The Impact Factor

Virtual Reality and the Steep Cost of an Over-Promised Future

Article

Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) may not be the future it has promised to be. Not on a technical level, but on an availability and accessibility one. Despite my newfound enthusiasm for VR, I remain skeptical for the future of the technology. An unhealthy hype cycle and misinformation about pricing created an unfounded hope for VR as consumer-friendly product. 2016 VR devices look to only for a hyper small niche of people, which makes me fear for VR and game developers alike. VR will make its mark in 2016. Let’s just hope it is a good one.

2016 is the year of virtual reality according to, well, everyone. I want to start this article the only way I know how. And that’s by telling you that, despite what the article below might sound like, I’m excited for virtual reality (VR). Really excited. My skepticism was converted to enthusiasm at the PlayStation Experience (PSX) in December of last year. My fiancée and I were able to book two appointments to PSX’s PlayStation (PS) VR demo area, one for each of the days we were at the event. Though Rez Infinite left me hesitant, the exceptional Job Simulator opened my eyes to how wholly different VR is from any gaming experience I’ve had before. After we took off our headsets from the Job Simulator demo we looked at each other and nodded—PS VR would be something that, price permitting, the two of us wanted in our household. VR is exciting. VR is really unlike anything you’ve seen before. And yet, I’m still here writing this.

All of the promise of VR, in one neat little gif.

If you have been following the gaming industry for any time at all, you’ll know just how much VR is discussed. It’s quite a bit. For years now we’ve heard promises of our simulated futures. A future in which you are transported to new worlds, so compelling a facsimile of reality that your brain is deceived into filling in the missing pieces, further selling the illusion of presence. The hype cycle surrounding VR has been loud, and strong, for half a decade. VR manufacturers, VR software makers, and games pundits alike rushed to their pulpits to decry the virtues of this new, most world changing, technology to date. It’s easy to see why the product was so easy to hype, too. VR has been a mainstay in science fiction for decades. VR seemingly delivers on a promise our collective imagination has had since we had cognition. At this point in the technology’s life, it’s hard to say how well it will live up to its lofty promises. I was certainly taken somewhere while playing Job Simulator, but I was also keenly aware I had a clunky headset on, was holding a PS4 controller, and was looking at simulated images. This article isn’t here to speculate on how well modern VR technology will actually work, though. This article is about how VR was hyped; how it was ‘sold’ to consumers. And how we were deceived.

 

The technology is still clunky, but it has me excited. What I can't get
behind is how VR has been talked about.

What is the deception at the heart of VR’s over-promised future? That VR will be for anyone. Far from it. This introduction to new VR will be only for the hardest of core, the spendthriftiest of spendthrifts. Nothing any VR developer, manufacturer, or mouthpiece has said to the contrary can be taken seriously. This started back in August 2012 when the ‘Oculus Rift’ announced its first Kickstarter. For a mere $300 pledge, you could get your hands on a functional dev kit version of the headset. The PC requirements to run the headset were always on the high end, but this pricing structure had my interest piqued. $300 is something I happily spend on new consoles. For a VR headset the price seemed more than fair. Facebook’s purchase of Oculus in March 2014 threw gas on the growing VR-excitement fire (and by association, VR-as-widespread-consumer-product fire). Facebook is a company that appeals to essentially everyone. It’s a site, and a service, is transcends age, socio-economic status, interests, etc. The way it was discussed, Facebook’s purchase of Oculus meant that one of the biggest companies in the world not only thought VR worked, but was also worth funding. A company as large as Facebook wouldn’t invest this kind of money and energy into a product that at best will be in the hands of a few thousand of gaming’s most devoted enthusiasts, right? This buyout meant that Oculus could have the support it needed to make the best VR headset possible, and have the resources to get a VR headset into the hands of everyone who wanted it.

I had remained skeptical, up to that point. No way is this high-powered VR headset that requires an even higher-powered PC making it into the hands of Joe Nebraska or Jane Oregon. No way. Yet no one was trying to put out the aforementioned VR-excitement fires. Then in September 2015 Oculus head Palmer Luckey was asked if his VR headset would be priced around $350, a number that had been tossed around by the company in the years prior. Luckey responded, “We’re roughly in that ballpark.” Luckey would go onto say that the headset would likely cost more than that ($350), but his “ballpark” quote still stood. I felt confident after this that VR would cost around $400. A price that, while high, was not totally unreasonable. A price I suspected would be ‘justifiable’ to most of those interested in experiencing VR. As we found out a couple months later in January 2016, though, Luckey has a pretty large ballpark. The Oculus would launch at $600.

 

Maybe not.

I’m sure $600 may not seem like a lot to some people. To me, however, this was the final nail in the VR as general consumer product coffin. From its earliest embryonic stages through today, VR has faced a slew of hurdles in its attempt at mass appeal. For starters, VR is a new technology that is not only difficult to describe (‘it feels like you’re there!’) but is also impossible to demo. In the years since its announcement, there have been shockingly few VR demos on stages at press conferences and trade events. The answer to “why” is quite simple: demos cannot replicate the experience of being inside a VR headset. Looking at a 2D screen loses the depth and sense of presence you feel with the headset on. It pretty much looks like any other game. The only way to sell the technology, other than lofty promises, is to get the headsets onto consumers. That hasn’t (really) happened. As someone intrigued by VR who actively sought chances to demo, it still took me until PSX 2015 to get one on my face. I even attended Game Developer's Conference (GDC) 2015 and unless you had a reservation (press & devs only), you had little chance to try out the tech. But the challenges don’t stop there. The cost to run Oculus far exceeds the headset’s $600 price tag. Building a PC that has the power to run VR will cost you $1200--$1500. So now it’s roughly $2000 to get into VR. That’s more than most people pay for monthly rent.

 

VR's clear challenges make me scratch my head, too.

So what are we left with? At best, a highly vocal minority that advocate for the technology. People will buy the first generation of VR. I’m sure many of those will enjoy the headset. But is that enough? One of my more minor worries is that those who buy in will feel the burn of being an early adopter. Early adopters getting punished is certainly nothing new to tech, but I suspect VR could elicit a particularly strong pushback. I imagine it’s hard to temper your expectations when you invest ~$2000 for something that has been sold as THE FUTURE (of gaming? Of entertainment? Of the world?! It’s unclear). If these vocal minority fall on the side of disliking the product, it could mean very bad news.

What worries me more as a gaming enthusiast, though, is that this barrier to entry to VR is already enough to torpedo its future. VR is nothing without the experiences you have on it. If only a few thousand people own a VR headset, what is the financial incentive to develop games for the device? Are software developers going to be able to make their money back? Even if the attach rate (the number of games, on average, each owner of the device purchases) is high, and I suspect it will be, will there simply be enough VR owners to make it worth it? A recent survey of game developers by GDC indicated interest in developing for VR is at an all time high, but the survey was taken before the first VR headset announced its price. Will this change things? I suspect it might. A quick glance at any VR enthusiast forum or website around the time of Oculus’s pricing told a grim story. Even the most devoted VR fanatics were angry at the price. Many said they would be holding off on their purchase. I hope for the best for VR developers, but it is unclear to me if that hope is naïve.

I do not believe all hope is lost for a consumer-friendly VR headset, however. The HTC Vive VR headset announced a pre-order date of February 29^th, but has yet to release a price. All predictions cite that the device will cost as much or more than the Oculus, however, given the extra features the Vive offers. Bummer. You have Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear, but running VR off the comparatively small processing power of a smartphone limits the kinds of experiences you can have. And then there is Sony’s PS VR. We’ve yet to hear a pre-order or release date, or price, but its ties to console gives me some hope. Bundles excluded, a PS4 should never cost you more than $400. The same cannot be said for a PC, where the price range is huge. I find it hard to imagine (though I expect I may be proven wrong yet again), that Sony would sell an accessory for the PS4 that costs much more than the console itself. (I’m only calling it an ‘accessory’ here because PS VR cannot run without a PS4.) The PS4 is one of the best selling consoles of all time with nearly 36 million units sold through as of December 2015. If Sony can release a VR device that costs roughly the same as the PS4, we may finally see a consumer-friendly VR headset. Finally, there’s still hope for the second generation of VR headsets. Assuming the VR ecosystem hasn’t already collapsed by that point.

The last great hope for a powerful consumer-friendly VR headset? Who knows.

And that’s where we stand. Despite how it might have read, I’m a believer in VR. I’m excited to buy PS VR, for the right price. But I’m worried. I’m more than a little scared for the hundreds of VR game developers out there, too. I wonder if the first wave of this VR generation will 'hurt' the VR industry like Nintendo's Virtual Boy did back in the 90's. How precarious is VR? The technical, graphical, immersive promise of VR is more real than ever, but we still seem so far away from it being anything other than an experience for a small niche of people. Here’s to hoping 2016 is not only the “year of VR”, but also a great year for VR. It’s got its work cut out.

At least nothing is as bad as the Virtual Boy. Right?