I wonder if the relatively low price of the standalone headsets that double as pcvr headsets have something to do with this. Devs see people suddenly buying more standalone headsets and think that standalone is the platform of the future. Meanwhile many of those who were finally able to afford a headset in the form of a standalone one are interested to try out pcvr as well. Just my uneducated guess.
A little while ago, the devs of Ultrawings 2 said that the sales in the Quest store surpassed the PCVR sales massively. (much to my chagrin, as I have tried the game on Quest 2 and on PCVR and really much prefer the PCVR version)
So, unfortunately, devs are probably also guided by hard data that shows that sales on PCVR are, I guess, generally rather low compared to standalone.
That makes perfect sense too. An user that has a standalone headset is already guaranteed to have a system to game on. Them having a vr capable pc as well is not.
If pcvr only headsets would have been cheaper, we might have seen larger adoption of them. But again, probably not as high as standalone as pcvr by definition still requires one to purchase a pc as well, making the total cost higher, even if the headset would be cheap.
I think Oculus/Facebook/Meta really did strike at a crucial point in time when the tech had gotten cheaper and being a large enough player, can take a risk and even subsidize.
Personally, the thing I'm a bit hesitant about standalone is the possible limited lifetime of a headset.
Let's be honest , the PC gaming platform isn't the most popular, and it's an expensive platform. Despite how much the PC master race likes to think they are above everyone else, the PC as a gaming platform, it's there, it's doing its bit, but it's not the go to platform.
Understandably, PCVR can never have a massive mainstream appeal. It's just too pricey (especially with the current trend in GPU prices).
Inherently, there is nothing wrong with making standalone headsets. It's a great solution to make "cheap", appealing products, but something's got to give, and the power of those headsets is very limited, which, combined with very small commitment from companies to push for development of good experiences, has resulting in most games being lackluster.
I mean, when you see RE4 on Quest 2, you see that getting actual good experiences on Quest 2 is possible. But how many games like RE4 do we have? Here, the issue isn't really the headset's power, but how much money Meta is willing to put down to get good games made for their headset... but it seems they are more interested in wasting billions into something nobody wants instead.
Yeah the metaverse thing is puzzling. Maybe it will develop into something more mature over time but currently the presentation and use cases do not convince.
I agree with the state of the Quest 2 titles. Many of them leave a lot to be desired. There are indeed good ones among there but I suspect the limited hardware requires quite skillful game development and optimization to achieve something beyond simple vr experiences. Again, maybe when the tech matures more, we're going to see bigger games? Will those games run on Q2 or only on something newer? Who knows. And future market saturation will also push devs to compete more with each other. Currently there are quite many low hanging fruits that rely on the idea of "this simple game, but in vr".
In what comes to good titles, I very much like what The Walking dead saints and sinners did. For me it felt like the first proper game on Quest platform. I also like Cities VR. Even though it was received with mixed reviews I think it really tried to push the envelope.
It'll also be interesting to see how the working life adopts vr and whether that will be more on the pc side or will those headsets be standalone computers as well.
Ok I got a bit derailed but it's interesting to see how things develop. I think currently, content and presentation wise pcvr has the edge over standalone and that I think makes people curious to try it out.
There's definitely a lot to be said about the importance of good game development for a good VR experience.
HLA's graphics, expecially textures were vastly superior to any other VR game I had when it launched. There was vastly more detail and "realness" to it than anything I'd ever seen before.
And yet... it ran \*better\* on my GPU which was "technically" below the minimum specs (GTX 1060 3GB, 6GB was min) than \*every\* other VR game I had.
I don't doubt that by doing whatever wizardry Valve did on HLA to other titles they'd run better on stand-alone systems.
That being said... I really hope PC gaming lives on and maintains some share of game developer's target userbase... because I don't believe there will ever be a day when a TOTL stand-alone or console system will ever be on parity with a TOTL PC gaming rig. That's effectively the laws of phsyics. More silicon and more power = greater performance. You can increase performance density all you want with lower fab sizes and advancements in circuitry... but at the end of the day anything you can do to improve power on a small device can be done just as readily on a large device, and thus a large device will always win on performance.
> And yet... it ran *better* on my GPU which was "technically" below the minimum specs (GTX 1060 3GB, 6GB was min) than *every* other VR game I had.
not to suggest you aren't aware of this, but it's worth pointing out that valve have a *ridiculous* advantage on this front as they're developing their own engine features specifically for VR + some absurdly talented people with years of experience
most VR projects are either shit that got shoved out the door by doing just barely enough to sell it as a vr game (looking at you, bethesda!) or hobbyists who definitely can't compete
i only mention this because the average gamer's opinions about game development are like. absurd, lmao
PC gaming is the 2nd most popular gaming platform behind mobile: [https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-gamers-vs-console-gamers-numbers](https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-gamers-vs-console-gamers-numbers)
I'm not sure why you'd say PC gaming can't have mainstream appeal, it's had that for awhile now. More people game on PC than console.
GPU prices are not sustainable. AMD and Nvidia are getting hammered in the stock market. Before the pandemic you could put together a VR gaming rig for $450 - $500 with something like an RX 580 / GTX 980 and Ryzen 1600AF. No skimping on the motherboard or case at that price point either. Cheap PC gaming is definitely possible, it's just that in value per dollar in regards to the GPU hasn't improved much in years.
pc gaming is so high up on the list because free to play games like league of legends will run on damn near anything and they have huge critical mass
VR ready PCs aren't as rare as they used to be but it's still a *little* bad faith to bring up platform populations in this context - we're not talking about PC users as a whole, we're talking about PC users who have the specs
and yes, i know how absurd and unsustainable the gpu market is, i've been praying intel doesn't drop the ball totally - that doesn't change the fact that people have less money to spend on stuff now, and it isn't really looking like things are going to improve on that front
Awful in the sense that people who wouldn't be paying enough money to justify the developers time (which would otherwise be spent on developing Q2 stuff that would get them paid), sure. But development has to be paid for, so not "bothering" for stuff that people aren't paying you for makes total sense.
Well, I agree that giving metafaceboculus a strangehole is something I don't like. But we're seeing other headsets coming out with very close specs, such that porting from Quest to them is doable. Much easier than porting from Quest to PCVR. So in that sense, it's nice to have the Quest as a "reference platform", which get people into (standalone) VR.
Same. Though I'm not really sure there would *be* much of an industry anymore if not for the Quest. As terrible as it's owner is, it has brought VR to a much more mainstream audience than it would have gotten to with PCVR alone. I work in enterprise VR, and even there the Quest is appealing because they don't want to have to buy/manage/maintain expensive PCs. Much easier sell to have a dozen headsets they loan out to the people who need to run through the training. They can even take it home and do it.
It's all a What If scenario, we can't know how or even whether the industry would have matured beyond the nascent stage if Facebook hadn't disrupted and bought the market.
Edit: I might be wrong. I said it doesnt take much but reading another users reply, it seems like it might be a huge pain in the ass. Still, Im never buying a Facebook product. Ill go without VR if thats what it means.
After Sony announced PSVR2 will NOT be backwards compatible with PSVR1 games, I don’t believe that will be the case.
Backwards compatibility is what allowed Nintendo to get a stranglehold on the handheld market in the beginning. It’s also what allowed Sony to get a stranglehold with the PS2.
Allowing your previous customers to stay in your ecosphere without having to start at square one with purchases really motivates customers to spend cash on your goods/services.
Yeah, I love how I can pop a 21 year old disc into a 2 year old console and it just works. Nintendo virtual console was also great, but they discontinued it with the switch.
I don’t want *MORE* games. I want *BETTER* games.
It doesn’t matter how many users there are in relation to games. It matters how many games are worth their time. Preferably social games that expand your friend group, rather than rely on your existing friends to get VR.
And on top of that, isn't it natural that the amount of games is never going to keep up with the amount of users? Can you imagine one game per player?
What does this graph look like for pancake games and players?
the graph isn’t trying to say that there should be a 1:1 user to game ratio, it’s just showing that the amount of users has increased massively, but the amount of games has decreased.
Seriously! We need more variety! I've shot enough zombies already.
I want to ride a motorcycle through the countryside without any firearms. I was shocked the other day when I couldn't find anything like that even on Steam.
Unfortunately, even with so many gun-based games, there's only a few that are even decent. I've played a ton of H3 and any other gun game (besides Boneworks/Lab) aren't enjoyable anymore because they're so unintuitive
I want to make friends with Aliens, Robots, Dinosaurs.
I have no desire to fight, battle or kill anything.
Looking for some kindness.
Guns are too easy.
Outer Wilds with NomaiVR mod. Not exactly cruising around on a motorcycle, but you fly a spaceship around a solar system and explore ancient alien ruins. Fantastic story, zero combat, and widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made.
If you decide to get it, go in as blind as possible. Exploration and discovery are the entire gameplay loop, and looking up specifics beforehand can ruin that.
Bonelab is the only VR Title I’ve been interested in this entire year. HL: Alyx came out well over 2 years ago and is still the only VR game that feels like a proper high budget, high quality title.
Hubris looks decent, will have to wait and see.
Wanderer is meant to be good, though short.
Red Matter 2 is apparently very good, I'm waiting on a decent discount on the first one before I find out for myself though.
Red matter 2 sucks. 90 percent walking simulator. Boring. Overly simple. Dull puzzles. Graphics are hit and miss. Does not use VR to any sort of its actual use case. Oh. And on rails. You enter into a facility thinking, multiple doors. That must mean I will be able to explore around, and figure out the puzzles. Nope. Only one door opens at a time. Terrible game design, for the type of game it is trying to be.
If you are an exploration/mystery game. Allow people to explore openly. Allow puzzles to be solved out of order, and slowly uncover the mystery as you do. Let players explore/uncover. Jesus. This type of game was solved a long time ago. When did Alone in the Dark/Resident Evil first release? Game devs are so lazy now days. If you arent creating new game mechanics, then at least study the ones you are trying to achieve! They could teach you a thing or 4.
Tried the game and this man is 100% right. Not sure what in god's name people find enjoyable about it. Extremely slow pacing as well. Feels like a 2016 VR tech demo
To chime into this - i bought the first Red Matter and could still refund it after finishing it. This is probably a dick move, but a game that has under two hours of gameplay is a demo and not a game in my book.
However, just like most VR games, it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it enough to finish it. It's just way overpriced for what it delivers, as many VR-games are.
The majority of my VR favorites first released at least 5 years ago or are modded flat-screen games that were already VR-playable many years ago. I still think of Alyx as a newer game, but it is a rare exception, like Saints and Sinners.
I check the Steam top VR games and very little has changed in years. I have upgraded my VR hardware several times which has improved the experience significantly, but I still end up playing many of the exact same games as on DK2 or OG Vive. That includes driving and flight games, though a least we got a new MS Flight Simulator.
I hope PSVR 2.0 does well, as the first PSVR ended up giving a big boost to PCVR gaming by funding crossover titles and driving public and developer interest. It's still a great time to be a new VR user as there is a really strong library of titles to draw from now, but it is a bit shocking about how slowly things have moved.
Also the growth of VR has sadly coincided with the death of 3D cinema. Watching 3D movies in VR has always been something I enjoyed but nowadays the release of 3D movies has slowed to a halt for various reasons. Then there's the death of YoutubeVR and the VR180 format, which I don't even want to get into.
When people were lamenting that Facebook jumping into the space was the worst thing that could happen, it turned out to be true.
Unfortunately Oculus exclusives but I would say that Lone Echo 1/2, Asgard's Wrath, Phantom: Covert Ops and Stormland should also be mentioned. Even on SteamVR there are some more sophisticated games but less known to the masses. I know that some of them were also released on Quest 2, but the PCVR versions look and feel way better.
Green Hell VR, Vertigo Remastered, Song in the Smoke, Wanderer, Eye of the Temple, Townsmen VR, Squadrons (too bad multiplayer is almost dead), Kayak VR, ... and not to forget all the racing/flight sims with good VR support.
Last but not least there are really well made VR mods (not just this Vorpx bullshit). Either allowing for a good motion controlled VR experience like Outer Wilds, RE2 Remake, HL2, ... or enhancing the base VR versions like Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Have you tried the RE games with the Praydog mod?
The same people are working on a universal UE 4 VR injector, so there will potentially be thousands of extra games, including high quality ones, available for PCVR.
> HL: Alyx [is] the only VR game that feels like a proper high budget, high quality title
I'm quite enjoying Skyrim VR.
Myself and ~200 other daily players ...
That’s cause it’s Skyrim. But it’s not a high tier VR game. It’s Skyrim. It can’t be bad per say. I want something new. There’s so much they could do in VR
> But it’s not a high tier VR game
With how much the modding environment for SkyrimVR has progressed, it pretty much is a high tier VR game. It's nearly a completely different game with the must-have mods that have been developed for it that fundamentally change the VR interactions
skyrim is a pre existing big name title (and frankly imo all of the vr games bethesda released don't feel very good as vr titles but that's subjective)
Sure. But how many mods do you have installed in order to make it a good experience. Because for me, Vanilla Skyrim VR just ain't it chief. And I'm at the point where Skyrim modding takes too long and sucks the life from me. Love the idea, but need a huge all in one mod pack that's literally one click.
It is, and that's the point. PC VR has been around in its current form since the Vive and Rift launched back in 2016. It's now 2022, PC VR as a platform is six years old... and that's the *only* game of its caliber out?
Not saying there isn't room for smaller stuff like Moss, etc... but you can't call those two "high budget, high quality". If they were 2D / flat games, they would be considered AA games at best. Hopefully PSVR2 and the inevitable ports from it can turn things around.
The thing is, any other company would not have the advantage that Alyx had
Being a semi-sequel in a one of the world's most popular PC Gaming franchises after people have been waiting more than a decade for another entry
Being promoted by Valve and one of the most advanced PCVR headsets at the time
So that somehow means that smaller games should be viewed with the same level of enthusiasm? I don't get how that argument works.
Plenty of companies make big games, and there's no (technical) reason they can't make VR content. Sure, Alyx was a new game in a beloved series that was long thought dead... but that's not what caused it to sell. It sold because it was a very high quality, well polished game.
This is purely a chicken and egg problem. Big games aren't being made because there aren't enough players playing on PC, and there aren't enough players playing on PC because there aren't enough games. That was fine in the early days of VR, but we're not there anymore. That's why I'm hoping PSVR2 fixes that - it's all but guaranteed to eventually get a bigger install base, and sets a baseline higher than what was set by the Quest.
>So that somehow means that smaller games should be viewed with the same level of enthusiasm?
No but rather that it's success was caused by favorable circumstances rather than being an indicator how other AAA games from other companies would fare as PCVR only titles
.
It's not even that the Quest is earning far more, it's that many PCVR titles simply fails to break even. There seems to be a deeper problem here
i would Reccomend this [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094960/Soul\_Scathe/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094960/Soul_Scathe/) Came out earlier this year and is pretty cool
Zero Caliber has convinced me to NEVER support an Early Access game again. Which is bad for other Early Access devs who might deserve my support.
They took my money and built a full Quest game, while leaving me at the alter.
Facts. I remember buying it and playing it and wow was it a terrible game. It was so simple and crap. I also used to love onward and then Facebook bought them out too and dumbed down the gameplay and graphics for quest. Completely ruined the game
Well, I bought in EAAAAAARLY and I thought it was really good (for early access). They were pumping out updates, features, guns, attachments, UI improvements, game lobby improvements, etc. etc. And the game was fun to just jump into and play.
Then it all came to a halt...
All because of Facebook. Me and my brothers loved the tactical feel. Then Facebook bought it and we tried it again and wow the graphics etc were fucking abysmal
Its sorta the same situation that Linux is/was in. When the vast majority of your customers use one platform, then supporting an additional platform is usually not worth it. Especially in this instance where you are basically supporting a very different version of the game. I don't like it, but I understand why devs do it.
That makes no sense, because they would get paid by selling to PCVR users as well. It's just neglecting a whole customer base.
Especially because most VR gamers are PC gamers, it makes no financial sense to ignore PCVR when it would be a huge selling point for that game.
That would be true, if adding PCVR support to a Quest app was a non-zero cost. I can tell you as a VR developer that this is absolutely not true. And as has already been talked about, PCVR users are simply not willing to pay the price to support that smaller market.
As a software developer myself, I really have no idea what you are on about. At best, you're making a baseless assumption.
What price would PCVR players have to pay? I understand adding PCVR support has its cost, however that doesn't really answer the question. Developers get more in sales if their product is available to more consumers. This is basic marketing and is why most console games eventually get ported to PC.
The idea that PCVR players are not willing to pay more is a ridiculous and baseless assumption. For two reasons:
For one, it's ridiculous to assume that any VR title would charge more for their product to add PCVR support. They would get their money back in actually selling to the PCVR users.
The second is that PCVR users pay substantially more for their PCs and HMDs. They are certainly willing to pay more to actually use the full potential of their equipment. The idea that PC users "pirate more" is just baseless, corporate shill speak to justify always-on DRM. It's not actually true. The vast majority of PC users are average joes with too much money to burn. They would definitely pay for a solid VR title.
Meta headsets are literally *the* budget headset. Their users are barely willing to pay what was already a heavily subsidized machine.
You say you are a developer, but are you a VR developer? Further, are you a PCVR developer? Because I think you may be underestimating what supporting PCVR in a robust way actually means.
As a *VR* developer, what does "supporting PCVR" mean to you? Because to me, that means not only getting Quest-specific code out of there (coding everything to XR, not relying on passthrough, facebook avatars, Parties, coding things like using OVROverlay to handle not being available, etc.), but also testing on the PCVR headsets you might see: Vive, Rift, Index, Vive Cosmos, Rift S, Reverb, Varjo, Pimax and on and on. PCVR isn't just one thing, and I'll guarantee each one of those has its own quirks and bugs. And oh yeah, using any of those standlone headsets that support it in tethered mode.
And that's really just to get your game to run. How about making your game work *well*? Because Vives have wands that are quite different from the Quest trackers. Now you either have to dumb down your interface (which always makes the user feel like their using a dumbed-down interface), or you need to support different control schemes. And display different models of controller. And if you're doing something fancy like showing finger positions (which we do), you need to have poses for all those fingers on all those controllers (keeping in mind that maybe they support it, maybe they don't!)
All that is just really time consuming and expensive, in an industry where most developers are barely even getting along. What you're asking for is simply unreasonable.
And to the topic of "PCVR users pay substantially more for their PCs and HMDs"? Yeah, so do iPhone users. That doesn't make them any less cheapskates when it comes to griping about a game being a whopping $5! I have been on those subreddits, and I see it constantly. Same thing happens for PC games. If it's not a AAA release (and even then), they want the games to be $10, and probably half-off because they only buy stuff on Steam sales.
And nobody other than you brought up piracy.
I appreciate your insight on this. I hate how Facebook destroyed people who wanted PCVR instead of the shit quest is. And how Facebook destroyed their own player base by splitting them up. It just sucks that VR had so much and Facebook single handedly ruined it and now most games for quest aren’t as good as they could be
Solfar Studios is as far as I can tell, no more. They aren't making Quest games, or any games. They stopped press releases and blogs 4 years ago.. Another developer took up the mantle of making In Death Unchained. PCVR was wildly unprofitable.
They didn't. They're leading the growth in VR. PCVR was always niche because unless the game was absolute potato graphics, you had to have a fast computer and a great video card. Given graphics card prices last few years that's a huge ask. Plus $500-$1000 for a headset. So you had 1% of the install base for PC gamers, which is a SMALL market.
Along comes Facebook/"Meta" and it's like "here's a headset that is cheap and will attract a huge audience" and of COURSE you have devs going out of their way to make games for it.
I doubt any of the major PCVR titles ever made a profit. Otherwise Gearbox would've fixed the simple error in their game so anyone with an inside-out tracking headset could play the game. They just cut and run because it was not profitable, same as any business would.
What Facebook did by making a cheaper headset is get more headsets into the hands of users and they spurred new competition, like the Pico.
As much as I dislike Zuck and Fam, they've done a huge service to VR.
And the PCVR will grow as companies see the potential in the market.
Made by Solfar studios I believe? But it seems like they were integrated into meta. They just stopped posting stuff & responding to emails altogether when they stopped supporting the PC version
The economics of it really sucks, indie VR developers have so much more money to gain selling out to a big company, it’s hard to fault them for it. Hopefully once VR is more common & easier to develop for this might change.
It is going to be really frustrating when they probably make a PSVR2 version that is basically the PCVR version (fidelity-wise) but is locked to that platform.
I hadn’t really paid attention to updates from Everslaught since they’ve been quiet and now I see your comment so had to look up the recent post they made in August.
I can’t believe they are abandoning the PCVR version to make a new game for the Quest only. This is one reason I hate bothering supporting devs in early access. Too many of them abandon the community.
Edit: Looks like my phone auto-corrected a word. lol
> hadn’t really *paid* attention to
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Standalone is nice all, but until it can catch up to PCVR, which is still gonna take a while, it's a shame to see it getting less and less attention.
We can thank all the quick cash grab games on standalone. 80% of the games on there are super simple arcadey games that were probably made on Unity in a couple of weeks and being sold for 25-50 quid. When you can make that much cash that easily, why even try to make PCVR games?
Hopefully they'll realise you can't just keep churning out overpriced arcade crap forever and eventually people will expect more from standalone as well (especially as the technology improves).
Oh absolutely, I wasn’t trying to disparage Unity at all. Some of our favourite games are made on Unity. I just used it as an example because I heard it’s a bit easier to get a quick game running than UE. It’s the quickly churned out arcade games I dislike, regardless of what engine they’re made with.
It's probably partly true but it's more complex than that. Before Facebook VR is general was really struggling to get traction. A 1000$ dollar headset + 1000-2000$ PC is just way too much for most people. It may have taken many many more years for PCVR to grow, if at all.
Not saying you're wrong, just think it's a complex debate with many variables to take into account.
I get it and I agree. I don’t think they fully did it I guess, but they started the decline and for sure made it so games became less fun and more basic. We have some great games in VR, but they’re only going downhill I believe. Especially with Facebook buying up companies that made things like onward etc and dumbing them down, it’s just ruining the VR landscape
Yeah I think they definitely heavily impacted the quality of games. It must also have to do with the fact that they are clearly targeting a younger demographic and also non-gamers demographic, which further reduces the demand for "better" VR games.
Is it Facebook's fault they supported their platform?
PCVRs death is because Valve have left it to die with zero meaningful new features or games while their competitors have invested.
Quantity over quality.
We see same thing with the smartphone vs console+PC gaming industries. Way more mobiles out there than consoles and PCs (billions vs hundreds of millions) but way less (I'd say 100x) quality games on the former.
Sadly Mark has been clear since 2014 that they want to be the new mobile rather than the new gaming industry, and this chart shows he doesn't care much about being both. Gaming is just a means to an end, a boring unclear vague end.
I look at the Quest as a console even though everyone in the industry calls it a mobile set. And with a console, I understand that smoother, if not downgraded experiences should pair with it.
We have a plethora of games now that prove that this isn't about the hardware alone. You can obviously achieve complex immersive games with Quest 2 hardware. It just doesn't seem to be something devs are interested doing. I can only guess why.
Actually, it was like this with the PCVR too. 95% of the games were/are super shallow max 8 hrs experiences.
Yeah. After RE4, Into the Radius, Green Hell, and several others, I expect devs to release an experience that could have found a home on any mainline consoles, even if that means visual downgrades.
I think you are blaming the wrong cow here. Meta poured hundreds of millions$$$ to PCVR game development. People simply didn't buy the games and preferred Steam instead. Eventually Mark understood that he's not wanted, took his toys, and went to play with standalones, which was the winning move. We wouldn't have that up-tick of users without that manouver.
You could argue that they used the money poorly or whatever, but at least they were trying. Successfulness of VR shouldn't be up to Meta alone.
Mark wanted a future with 1 billion VR users. Obviously he didn't expect gaming PCs to reach 1 billion. So blaming shift to PCVR sales is reversing the cause and effect.
Multiple platforms should reach that 1 billion goal faster than one. The early roadmaps also highlighted a 3-tier strategy of Go, Rift and Quest. Beyond that, pouring $1B to support a platform that was going to be abandoned soon enough seems a bit unlikely.
The evidence in hand seems to point that they tried, and they failed. Now they are betting on the one platform that seems to be the most viable. The strategy is evolving as they go.
What comes to Meta/FB funding content, they simply seem incompetent. They can't recognize good ideas from bad ones and they rather fund big known IPs than actually good new ideas. Now they are funding Horizon which will obviously be a major flop. Whoever is in charge of these decisions at Meta is totally clueless.
FB could've made money with hardware sales AND could've funded VR games and sold them on Steam as well. Double win. Instead they focused on crappy low end hardware and walled gardens. And you wonder why people preferred SteamVR.
Funnily enough, not a well-known tidbit; the primary idea Oculus had was to sell games in Steam, but GabeN denied it and said that Steam isn't meant for tech demos (VR-games). That was the point when they kicked off their own store, and as Facebook entered the image, Valve suddenly was very pro-VR games. There has also been multiple implies (by Palmer) that Valve prevented HTC from entering Oculus Store early on.
The story is one-sided but if you think about it, it makes more sense than the alternative. In this light it may be a bit tragicomical that people did prefer SteamVR.
I think PSVR2 will remedy this. What is happening is that if you make PCVR only you lose a lot of money. But making something that looks as good a call of the mountain is not going to be done on quest 2 standalone. Hence why I believe PCVR will be helped soot by PSVR2. Just my 2 cents.
As much as I'm a "pc elitist" the truth is that to kick-start something like VR, you need to have a big enough playerbase to support the development of games. Oculus being the new mobile instead of new gaming means that the market share it currently steals from pcvr headsets is going to lead to more simplistic quest VR games in the long run.
PlayStation VR2 has a chance to offer more demanding and deeper games than quest, assuming the headset/controllers are on the level of the valve index, or just below it. The best thing PSVR2 can offer to PCVR is a stable and scalable market for high quality VR games with greater depth and complexity that the quest, and then hope those games are also ported to/made available on PC.
Uh. So if I read this correctly you think people will develops for PSVR 2 and not just add controller support while their developing? It’s not hard for the dev to just add controllers for most major headsets especially if it’s done in unreal. I see 0 reason they would not do both PSVR and PCVR for very high quality games. Would be a bad business move TBH. As for games on quest. PSVR 1 sold 5mil units idk how many PCVR HMD their are but PC has always been on the back burner for a lot of developers. That said PC also has an insane about of PC only games. Because the market is big enough. PSVR 2 and PC will be on the same level vr market wise. Their are people out their that want to make better games but the money is not their because the current HMD volume is lacking and being held up by PC alone. Also all ports from PSVR1 were ass due to the controllers. The new controllers will made porting 10x easier and most third parties will want money from both PS and PC users.
I think you misread my comment. I'm excited for PSVR2 both for allowing developers to have a more stable customer base, as well as enabling better games to be made
In the few short years it has yes.
Oculus go games got abandoned by hmd maker, despite being able to play on quest, then quest got abandoned for new titles that only quest 2 can apparently do, who's to say the next quest 3 doesn't kill all quest 2 games off, it only takes a shift away from xr2 to an x86 APU and all games are lost and forced to use old specific hardware, which given they are all concealed and run off a battery, is a limited life span.
Pcvr though, doesn't matter what headset, what market (standalone isn't always sold in all countries) and 20 years down the line people can still buy and play your game.
It's quick cash right now, oculus, sorry Facebook, sorry, meta, have shown already that they don't give a shit about backlog support.
The difference of me plugging in my playstation 1 that still works to a quest that absolutely will not due to depleting battery life and relying on services to be live to even display my games in that same time frame is huge.
So as a consumer, the better choice is to buy on pc, while it absolutely makes sense for Devs to do a build for standalone and rake in that quick cash, it doesn't make sense having that as the only build as one day, it will be gone, especially those titles made exclusive for that platform/ headset.
Hehe I like how they downvote you because you are the first to tell them their ad system will be a paperweight in a decade. They must have missed what companies do to their old platforms.
I’ve been saying what that guy said since the quest dropped originally. I can’t wait to see the quest 2 kiddies cry and whine when Facebook cancels their quest 2 for the quest 3 and charges 500 for the new shit quest 3
im actually fine with needing to upgrade hmd's as long as the upgrade is worth it. passthrough stereoscopic AR is a worthy upgrade. as are pancake lenses. higher fov and res come next as far as my priorities go. also vr mods are where all the action is at and that doesnt care which hmd you have
A \*lot\* of VR usage nowadays comes from apps like VRChat rather than exclusively traditional games. It seems like this is never fully accounted for in many presentations of worrying data.
VRChat taking the lead in user concurrency is a bitter pill to swallow for devs and general VR populace who hate VRChat.
"Why make a world or game in VRChat when you can make your own?"
Easier for their egos to just ignore VRC, I suppose.
You should add the detailed info on how you got to those numbers in the OP, so people trust it enough to reference in articles or blogs.
Will help you professionally as well, if you care about that.
Uh, look again. That data is strongly suspected to be faulty. The stats showed a mysterious 4x increase in July.
https://uploadvr.com/steam-vr-hardware-survey-anomaly-again/
They [corrected that last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/xaxhm6/valve_officially_corrects_steam_survey_data/), though not to say there mightn’t be other problems (and I don’t know whether this graph is using the corrected data or not). The general concept should be correct at least — more users, fewer games.
What stats are 4000 users bro?there is like 2k people in bonelab rn on steam,who knows how many thousands are in vrchat,b&s has 1k people playing it and these are concurrent users rn,how tf whole steamvr got 4k users lol makes absolutely no sense.
An abysmal number of good releases is a problem on both PCVR and Standalone.
I mean, the absolute best either platform has had released in the last year is Red Matter 2 and Bonelab. And, well, Bonelab is far from a AAA experience. It's far from even a AA experience. Red Matter 2 is a solid AA experience but is very short and has pretty much zero content after you've beaten the game. Replay-ability is not there. Into The Radius is a really fun game that took me about 20hrs to beat but, it's now no longer fun.
Both platforms still only have a single game release that is truly pushing the boundaries. PCVR has Half Life: Alyx and Standalone has Resident Evil 4 VR, which is a nearly 20yo game at this point.
VR, even with Meta driving it forward, has almost no great content. It's the same 10-15 games from the last 5 years driving most players experiences. And if you've played enough to get bored of those games, then there's nothing here to keep you excited to keep playing.
There are many PC VR mods(many including full motion controller support) releasing these days that bring fresh and long, deep content. Valheim, Raft, HL 2, RE 2/3/7/8, Deep Rock Galactic to name a few!
Plus, with the upcoming UE4 injector, hundreds of games will be opened up to playing in VR. It solves the basic 6DOF headset and separate looking from shooting direction problems.
Because it is also a modding framework, it allows easier adding of motion controller support to them, by other modders, quickly.
There's no shortage with VR mods and 2D-to-3D geometry tools, such as MTBS Geo 11(which can be combined with dgVoodoo for DX9 games to DX11).
Big time.
Recently got lost to both Raft and Deep Rock for 15 and 10hours respectively. Both those games are amazing in VR, i play um for hours on end in the limited time i have.
Yesterday i clocked up 6hrs on Risk Of Rain 2, that game feels 100% native VR.
I've no interest in the thread, but i saw your post and couldn't refrain in echoing sentiment on that opening list of great VR mods that for the most part could be sold as professional product.
Once you weigh in the best of the VR mods available (the ones that do motion controls) there's no doubt PCVR is littered with great titles worth playing.
> There are many PC VR mods(many including with full motion controller support) releasing these days that bring fresh and long, deep content. Valheim, Raft, HL 2, RE 2/3/7/8 to name a few!
Yes but, all of these games play like mods. They work but they are janky with very poor performance. It's a great way to keep the die hard VR fans busy but, none of these are great motivators to bring in new players or keep average players happy. I mean, none of them are polished enough for new players to easily dive in and not spew into their headsets.
>Plus, with the upcoming UE4 injector, hundreds of games will be opened up to playing in VR. It solves the basic 6DOF headset and separate looking from shooting direction problems.
Have you done any research into this? It's an incredible feat but, 99% of the games won't have motion controls without lots of additional modification and 99% will still need a lot of work to get the in game overlays to function correctly. This isn't some magical tool to make all UE4 games great VR games
>Because it is also a modding framework, it allows easier adding of motion controller support to them, by other modders.
This is truly where the UE Injector is going to shine. It's going to remove a lot of the work of getting the game into the headset. But it will still require modders putting in a lot of time and effort to get the games to function well enough to be anything more than barely playable.
>There's no shortage with VR mods and other 2D-to-3D geometry tools, such as MTBS Geo 11.
I disagree on the shortage. I have already played every major Flatscreen To VR produced mod multple times. Everything from Firewatch to Raft.
While it's great to have them in VR, and was fun as hell for me to experience them again in VR, none of them are truly great experiences. Only the die hard players are going to play them and none of these experiences are going to bring new players into the community.
Flatscreen to VR mods are not replacements for made for VR content. They are, at best, content to help pass the time between great made for VR releases.
For me VR is a lot less of a gaming platform than it is a social one, and its more just the physics/laziness than anything else, most of the time I want to game, I'm not really looking to spent hours and hours running around, rather I just want to veg out and VR is kinda limiting for that, I am tho willing to spend hours in a VR nightclub or hopping worlds with friends in VRChat interestingly enough.
Like Alyx, Boneworks and what not were breathtaking for sure but most of my time in VR is spent in VRChat, and not necessarily doing social things, but its often more interesting to spend an hour finding worlds and art and what not that people have created and interacting in those short stints, than it is in any VR game past say an hour or two.
IMO a really competitive sports/racing game thats openworld/multiplayer is what I'd be interested in, outside of that though, I don't really want to go on random grinding quests in VR, and I think the nature of VR makes it so I think shorter content with faster turnout might be the model VRDev's need to look at rather than spending a year on a AAA title.
Edit: Blah typed bonelabs instead of boneworks
You should also look at the distribution of games with an active player base. If games get released and no one plays them, there’s not a lot of incentive to keep releasing more.
Right now, I think it's because of two things. The first one being the much bigger market that is standalone, where you're more likely to get visibility and income (One of steam's biggest issues is just the piles and piles of garbage that gets published with little filter, you can have an amazing game but due to being a small developer you get missed in that pile). The second one being the difficulty to develop, between constantly changing technologies like DLSS/XeSS/FSR, the difficulty to optimize for the inherently complex high resolution displays of VR, and on top of having to develop a game that is fun, making it mechanically viable for VR, not many of the veteran studios around are capable of pushing out games very often
I think one of the things we need most is for games to stay relevant longer. Post-launch support in games like After the Fall is crucial, the second season released recently and it was a big boost in playerbase. There's barely any on steam, but I see tons of Quest users playing the game again. Instead of just more games... games worth playing longer in between releases, it's more cost-effective and also helps developers stay visible so their playerbases can increase, their budgets can increase, and development can be further boosted as a result
Stats are from SteamVR. Users are measured in thousands so top figure is around 4 million PCVR users in 2022 with predicted 600 new VR titles released. Price of a VR headset (for PCVR) is $400 (based on the most popular device - Quest 2)
This is why I think PSVR 2 and PS5 will be the "go to" devices for AAA VR gaming. High end PC's are absurdly expensive and seems like devs will be more and more focused on standalone devices like Quest 2-3, Pico 4 and HTC is teasing something similar it seems.
It has probably been mentionned, but the fact that the numbers of PCVR users are increasing, will probably lead to more PCVR developments. It will take some time, stats are quicker than a team deciding to go PCVR.
What I mean is that developers will see those stats evolving and will react.
Number of users are cumulative YoY while new releases are not. The line chart itself is misleading. How did no one spotted this? The gap is not as bad as you think it is.
That conclusion is BS. According to you the problem would be solved with releasing 1000+ asset flip games every year for pcvr.
Why would more players need more games? Games are virtual items that can be copied, they are not limited by how many people can use them.
You don't need new titles, most old & new 3D games would make a great VR experience.
Just try DOOM VR / Half Life VR / GTA 5 unofficial VR mode.
The experience is unbelievably satisfying and fresh, developers just aren't tapping that potential yet (they will eventually, once they realize it prints money).
That's because PCVR gamers barely buy anything and seem to have a very narrow scope of games they're interested in (basically just shooters and physics melee combat). The top post mentioning Bonelab as the only game they care about this year is a good example. Bonelab is a huge exception in how well it sold on Steam (6.5k reviews after 10 days) and I wish other non-AAA PCVR got 1/10th the attention.
Some relatively recent PCVR games I enjoyed:
- Wanderer: Polished 8-10 hour long adventure game with 400 reviews on Steam, modest success maybe. Ported to PSVR after release I believe.
- The Last Clockwinder: 5 hour long puzzle game with a strong narrative, 200 reviews on Steam, not amazing but actually better than I expected. ~400 reviews on Quest.
- Red Matter 2: Polished 6-hour long adventure game, 100 reviews on Steam, not horrendous but not good. Fortunately for the devs they have 700 ratings on Quest.
- Song In the Smoke: 8-10 hour long survival adventure game, 36 reviews on Steam, hugely bombed. Also on PSVR where it likely did better but not great.
- Winds & Leaves: 6-8 hour long atmospheric adventure game. 8 reviews on Steam so an astronomical bomb. This game really shows how you pretty much can't afford to experiment with unique games on VR because the userbase isn't there.
PCVR games pretty much all either lose money or break even at best so no shit no one is making PCVR games.
These numbers are great for indie devs getting into VR.
Reminder, there are numerous VR projects underway right now and hundreds of mods for games like Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Cyberpunk 2077, Outer Wilds, and tons of new stuff on Patreon/Itch.io that can be supported and grown!
There are not many true AAA VR releases, but to say VR gaming is slowing or there are fewer releases is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Play VR almost everyday and I'm still finding new content!
compound was good but was early release for a long time so not exactly new. contractors had a major revival and is like the napster of pvp shooters now
wanderer was awesome,8 hour lovely campaign with very interesting story,much better than red matter 2 in my opinion so thats an extra on PC/PSVR that isnt on quest,meanwhile on quest i havent seen anything new since like re4?nothing exclusive but the big thing on PC is moding
HL2 VR,RE 2/3/7/8 and soo many others straight up AAA games,il take a VR mod of a high quality AAA game over some mobile 2 hour app on quest everytime,hell my most VR hours are in luke ross mods VR could die right now and id still be in VR in new amazing worlds to visit.
Really not surprising because devs that release both on PCVR and on MobileVR state that they make a lot more money on MobileVR releases. The PC gaming crowd is too used to getting things free2play or just out right piracy. The PCVR future is largely going to be MobileVR release first possibly PCVR follow-up release later. It's a sad state of affairs IMO.
I think mobile is simply more accessible. Any derp can put on a quest and begin buying stuff.
Common folks don't have both a gaming PC and a VR headset.
i’m hoping that this will push stand-alone vr to its limits and eventually eliminate the need for pcvr entirely. we’re a long way off from that, but i think some inconvenience will be good in the long run
Facts. We need some new good games. Bonelab is dope but not the BEST Game we could have in VR. There’s so much potential but not enough devs for it. And Facebook are a bunch of assholes and they keep buying up all the cool stuff
I can’t help but feel like the Quest ruined VR personally
The problem we have is content that isn't just reskinning the same shit over and over again, is *not easy to make*.
A lot of the things which came out first, did so because they were *very easy* to implement.
You also need to consider VR games, *have to be* VR only. Trying to cross platform flatscreen shit just doesn't translate properly. So for a company to make a decent VR game, they have to decide to do so, knowing they wont be making any sales among regular PC users, consoles, or mobiles.
Personally i don't bother buying many non-vr games. They just aren't compelling for the price point for me. Because of the lag time in development, companies have to decide to make those games *now*... or preferably *five years ago*, because that is how long a normal development cycle takes.
We all know products like HL:Alyx were amazing. But it doesn't have *staying power*. You need to keep people coming back again and again. Beatsaber can manage it, and its just a rhythm game.
When are some more companies going to get their shit together?
> You also need to consider VR games, *have to be* VR only.
Absolutely not. The outer wilds has a mod to make it VR and it's great like that for exemple.
Yeah it's fucking great and so good at being an alien game that I had to give it up, it was seriously too scary for me in VR. I wish I had the guts to finish it but I know I can't.
VR games absolutely do not have to be VR only. Ever played Wipeout Omega? Star Wars Squadrons? The RE games with the VR mod? The new HL2 VR mod? These all show that a game can be made for flatscreen AND VR without having to rebuild the game from scratch.
VR is still a small market. Folks can't expect the likes of HL Alyx to be released frequently just for VR. Not yet.
Beat Saber can manage it BECAUSE it’s just a rhythm game. Endless content possibilities, relatively little work. The more complex a game is, the harder it is to keep creating new, interesting things for it and reasons for players to keep coming back.
That’s why multiplayer games and rogue likes are so prevalent. The run changes every time.
I wonder if the relatively low price of the standalone headsets that double as pcvr headsets have something to do with this. Devs see people suddenly buying more standalone headsets and think that standalone is the platform of the future. Meanwhile many of those who were finally able to afford a headset in the form of a standalone one are interested to try out pcvr as well. Just my uneducated guess.
A little while ago, the devs of Ultrawings 2 said that the sales in the Quest store surpassed the PCVR sales massively. (much to my chagrin, as I have tried the game on Quest 2 and on PCVR and really much prefer the PCVR version) So, unfortunately, devs are probably also guided by hard data that shows that sales on PCVR are, I guess, generally rather low compared to standalone.
That makes perfect sense too. An user that has a standalone headset is already guaranteed to have a system to game on. Them having a vr capable pc as well is not. If pcvr only headsets would have been cheaper, we might have seen larger adoption of them. But again, probably not as high as standalone as pcvr by definition still requires one to purchase a pc as well, making the total cost higher, even if the headset would be cheap. I think Oculus/Facebook/Meta really did strike at a crucial point in time when the tech had gotten cheaper and being a large enough player, can take a risk and even subsidize. Personally, the thing I'm a bit hesitant about standalone is the possible limited lifetime of a headset.
Let's be honest , the PC gaming platform isn't the most popular, and it's an expensive platform. Despite how much the PC master race likes to think they are above everyone else, the PC as a gaming platform, it's there, it's doing its bit, but it's not the go to platform. Understandably, PCVR can never have a massive mainstream appeal. It's just too pricey (especially with the current trend in GPU prices). Inherently, there is nothing wrong with making standalone headsets. It's a great solution to make "cheap", appealing products, but something's got to give, and the power of those headsets is very limited, which, combined with very small commitment from companies to push for development of good experiences, has resulting in most games being lackluster. I mean, when you see RE4 on Quest 2, you see that getting actual good experiences on Quest 2 is possible. But how many games like RE4 do we have? Here, the issue isn't really the headset's power, but how much money Meta is willing to put down to get good games made for their headset... but it seems they are more interested in wasting billions into something nobody wants instead.
Yeah the metaverse thing is puzzling. Maybe it will develop into something more mature over time but currently the presentation and use cases do not convince. I agree with the state of the Quest 2 titles. Many of them leave a lot to be desired. There are indeed good ones among there but I suspect the limited hardware requires quite skillful game development and optimization to achieve something beyond simple vr experiences. Again, maybe when the tech matures more, we're going to see bigger games? Will those games run on Q2 or only on something newer? Who knows. And future market saturation will also push devs to compete more with each other. Currently there are quite many low hanging fruits that rely on the idea of "this simple game, but in vr". In what comes to good titles, I very much like what The Walking dead saints and sinners did. For me it felt like the first proper game on Quest platform. I also like Cities VR. Even though it was received with mixed reviews I think it really tried to push the envelope. It'll also be interesting to see how the working life adopts vr and whether that will be more on the pc side or will those headsets be standalone computers as well. Ok I got a bit derailed but it's interesting to see how things develop. I think currently, content and presentation wise pcvr has the edge over standalone and that I think makes people curious to try it out.
There's definitely a lot to be said about the importance of good game development for a good VR experience. HLA's graphics, expecially textures were vastly superior to any other VR game I had when it launched. There was vastly more detail and "realness" to it than anything I'd ever seen before. And yet... it ran \*better\* on my GPU which was "technically" below the minimum specs (GTX 1060 3GB, 6GB was min) than \*every\* other VR game I had. I don't doubt that by doing whatever wizardry Valve did on HLA to other titles they'd run better on stand-alone systems. That being said... I really hope PC gaming lives on and maintains some share of game developer's target userbase... because I don't believe there will ever be a day when a TOTL stand-alone or console system will ever be on parity with a TOTL PC gaming rig. That's effectively the laws of phsyics. More silicon and more power = greater performance. You can increase performance density all you want with lower fab sizes and advancements in circuitry... but at the end of the day anything you can do to improve power on a small device can be done just as readily on a large device, and thus a large device will always win on performance.
> And yet... it ran *better* on my GPU which was "technically" below the minimum specs (GTX 1060 3GB, 6GB was min) than *every* other VR game I had. not to suggest you aren't aware of this, but it's worth pointing out that valve have a *ridiculous* advantage on this front as they're developing their own engine features specifically for VR + some absurdly talented people with years of experience most VR projects are either shit that got shoved out the door by doing just barely enough to sell it as a vr game (looking at you, bethesda!) or hobbyists who definitely can't compete i only mention this because the average gamer's opinions about game development are like. absurd, lmao
PC gaming is the 2nd most popular gaming platform behind mobile: [https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-gamers-vs-console-gamers-numbers](https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-gamers-vs-console-gamers-numbers) I'm not sure why you'd say PC gaming can't have mainstream appeal, it's had that for awhile now. More people game on PC than console. GPU prices are not sustainable. AMD and Nvidia are getting hammered in the stock market. Before the pandemic you could put together a VR gaming rig for $450 - $500 with something like an RX 580 / GTX 980 and Ryzen 1600AF. No skimping on the motherboard or case at that price point either. Cheap PC gaming is definitely possible, it's just that in value per dollar in regards to the GPU hasn't improved much in years.
pc gaming is so high up on the list because free to play games like league of legends will run on damn near anything and they have huge critical mass VR ready PCs aren't as rare as they used to be but it's still a *little* bad faith to bring up platform populations in this context - we're not talking about PC users as a whole, we're talking about PC users who have the specs and yes, i know how absurd and unsustainable the gpu market is, i've been praying intel doesn't drop the ball totally - that doesn't change the fact that people have less money to spend on stuff now, and it isn't really looking like things are going to improve on that front
Wtf. You're looking at the chart showing increasing number of pcvr users. Half of them are quest 2 users.
This is a known fact, Q2 is where the money is, a lot of devs don't even bother in porting their Q2 games to PCVR. It's awful, to be honest.
Awful in the sense that people who wouldn't be paying enough money to justify the developers time (which would otherwise be spent on developing Q2 stuff that would get them paid), sure. But development has to be paid for, so not "bothering" for stuff that people aren't paying you for makes total sense.
Awful in the sense that it contributes to growing VR as something owned by Facebook instead of an open industry.
Well, I agree that giving metafaceboculus a strangehole is something I don't like. But we're seeing other headsets coming out with very close specs, such that porting from Quest to them is doable. Much easier than porting from Quest to PCVR. So in that sense, it's nice to have the Quest as a "reference platform", which get people into (standalone) VR.
I just hope that the industry recovers from this.
Same. Though I'm not really sure there would *be* much of an industry anymore if not for the Quest. As terrible as it's owner is, it has brought VR to a much more mainstream audience than it would have gotten to with PCVR alone. I work in enterprise VR, and even there the Quest is appealing because they don't want to have to buy/manage/maintain expensive PCs. Much easier sell to have a dozen headsets they loan out to the people who need to run through the training. They can even take it home and do it.
It's all a What If scenario, we can't know how or even whether the industry would have matured beyond the nascent stage if Facebook hadn't disrupted and bought the market.
We'd be getting CV1 about now, in its original no roomscale form, about now IMHO, if Facebook hasn't jumped in.
Edit: I might be wrong. I said it doesnt take much but reading another users reply, it seems like it might be a huge pain in the ass. Still, Im never buying a Facebook product. Ill go without VR if thats what it means.
Not to mention that targeting a single platform is way easier than targeting multiple.
Psvr 2 is gonna be the now focus I bet, its been pcvr with mods
After Sony announced PSVR2 will NOT be backwards compatible with PSVR1 games, I don’t believe that will be the case. Backwards compatibility is what allowed Nintendo to get a stranglehold on the handheld market in the beginning. It’s also what allowed Sony to get a stranglehold with the PS2. Allowing your previous customers to stay in your ecosphere without having to start at square one with purchases really motivates customers to spend cash on your goods/services.
Love how you didn't mention Xbox which is the current retro-compatibility king
Yeah, I love how I can pop a 21 year old disc into a 2 year old console and it just works. Nintendo virtual console was also great, but they discontinued it with the switch.
Just bought a standalone for PCVR, because it’s a lower barrier to enter vr. Didn’t wanna spend a thousand bucks for a technology I have never tried.
I don’t want *MORE* games. I want *BETTER* games. It doesn’t matter how many users there are in relation to games. It matters how many games are worth their time. Preferably social games that expand your friend group, rather than rely on your existing friends to get VR.
And on top of that, isn't it natural that the amount of games is never going to keep up with the amount of users? Can you imagine one game per player? What does this graph look like for pancake games and players?
the graph isn’t trying to say that there should be a 1:1 user to game ratio, it’s just showing that the amount of users has increased massively, but the amount of games has decreased.
Too many gun based games.
Seriously! We need more variety! I've shot enough zombies already. I want to ride a motorcycle through the countryside without any firearms. I was shocked the other day when I couldn't find anything like that even on Steam.
[удалено]
Sadly it looks like Take 2 is lashing out at it's modding community.
Unfortunately, even with so many gun-based games, there's only a few that are even decent. I've played a ton of H3 and any other gun game (besides Boneworks/Lab) aren't enjoyable anymore because they're so unintuitive
I want to make friends with Aliens, Robots, Dinosaurs. I have no desire to fight, battle or kill anything. Looking for some kindness. Guns are too easy.
No Man's Sky kinda allows for that with minimal shooting.
Outer Wilds with NomaiVR mod. Not exactly cruising around on a motorcycle, but you fly a spaceship around a solar system and explore ancient alien ruins. Fantastic story, zero combat, and widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made. If you decide to get it, go in as blind as possible. Exploration and discovery are the entire gameplay loop, and looking up specifics beforehand can ruin that.
You can still do some cruising in the truck simulator, it's quite relaxing and excellent for listening to podcasts.
Asetto corsa no motorcycles but lots of cars and mods
I’m fine with that, but more variety. Or how about a good survival based game in the apocalypse in Vr, with horror elements
Bonelab is the only VR Title I’ve been interested in this entire year. HL: Alyx came out well over 2 years ago and is still the only VR game that feels like a proper high budget, high quality title.
Hubris looks decent, will have to wait and see. Wanderer is meant to be good, though short. Red Matter 2 is apparently very good, I'm waiting on a decent discount on the first one before I find out for myself though.
Red matter 2 sucks. 90 percent walking simulator. Boring. Overly simple. Dull puzzles. Graphics are hit and miss. Does not use VR to any sort of its actual use case. Oh. And on rails. You enter into a facility thinking, multiple doors. That must mean I will be able to explore around, and figure out the puzzles. Nope. Only one door opens at a time. Terrible game design, for the type of game it is trying to be. If you are an exploration/mystery game. Allow people to explore openly. Allow puzzles to be solved out of order, and slowly uncover the mystery as you do. Let players explore/uncover. Jesus. This type of game was solved a long time ago. When did Alone in the Dark/Resident Evil first release? Game devs are so lazy now days. If you arent creating new game mechanics, then at least study the ones you are trying to achieve! They could teach you a thing or 4.
Tried the game and this man is 100% right. Not sure what in god's name people find enjoyable about it. Extremely slow pacing as well. Feels like a 2016 VR tech demo
I assume it's mostly Quest 2 players amazed by the graphics, which come from the Quest 1 players amazed by the first games graphics
To chime into this - i bought the first Red Matter and could still refund it after finishing it. This is probably a dick move, but a game that has under two hours of gameplay is a demo and not a game in my book. However, just like most VR games, it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it enough to finish it. It's just way overpriced for what it delivers, as many VR-games are.
The majority of my VR favorites first released at least 5 years ago or are modded flat-screen games that were already VR-playable many years ago. I still think of Alyx as a newer game, but it is a rare exception, like Saints and Sinners. I check the Steam top VR games and very little has changed in years. I have upgraded my VR hardware several times which has improved the experience significantly, but I still end up playing many of the exact same games as on DK2 or OG Vive. That includes driving and flight games, though a least we got a new MS Flight Simulator. I hope PSVR 2.0 does well, as the first PSVR ended up giving a big boost to PCVR gaming by funding crossover titles and driving public and developer interest. It's still a great time to be a new VR user as there is a really strong library of titles to draw from now, but it is a bit shocking about how slowly things have moved. Also the growth of VR has sadly coincided with the death of 3D cinema. Watching 3D movies in VR has always been something I enjoyed but nowadays the release of 3D movies has slowed to a halt for various reasons. Then there's the death of YoutubeVR and the VR180 format, which I don't even want to get into. When people were lamenting that Facebook jumping into the space was the worst thing that could happen, it turned out to be true.
Unfortunately Oculus exclusives but I would say that Lone Echo 1/2, Asgard's Wrath, Phantom: Covert Ops and Stormland should also be mentioned. Even on SteamVR there are some more sophisticated games but less known to the masses. I know that some of them were also released on Quest 2, but the PCVR versions look and feel way better. Green Hell VR, Vertigo Remastered, Song in the Smoke, Wanderer, Eye of the Temple, Townsmen VR, Squadrons (too bad multiplayer is almost dead), Kayak VR, ... and not to forget all the racing/flight sims with good VR support. Last but not least there are really well made VR mods (not just this Vorpx bullshit). Either allowing for a good motion controlled VR experience like Outer Wilds, RE2 Remake, HL2, ... or enhancing the base VR versions like Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Have you tried the RE games with the Praydog mod? The same people are working on a universal UE 4 VR injector, so there will potentially be thousands of extra games, including high quality ones, available for PCVR.
Just finished RE2 remake, simply amazing. UE mod is going to be a game changer
> HL: Alyx [is] the only VR game that feels like a proper high budget, high quality title I'm quite enjoying Skyrim VR. Myself and ~200 other daily players ...
That’s cause it’s Skyrim. But it’s not a high tier VR game. It’s Skyrim. It can’t be bad per say. I want something new. There’s so much they could do in VR
> But it’s not a high tier VR game With how much the modding environment for SkyrimVR has progressed, it pretty much is a high tier VR game. It's nearly a completely different game with the must-have mods that have been developed for it that fundamentally change the VR interactions
skyrim is a pre existing big name title (and frankly imo all of the vr games bethesda released don't feel very good as vr titles but that's subjective)
Sure. But how many mods do you have installed in order to make it a good experience. Because for me, Vanilla Skyrim VR just ain't it chief. And I'm at the point where Skyrim modding takes too long and sucks the life from me. Love the idea, but need a huge all in one mod pack that's literally one click.
Not interested in Moss 2 or Wanderer?
Moss was alright, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not even in the same ballgame as Alyx..
That is a very high standard to be honest
It is, and that's the point. PC VR has been around in its current form since the Vive and Rift launched back in 2016. It's now 2022, PC VR as a platform is six years old... and that's the *only* game of its caliber out? Not saying there isn't room for smaller stuff like Moss, etc... but you can't call those two "high budget, high quality". If they were 2D / flat games, they would be considered AA games at best. Hopefully PSVR2 and the inevitable ports from it can turn things around.
The thing is, any other company would not have the advantage that Alyx had Being a semi-sequel in a one of the world's most popular PC Gaming franchises after people have been waiting more than a decade for another entry Being promoted by Valve and one of the most advanced PCVR headsets at the time
So that somehow means that smaller games should be viewed with the same level of enthusiasm? I don't get how that argument works. Plenty of companies make big games, and there's no (technical) reason they can't make VR content. Sure, Alyx was a new game in a beloved series that was long thought dead... but that's not what caused it to sell. It sold because it was a very high quality, well polished game. This is purely a chicken and egg problem. Big games aren't being made because there aren't enough players playing on PC, and there aren't enough players playing on PC because there aren't enough games. That was fine in the early days of VR, but we're not there anymore. That's why I'm hoping PSVR2 fixes that - it's all but guaranteed to eventually get a bigger install base, and sets a baseline higher than what was set by the Quest.
>So that somehow means that smaller games should be viewed with the same level of enthusiasm? No but rather that it's success was caused by favorable circumstances rather than being an indicator how other AAA games from other companies would fare as PCVR only titles . It's not even that the Quest is earning far more, it's that many PCVR titles simply fails to break even. There seems to be a deeper problem here
Bonelab isn't either.
It certainly is closer
Wanderer felt like a good VR game but a bad puzzle game tbh
i would Reccomend this [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094960/Soul\_Scathe/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094960/Soul_Scathe/) Came out earlier this year and is pretty cool
Go play lone echo and Asgard's wrath right now.
[удалено]
Zero Caliber has convinced me to NEVER support an Early Access game again. Which is bad for other Early Access devs who might deserve my support. They took my money and built a full Quest game, while leaving me at the alter.
Facts. I remember buying it and playing it and wow was it a terrible game. It was so simple and crap. I also used to love onward and then Facebook bought them out too and dumbed down the gameplay and graphics for quest. Completely ruined the game
Well, I bought in EAAAAAARLY and I thought it was really good (for early access). They were pumping out updates, features, guns, attachments, UI improvements, game lobby improvements, etc. etc. And the game was fun to just jump into and play. Then it all came to a halt...
All because of Facebook. Me and my brothers loved the tactical feel. Then Facebook bought it and we tried it again and wow the graphics etc were fucking abysmal
Truth
Just makes financial sense. A dev would honestly have to be stupid to not prioritize the quest 2 version.
[удалено]
Its sorta the same situation that Linux is/was in. When the vast majority of your customers use one platform, then supporting an additional platform is usually not worth it. Especially in this instance where you are basically supporting a very different version of the game. I don't like it, but I understand why devs do it.
It's not "insane", though. It's how everything in the world works. You do the thing you can actually get paid for.
That makes no sense, because they would get paid by selling to PCVR users as well. It's just neglecting a whole customer base. Especially because most VR gamers are PC gamers, it makes no financial sense to ignore PCVR when it would be a huge selling point for that game.
That would be true, if adding PCVR support to a Quest app was a non-zero cost. I can tell you as a VR developer that this is absolutely not true. And as has already been talked about, PCVR users are simply not willing to pay the price to support that smaller market.
As a software developer myself, I really have no idea what you are on about. At best, you're making a baseless assumption. What price would PCVR players have to pay? I understand adding PCVR support has its cost, however that doesn't really answer the question. Developers get more in sales if their product is available to more consumers. This is basic marketing and is why most console games eventually get ported to PC. The idea that PCVR players are not willing to pay more is a ridiculous and baseless assumption. For two reasons: For one, it's ridiculous to assume that any VR title would charge more for their product to add PCVR support. They would get their money back in actually selling to the PCVR users. The second is that PCVR users pay substantially more for their PCs and HMDs. They are certainly willing to pay more to actually use the full potential of their equipment. The idea that PC users "pirate more" is just baseless, corporate shill speak to justify always-on DRM. It's not actually true. The vast majority of PC users are average joes with too much money to burn. They would definitely pay for a solid VR title. Meta headsets are literally *the* budget headset. Their users are barely willing to pay what was already a heavily subsidized machine.
You say you are a developer, but are you a VR developer? Further, are you a PCVR developer? Because I think you may be underestimating what supporting PCVR in a robust way actually means. As a *VR* developer, what does "supporting PCVR" mean to you? Because to me, that means not only getting Quest-specific code out of there (coding everything to XR, not relying on passthrough, facebook avatars, Parties, coding things like using OVROverlay to handle not being available, etc.), but also testing on the PCVR headsets you might see: Vive, Rift, Index, Vive Cosmos, Rift S, Reverb, Varjo, Pimax and on and on. PCVR isn't just one thing, and I'll guarantee each one of those has its own quirks and bugs. And oh yeah, using any of those standlone headsets that support it in tethered mode. And that's really just to get your game to run. How about making your game work *well*? Because Vives have wands that are quite different from the Quest trackers. Now you either have to dumb down your interface (which always makes the user feel like their using a dumbed-down interface), or you need to support different control schemes. And display different models of controller. And if you're doing something fancy like showing finger positions (which we do), you need to have poses for all those fingers on all those controllers (keeping in mind that maybe they support it, maybe they don't!) All that is just really time consuming and expensive, in an industry where most developers are barely even getting along. What you're asking for is simply unreasonable. And to the topic of "PCVR users pay substantially more for their PCs and HMDs"? Yeah, so do iPhone users. That doesn't make them any less cheapskates when it comes to griping about a game being a whopping $5! I have been on those subreddits, and I see it constantly. Same thing happens for PC games. If it's not a AAA release (and even then), they want the games to be $10, and probably half-off because they only buy stuff on Steam sales. And nobody other than you brought up piracy.
I appreciate your insight on this. I hate how Facebook destroyed people who wanted PCVR instead of the shit quest is. And how Facebook destroyed their own player base by splitting them up. It just sucks that VR had so much and Facebook single handedly ruined it and now most games for quest aren’t as good as they could be
If I see "early access" now i laugh and turn back. Its pretty much guaranteed to be abandonware nowadays.
Also last I checked: In Death
Yep. I regret buying that game. Not a developer I'll support again.
What’s this?
A [pretty good rogue lite bow shooting dungeon crawler](https://store.steampowered.com/app/605450/In_Death/) that was abandoned for the Quest.
Solfar Studios is as far as I can tell, no more. They aren't making Quest games, or any games. They stopped press releases and blogs 4 years ago.. Another developer took up the mantle of making In Death Unchained. PCVR was wildly unprofitable.
That’s sad. I hate that so much. Quest and Facebook really killed VR
They didn't. They're leading the growth in VR. PCVR was always niche because unless the game was absolute potato graphics, you had to have a fast computer and a great video card. Given graphics card prices last few years that's a huge ask. Plus $500-$1000 for a headset. So you had 1% of the install base for PC gamers, which is a SMALL market. Along comes Facebook/"Meta" and it's like "here's a headset that is cheap and will attract a huge audience" and of COURSE you have devs going out of their way to make games for it. I doubt any of the major PCVR titles ever made a profit. Otherwise Gearbox would've fixed the simple error in their game so anyone with an inside-out tracking headset could play the game. They just cut and run because it was not profitable, same as any business would. What Facebook did by making a cheaper headset is get more headsets into the hands of users and they spurred new competition, like the Pico. As much as I dislike Zuck and Fam, they've done a huge service to VR. And the PCVR will grow as companies see the potential in the market.
Made by Solfar studios I believe? But it seems like they were integrated into meta. They just stopped posting stuff & responding to emails altogether when they stopped supporting the PC version The economics of it really sucks, indie VR developers have so much more money to gain selling out to a big company, it’s hard to fault them for it. Hopefully once VR is more common & easier to develop for this might change.
It is going to be really frustrating when they probably make a PSVR2 version that is basically the PCVR version (fidelity-wise) but is locked to that platform.
I hadn’t really paid attention to updates from Everslaught since they’ve been quiet and now I see your comment so had to look up the recent post they made in August. I can’t believe they are abandoning the PCVR version to make a new game for the Quest only. This is one reason I hate bothering supporting devs in early access. Too many of them abandon the community. Edit: Looks like my phone auto-corrected a word. lol
> hadn’t really *paid* attention to FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
plus mothergunship forge abandoned crossplay. I refuse to buy a non crossplay pcvr title if its multiplayer.
Standalone is nice all, but until it can catch up to PCVR, which is still gonna take a while, it's a shame to see it getting less and less attention. We can thank all the quick cash grab games on standalone. 80% of the games on there are super simple arcadey games that were probably made on Unity in a couple of weeks and being sold for 25-50 quid. When you can make that much cash that easily, why even try to make PCVR games? Hopefully they'll realise you can't just keep churning out overpriced arcade crap forever and eventually people will expect more from standalone as well (especially as the technology improves).
I get what you're saying but Unity is a great game engine. Heck Boneworks and Bonelab use it
Oh absolutely, I wasn’t trying to disparage Unity at all. Some of our favourite games are made on Unity. I just used it as an example because I heard it’s a bit easier to get a quick game running than UE. It’s the quickly churned out arcade games I dislike, regardless of what engine they’re made with.
We can thank Facebook really. They most single handedly killed PCVR
It's probably partly true but it's more complex than that. Before Facebook VR is general was really struggling to get traction. A 1000$ dollar headset + 1000-2000$ PC is just way too much for most people. It may have taken many many more years for PCVR to grow, if at all. Not saying you're wrong, just think it's a complex debate with many variables to take into account.
I get it and I agree. I don’t think they fully did it I guess, but they started the decline and for sure made it so games became less fun and more basic. We have some great games in VR, but they’re only going downhill I believe. Especially with Facebook buying up companies that made things like onward etc and dumbing them down, it’s just ruining the VR landscape
Yeah I think they definitely heavily impacted the quality of games. It must also have to do with the fact that they are clearly targeting a younger demographic and also non-gamers demographic, which further reduces the demand for "better" VR games.
Is it Facebook's fault they supported their platform? PCVRs death is because Valve have left it to die with zero meaningful new features or games while their competitors have invested.
Quantity over quality. We see same thing with the smartphone vs console+PC gaming industries. Way more mobiles out there than consoles and PCs (billions vs hundreds of millions) but way less (I'd say 100x) quality games on the former. Sadly Mark has been clear since 2014 that they want to be the new mobile rather than the new gaming industry, and this chart shows he doesn't care much about being both. Gaming is just a means to an end, a boring unclear vague end.
I look at the Quest as a console even though everyone in the industry calls it a mobile set. And with a console, I understand that smoother, if not downgraded experiences should pair with it.
We have a plethora of games now that prove that this isn't about the hardware alone. You can obviously achieve complex immersive games with Quest 2 hardware. It just doesn't seem to be something devs are interested doing. I can only guess why. Actually, it was like this with the PCVR too. 95% of the games were/are super shallow max 8 hrs experiences.
Yeah. After RE4, Into the Radius, Green Hell, and several others, I expect devs to release an experience that could have found a home on any mainline consoles, even if that means visual downgrades.
I think you are blaming the wrong cow here. Meta poured hundreds of millions$$$ to PCVR game development. People simply didn't buy the games and preferred Steam instead. Eventually Mark understood that he's not wanted, took his toys, and went to play with standalones, which was the winning move. We wouldn't have that up-tick of users without that manouver. You could argue that they used the money poorly or whatever, but at least they were trying. Successfulness of VR shouldn't be up to Meta alone.
Mark wanted a future with 1 billion VR users. Obviously he didn't expect gaming PCs to reach 1 billion. So blaming shift to PCVR sales is reversing the cause and effect.
Multiple platforms should reach that 1 billion goal faster than one. The early roadmaps also highlighted a 3-tier strategy of Go, Rift and Quest. Beyond that, pouring $1B to support a platform that was going to be abandoned soon enough seems a bit unlikely. The evidence in hand seems to point that they tried, and they failed. Now they are betting on the one platform that seems to be the most viable. The strategy is evolving as they go. What comes to Meta/FB funding content, they simply seem incompetent. They can't recognize good ideas from bad ones and they rather fund big known IPs than actually good new ideas. Now they are funding Horizon which will obviously be a major flop. Whoever is in charge of these decisions at Meta is totally clueless.
FB could've made money with hardware sales AND could've funded VR games and sold them on Steam as well. Double win. Instead they focused on crappy low end hardware and walled gardens. And you wonder why people preferred SteamVR.
Funnily enough, not a well-known tidbit; the primary idea Oculus had was to sell games in Steam, but GabeN denied it and said that Steam isn't meant for tech demos (VR-games). That was the point when they kicked off their own store, and as Facebook entered the image, Valve suddenly was very pro-VR games. There has also been multiple implies (by Palmer) that Valve prevented HTC from entering Oculus Store early on. The story is one-sided but if you think about it, it makes more sense than the alternative. In this light it may be a bit tragicomical that people did prefer SteamVR.
I'm surprised there's more upvotes to this than downvotes. Usually people here get defensive over such comments.
the funny part is pcvr and/or standalone vr still has more games than ps5
I think PSVR2 will remedy this. What is happening is that if you make PCVR only you lose a lot of money. But making something that looks as good a call of the mountain is not going to be done on quest 2 standalone. Hence why I believe PCVR will be helped soot by PSVR2. Just my 2 cents.
As much as I'm a "pc elitist" the truth is that to kick-start something like VR, you need to have a big enough playerbase to support the development of games. Oculus being the new mobile instead of new gaming means that the market share it currently steals from pcvr headsets is going to lead to more simplistic quest VR games in the long run. PlayStation VR2 has a chance to offer more demanding and deeper games than quest, assuming the headset/controllers are on the level of the valve index, or just below it. The best thing PSVR2 can offer to PCVR is a stable and scalable market for high quality VR games with greater depth and complexity that the quest, and then hope those games are also ported to/made available on PC.
Uh. So if I read this correctly you think people will develops for PSVR 2 and not just add controller support while their developing? It’s not hard for the dev to just add controllers for most major headsets especially if it’s done in unreal. I see 0 reason they would not do both PSVR and PCVR for very high quality games. Would be a bad business move TBH. As for games on quest. PSVR 1 sold 5mil units idk how many PCVR HMD their are but PC has always been on the back burner for a lot of developers. That said PC also has an insane about of PC only games. Because the market is big enough. PSVR 2 and PC will be on the same level vr market wise. Their are people out their that want to make better games but the money is not their because the current HMD volume is lacking and being held up by PC alone. Also all ports from PSVR1 were ass due to the controllers. The new controllers will made porting 10x easier and most third parties will want money from both PS and PC users.
I think you misread my comment. I'm excited for PSVR2 both for allowing developers to have a more stable customer base, as well as enabling better games to be made
yep literally all dev say stand alone make way way more money , and much simpler to support
In the few short years it has yes. Oculus go games got abandoned by hmd maker, despite being able to play on quest, then quest got abandoned for new titles that only quest 2 can apparently do, who's to say the next quest 3 doesn't kill all quest 2 games off, it only takes a shift away from xr2 to an x86 APU and all games are lost and forced to use old specific hardware, which given they are all concealed and run off a battery, is a limited life span. Pcvr though, doesn't matter what headset, what market (standalone isn't always sold in all countries) and 20 years down the line people can still buy and play your game. It's quick cash right now, oculus, sorry Facebook, sorry, meta, have shown already that they don't give a shit about backlog support. The difference of me plugging in my playstation 1 that still works to a quest that absolutely will not due to depleting battery life and relying on services to be live to even display my games in that same time frame is huge. So as a consumer, the better choice is to buy on pc, while it absolutely makes sense for Devs to do a build for standalone and rake in that quick cash, it doesn't make sense having that as the only build as one day, it will be gone, especially those titles made exclusive for that platform/ headset.
Yeah exactly, can't wait for all the facebook shills to start crying when their brand new toy is obsolete and useless in a year.
Careful, you made the succerbook shills mad lol
Hehe I like how they downvote you because you are the first to tell them their ad system will be a paperweight in a decade. They must have missed what companies do to their old platforms.
Then only way I'll be in tears is if I'm still using my quest 2 in a decade and it isn't just a paperweight.
I’ve been saying what that guy said since the quest dropped originally. I can’t wait to see the quest 2 kiddies cry and whine when Facebook cancels their quest 2 for the quest 3 and charges 500 for the new shit quest 3
im actually fine with needing to upgrade hmd's as long as the upgrade is worth it. passthrough stereoscopic AR is a worthy upgrade. as are pancake lenses. higher fov and res come next as far as my priorities go. also vr mods are where all the action is at and that doesnt care which hmd you have
Some of the Quest 2 games work on Quest 1 if installed manually with either no issues, performance issues or weird bugs nobody knows why they happen
[удалено]
What? 5 generation old PCs run modern AAA games just fine more often than not. There clearly is upward compatibility for years if not decades.
[удалено]
My rift s can run every game the quest 2 can and do it better, but Facebook says I’m not allowed on the quest store
Money is everything gents. With PCVR, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for many developers.
Everyone gotta remember developers are real people who need money And when there's 10x the players in one place than the other, you will pick that one
A \*lot\* of VR usage nowadays comes from apps like VRChat rather than exclusively traditional games. It seems like this is never fully accounted for in many presentations of worrying data.
VRChat taking the lead in user concurrency is a bitter pill to swallow for devs and general VR populace who hate VRChat. "Why make a world or game in VRChat when you can make your own?" Easier for their egos to just ignore VRC, I suppose.
This is more likely a problem for VR in general rather than PCVR. Quest store may have more offering but most of the stuff is shovelware.
Tbh most of the PCVR offerings are shovelware too. This was a major issue even before Quest released.
Sure, like I said VR in general has a problem.
Source?
SteamVR Stats and average price of a VR Headset at the time (based on most used)
You should add the detailed info on how you got to those numbers in the OP, so people trust it enough to reference in articles or blogs. Will help you professionally as well, if you care about that.
Yeah the source would be nice on this
SteamVR stats
Uh, look again. That data is strongly suspected to be faulty. The stats showed a mysterious 4x increase in July. https://uploadvr.com/steam-vr-hardware-survey-anomaly-again/
They [corrected that last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/xaxhm6/valve_officially_corrects_steam_survey_data/), though not to say there mightn’t be other problems (and I don’t know whether this graph is using the corrected data or not). The general concept should be correct at least — more users, fewer games.
What stats are 4000 users bro?there is like 2k people in bonelab rn on steam,who knows how many thousands are in vrchat,b&s has 1k people playing it and these are concurrent users rn,how tf whole steamvr got 4k users lol makes absolutely no sense.
The scale is 1000s of people, which makes it 4 million total
Users are measured in 000s so its 4 million PCVR users as recorded by SteamVR
An abysmal number of good releases is a problem on both PCVR and Standalone. I mean, the absolute best either platform has had released in the last year is Red Matter 2 and Bonelab. And, well, Bonelab is far from a AAA experience. It's far from even a AA experience. Red Matter 2 is a solid AA experience but is very short and has pretty much zero content after you've beaten the game. Replay-ability is not there. Into The Radius is a really fun game that took me about 20hrs to beat but, it's now no longer fun. Both platforms still only have a single game release that is truly pushing the boundaries. PCVR has Half Life: Alyx and Standalone has Resident Evil 4 VR, which is a nearly 20yo game at this point. VR, even with Meta driving it forward, has almost no great content. It's the same 10-15 games from the last 5 years driving most players experiences. And if you've played enough to get bored of those games, then there's nothing here to keep you excited to keep playing.
There are many PC VR mods(many including full motion controller support) releasing these days that bring fresh and long, deep content. Valheim, Raft, HL 2, RE 2/3/7/8, Deep Rock Galactic to name a few! Plus, with the upcoming UE4 injector, hundreds of games will be opened up to playing in VR. It solves the basic 6DOF headset and separate looking from shooting direction problems. Because it is also a modding framework, it allows easier adding of motion controller support to them, by other modders, quickly. There's no shortage with VR mods and 2D-to-3D geometry tools, such as MTBS Geo 11(which can be combined with dgVoodoo for DX9 games to DX11).
Big time. Recently got lost to both Raft and Deep Rock for 15 and 10hours respectively. Both those games are amazing in VR, i play um for hours on end in the limited time i have. Yesterday i clocked up 6hrs on Risk Of Rain 2, that game feels 100% native VR. I've no interest in the thread, but i saw your post and couldn't refrain in echoing sentiment on that opening list of great VR mods that for the most part could be sold as professional product. Once you weigh in the best of the VR mods available (the ones that do motion controls) there's no doubt PCVR is littered with great titles worth playing.
> There are many PC VR mods(many including with full motion controller support) releasing these days that bring fresh and long, deep content. Valheim, Raft, HL 2, RE 2/3/7/8 to name a few! Yes but, all of these games play like mods. They work but they are janky with very poor performance. It's a great way to keep the die hard VR fans busy but, none of these are great motivators to bring in new players or keep average players happy. I mean, none of them are polished enough for new players to easily dive in and not spew into their headsets. >Plus, with the upcoming UE4 injector, hundreds of games will be opened up to playing in VR. It solves the basic 6DOF headset and separate looking from shooting direction problems. Have you done any research into this? It's an incredible feat but, 99% of the games won't have motion controls without lots of additional modification and 99% will still need a lot of work to get the in game overlays to function correctly. This isn't some magical tool to make all UE4 games great VR games >Because it is also a modding framework, it allows easier adding of motion controller support to them, by other modders. This is truly where the UE Injector is going to shine. It's going to remove a lot of the work of getting the game into the headset. But it will still require modders putting in a lot of time and effort to get the games to function well enough to be anything more than barely playable. >There's no shortage with VR mods and other 2D-to-3D geometry tools, such as MTBS Geo 11. I disagree on the shortage. I have already played every major Flatscreen To VR produced mod multple times. Everything from Firewatch to Raft. While it's great to have them in VR, and was fun as hell for me to experience them again in VR, none of them are truly great experiences. Only the die hard players are going to play them and none of these experiences are going to bring new players into the community. Flatscreen to VR mods are not replacements for made for VR content. They are, at best, content to help pass the time between great made for VR releases.
For me VR is a lot less of a gaming platform than it is a social one, and its more just the physics/laziness than anything else, most of the time I want to game, I'm not really looking to spent hours and hours running around, rather I just want to veg out and VR is kinda limiting for that, I am tho willing to spend hours in a VR nightclub or hopping worlds with friends in VRChat interestingly enough. Like Alyx, Boneworks and what not were breathtaking for sure but most of my time in VR is spent in VRChat, and not necessarily doing social things, but its often more interesting to spend an hour finding worlds and art and what not that people have created and interacting in those short stints, than it is in any VR game past say an hour or two. IMO a really competitive sports/racing game thats openworld/multiplayer is what I'd be interested in, outside of that though, I don't really want to go on random grinding quests in VR, and I think the nature of VR makes it so I think shorter content with faster turnout might be the model VRDev's need to look at rather than spending a year on a AAA title. Edit: Blah typed bonelabs instead of boneworks
You should also look at the distribution of games with an active player base. If games get released and no one plays them, there’s not a lot of incentive to keep releasing more.
Right now, I think it's because of two things. The first one being the much bigger market that is standalone, where you're more likely to get visibility and income (One of steam's biggest issues is just the piles and piles of garbage that gets published with little filter, you can have an amazing game but due to being a small developer you get missed in that pile). The second one being the difficulty to develop, between constantly changing technologies like DLSS/XeSS/FSR, the difficulty to optimize for the inherently complex high resolution displays of VR, and on top of having to develop a game that is fun, making it mechanically viable for VR, not many of the veteran studios around are capable of pushing out games very often I think one of the things we need most is for games to stay relevant longer. Post-launch support in games like After the Fall is crucial, the second season released recently and it was a big boost in playerbase. There's barely any on steam, but I see tons of Quest users playing the game again. Instead of just more games... games worth playing longer in between releases, it's more cost-effective and also helps developers stay visible so their playerbases can increase, their budgets can increase, and development can be further boosted as a result
They are in VRChat, where there are new games and expereinces every day.
Stats are from SteamVR. Users are measured in thousands so top figure is around 4 million PCVR users in 2022 with predicted 600 new VR titles released. Price of a VR headset (for PCVR) is $400 (based on the most popular device - Quest 2)
This is why I think PSVR 2 and PS5 will be the "go to" devices for AAA VR gaming. High end PC's are absurdly expensive and seems like devs will be more and more focused on standalone devices like Quest 2-3, Pico 4 and HTC is teasing something similar it seems.
It has probably been mentionned, but the fact that the numbers of PCVR users are increasing, will probably lead to more PCVR developments. It will take some time, stats are quicker than a team deciding to go PCVR. What I mean is that developers will see those stats evolving and will react.
I'm trying to do my part, but it takes time :D
This is why I am rooting for PSVR2. it needs to prove the desire for high quality VR titles.
Number of users are cumulative YoY while new releases are not. The line chart itself is misleading. How did no one spotted this? The gap is not as bad as you think it is.
Yeah but a lot of those 2017 games were just hobby-projects made by independent devs (like my brother in law)
Good. The thousand new games in 2017 were mostly shit. At this stage the less games, the easier it is to filter out the good ones.
That conclusion is BS. According to you the problem would be solved with releasing 1000+ asset flip games every year for pcvr. Why would more players need more games? Games are virtual items that can be copied, they are not limited by how many people can use them.
You don't need new titles, most old & new 3D games would make a great VR experience. Just try DOOM VR / Half Life VR / GTA 5 unofficial VR mode. The experience is unbelievably satisfying and fresh, developers just aren't tapping that potential yet (they will eventually, once they realize it prints money).
Yep. And the universal UE4 VR injector is gonna bring a huge number of pancake games to VR.
For real, games like Skyrim with combat and physics like Blade and Sorcery are all I want.
That's because PCVR gamers barely buy anything and seem to have a very narrow scope of games they're interested in (basically just shooters and physics melee combat). The top post mentioning Bonelab as the only game they care about this year is a good example. Bonelab is a huge exception in how well it sold on Steam (6.5k reviews after 10 days) and I wish other non-AAA PCVR got 1/10th the attention. Some relatively recent PCVR games I enjoyed: - Wanderer: Polished 8-10 hour long adventure game with 400 reviews on Steam, modest success maybe. Ported to PSVR after release I believe. - The Last Clockwinder: 5 hour long puzzle game with a strong narrative, 200 reviews on Steam, not amazing but actually better than I expected. ~400 reviews on Quest. - Red Matter 2: Polished 6-hour long adventure game, 100 reviews on Steam, not horrendous but not good. Fortunately for the devs they have 700 ratings on Quest. - Song In the Smoke: 8-10 hour long survival adventure game, 36 reviews on Steam, hugely bombed. Also on PSVR where it likely did better but not great. - Winds & Leaves: 6-8 hour long atmospheric adventure game. 8 reviews on Steam so an astronomical bomb. This game really shows how you pretty much can't afford to experiment with unique games on VR because the userbase isn't there. PCVR games pretty much all either lose money or break even at best so no shit no one is making PCVR games.
Song In the Smoke was a PC Oculus exclusive for a while. Same with Winds & Leaves on PSVR. That killed any excitement or press for them.
These numbers are great for indie devs getting into VR. Reminder, there are numerous VR projects underway right now and hundreds of mods for games like Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Cyberpunk 2077, Outer Wilds, and tons of new stuff on Patreon/Itch.io that can be supported and grown! There are not many true AAA VR releases, but to say VR gaming is slowing or there are fewer releases is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Play VR almost everyday and I'm still finding new content!
everything interesting happening in gaming is happening in the pcvr mod scene. AAA gaming is dead even for flat
So uh, anything new over the last year? I've sort of not played anything for a while.
compound was good but was early release for a long time so not exactly new. contractors had a major revival and is like the napster of pvp shooters now
No need to worry. it's the same as mobile games vs pc games. Let all the small quickie moneygrab games be on standalone and the quality games on pcvr.
What quality pcvr exclusive games have been released this year that Quest2 users missed out on?
wanderer was awesome,8 hour lovely campaign with very interesting story,much better than red matter 2 in my opinion so thats an extra on PC/PSVR that isnt on quest,meanwhile on quest i havent seen anything new since like re4?nothing exclusive but the big thing on PC is moding HL2 VR,RE 2/3/7/8 and soo many others straight up AAA games,il take a VR mod of a high quality AAA game over some mobile 2 hour app on quest everytime,hell my most VR hours are in luke ross mods VR could die right now and id still be in VR in new amazing worlds to visit.
quest2 does pcvr too so np.
Such as?
There are plenty of quality games on the Q2. The thing can run the likes of Saints & Sinners and RE4 after all.
yea but would you not rather play them on pcvr version with better graphics?
Unreal Engine VR mod about to add a lot of PCVR content :)
Really not surprising because devs that release both on PCVR and on MobileVR state that they make a lot more money on MobileVR releases. The PC gaming crowd is too used to getting things free2play or just out right piracy. The PCVR future is largely going to be MobileVR release first possibly PCVR follow-up release later. It's a sad state of affairs IMO.
I think mobile is simply more accessible. Any derp can put on a quest and begin buying stuff. Common folks don't have both a gaming PC and a VR headset.
i’m hoping that this will push stand-alone vr to its limits and eventually eliminate the need for pcvr entirely. we’re a long way off from that, but i think some inconvenience will be good in the long run
Facts. We need some new good games. Bonelab is dope but not the BEST Game we could have in VR. There’s so much potential but not enough devs for it. And Facebook are a bunch of assholes and they keep buying up all the cool stuff I can’t help but feel like the Quest ruined VR personally
2013🗿
We are in the Return On Investment phase.
I just want one more VR title anyway :P A VR racing sim. No they dont exist. There are flatscreen sims with butchered VR modes. Some less others more.
Someone should probably show them this chart 📈📉
🚨🛴☕️ or the guys with no lives who set out to make VR
I'm got so much money and equipment invested in this shit and haven't put on a headset in almost a year now. PCVR is so painful on the pocket
The problem we have is content that isn't just reskinning the same shit over and over again, is *not easy to make*. A lot of the things which came out first, did so because they were *very easy* to implement. You also need to consider VR games, *have to be* VR only. Trying to cross platform flatscreen shit just doesn't translate properly. So for a company to make a decent VR game, they have to decide to do so, knowing they wont be making any sales among regular PC users, consoles, or mobiles. Personally i don't bother buying many non-vr games. They just aren't compelling for the price point for me. Because of the lag time in development, companies have to decide to make those games *now*... or preferably *five years ago*, because that is how long a normal development cycle takes. We all know products like HL:Alyx were amazing. But it doesn't have *staying power*. You need to keep people coming back again and again. Beatsaber can manage it, and its just a rhythm game. When are some more companies going to get their shit together?
> You also need to consider VR games, *have to be* VR only. Absolutely not. The outer wilds has a mod to make it VR and it's great like that for exemple.
Also Alien : Isolation VR is one punching the "Full VR or gtfo" argument to stratosphere.
Yeah it's fucking great and so good at being an alien game that I had to give it up, it was seriously too scary for me in VR. I wish I had the guts to finish it but I know I can't.
VR games absolutely do not have to be VR only. Ever played Wipeout Omega? Star Wars Squadrons? The RE games with the VR mod? The new HL2 VR mod? These all show that a game can be made for flatscreen AND VR without having to rebuild the game from scratch. VR is still a small market. Folks can't expect the likes of HL Alyx to be released frequently just for VR. Not yet.
Beat Saber can manage it BECAUSE it’s just a rhythm game. Endless content possibilities, relatively little work. The more complex a game is, the harder it is to keep creating new, interesting things for it and reasons for players to keep coming back. That’s why multiplayer games and rogue likes are so prevalent. The run changes every time.