VR gaming has been a thing for a year or two now but I don't think there's really that one game which prompted everyone to go buy a VR headset already and play it. Like how Quake made everyone go buy 3D-accelerated graphics cards and how games like Super Mario 64 and Sonic the Hedgehog made everyone want to buy a Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis. Even though there's been some very cool VR games released recently, none of them have really caused a massive shockwave in the market or really grabbed mainstream attention. Common reasons for why that is point to the rather short nature of VR games since you don't want to be playing in VR for too long, and VR gaming itself still coming off as a niche to most people which needs to work out the kinks in the technology, so most people wouldn't even bother with it even if the games themselves were really good.
That said, what would it take for you to get into VR gaming? Is the price of VR headsets still a problem or the lack of room space, does the whole thing still come off as a gimmick, or does it still seem like there aren't any good VR exclusives? Would you bite the pillow for a first-person VR mech cockpit simulator, a swordfighting simulator of some sorts, or some other kind of as of yet undescribed action game?
Cost and still not being completely wireless. There's a pic floating around of some futuristic apartment, that's completely empty except for the guy sitting in the corner, away in fantasy land with the VR headset. Until it can become that good I won't even consider it. That said, I've tried Vive and a few minigames and porn, but I was not impressed yet.
Gavin Walker
VR Metroid Prime
Ian James
Because it's so unfocused that no one knows which headset and platform to target. Resident Evil 7 was about as close to a killer VR game as we got, and that was a PSVR only one. So not only do you have to pick one of the several overpriced headsets, and no one can agree on which is better, none of which really have any interesting games, just tech demos.
It's the same issue as with Linux Distros - no one can agree which is the best, or even which is better than the others, and there's still no real reason to use it other than "Windows is bad", which will never be enough of a reason for the majority of the population.
Luis Smith
A huge reduction in price. It's not that I can't afford it, but more that most people can't afford it, while others like myself won't get it because nobody else can afford it. After all of this time, consumer confidence in the future of VR is still shaky at best. The best way to fix that is to put them in as many homes as possible.
Hunter Perez
I think that developers need to realize that motion controls are basically VR's cancer and that they need to apply some serious chemo. As soon as we get normal video games with normal controllers or M+KB controls, we'll see a huge VR breakthrough
Good video games with good controls are, inherently, an immersive medium. You think what you want to do, you use your controller of choice, it happens on the screen. Do it for an hour or two, and your brain will start really forming the connection between small, instantaneous movement and on-screen action. Until we have devices that can literally hook up to our brains and read the electrical impulses from them, this is the closest we can get to having a video game that is controlled directly by our thoughts, and controllers work just fine for this most of the time.
VR is also an inherently immersive technology, because it removes the screen from the equation. The full 3D effects mean we have a very close approximation of a fully recognized simulated environment as it would be perceived by our eyes if it were real. This is a potentially powerful tool.
Now, take these two hyper-immersive mediums, VR and video games themselves, and combine them with motion controls. The most unimmersive way to play a video game. The delay between real life action and on-screen action is unimmersive, the lack of tactile feedback is unimmersive, the fact that you can't actually perform actions with a motion controller as fast as a game character can is unimmersive, the awkward differences between the shape of the controller and whatever your character is doing is unimmersive. Everything about motion controls reminds you that you are playing a game, not experiencing a world, and kills any hope you had at immersing your self in that experience. Yes, they're INTUITIVE, at least intuitive to real life, but that's not how video game immersion works. Video game immersion is about minimizing time between "my brain synapses just fired" and "my character did what I wanted them to do", and motion controls are the antithesis of that.
Kill motion controls and VR becomes the new 3D.
Grayson Ward
oh right, and it doesn't help that motion controls also dictate those huge setups with like fifty sensors and a big ass room to set them all in with no interference. Get rid of that stupid garbage.
