this because I have a desktop running an i7 3.5GHz quad core processor with 16GB of RAM and a £200 NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card, and my PC still struggles occasionally to keep frame-rates high enough for VR. And that's just the DK2; expectations are that the consumer version will have a higher resolution and require even more oomph to work. Your average person that plays computer games on a PC is unlikely to have the resources available to commit to that kind of hardware expenditure.
My flatmate for instance plays a lot of games on steam, but they're mostly older games. If he wanted to get an Oculus he'd have to pay £300 for the headset, then another £200 (at least) for a new graphics card, more for a new processor (apparently some of the demos can be quite CPU intensive) and then he'd need to make sure his PSU could cope with all that extra hardware. That's a lot of money up front to make VR work. I should know because I just went through it.
Sony on the other hand has over 10 million PS4's in the wild, all running the same specs, and all with no upgrade path. If Sony can make a VR headset that runs against the PS4 specifications, even at lower graphics levels, then for PS4 owners the road to VR costs whatever Project Morpheus costs, and no more. Lets put it on equal pegging with the Oculus at around £300. That's a much easier sell.
Further to that, people own computers for a whole bunch of reasons. People work on their computers, they code, and they edit videos on them. Being able to play games for them is only part of the value they paid money for. Some people do have PC's purely for games, but I'd be surprised if most people used their PC's primarily for gaming. PS4 owners on the other hand have already shelled out money for a dedicated gaming device. People in that situation (so my theory goes) should be more easily sold on a VR gaming accessory.
The way I see things panning out is this. The Oculus will likely continue to provide the state-of-the-art in VR experience for the real VR fanatics or the hard core PC gamer crowd. They will also probably scoop up a whole bunch of professional users too, in the form of architects or engineers or the like. But the costs of all the peripheral PC equipment you need to make the Oculus a decent experience will see off the "mainstream". In my view, it'll take someone like Sony (or an xbox equivalent) to offer a lesser, but good-enough, product to a large audience of people who are already bought into "gaming" to really make VR a viable and mainstream gaming platform.
I think Sony stand a pretty good chance of "winning" for those reasons.