The first time most of us encountered a VR system was the first time we read an article on this strange thing called the Oculus Rift. It looked like nothing more than snowboarding goggles with black tape over them. From that alone most felt this is useless but then people began to read and thought themselves “is this what I’ve wanted my games to strive towards all along”? As new VR headsets begin to flood the market from every company with an old set of goggles they could MacGyver into a product most who experienced it first hand screamed “this is exactly what I want”. Palmer Luckey was 22 years old when he said “I brought VR back from the dead” and honestly could anyone really argue with that statement. One has to bring up the fact that this has been attempted before and failed miserably but this time technology is definitely on the side of VR. The technology definitely makes all the difference in the world.
Now that we see the amount of companies coming to the forefront with quality Virtual Reality efforts you can tell the gaming industry wanted this as well. Developers being unified towards bringing the gaming industry into a Matrix level of immersion sounds like an amazing thing. Still you have to ask how will the industry be able to market something you can’t advertise without strapping something to a persons face. Here in lies the problem, if you cant get the consumer to support and buy in neither will the developers who are needed to create the amazing VR experiences the platform needs. This will be the big question that will have to be answered sooner rather later. Were already starting to see release windows announced with Sony’s Project Morpheus taking the lead.
Like any gaming device release you cannot release without quality experiences for us consumers to well…experience. In the end the only thing that matters, are these devices fun and can they break the initial barrier that has been built up by years of terrible VR offerings. We normally do not like to equate the price of something to the quality of something because a company could easily over charge for a sub par product or vice versa. In an interview with “The Market for Computer & Video Games” HTC’s Director of marketing Jeff Gattis says that “Vive VR’s slightly higher price point is a trade off for a premium VR experience” that both Valve and HTC are hoping to achieve with its VR offering. The question now is does this quote represent a shared mentality of all VR developers that there main focus is delivering a premium VR Experience. With Valve and HTC being the new kids on the block with there VR headset and showing this type transparent view of there vision. This is a good indication that when the Vive VR, The Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus are all staring at you from a store shelve you will have hard time making your purchasing choice. Based on the fact all VR companies will have brought there A game and placed it just in front of the consumers Eyes.