Author Topic: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even  (Read 9352 times)

Offline Castruccio

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Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« on: December 14, 2016, 09:39:48 am »
Thought this article and it's various links might be of interest.  I hope Arcen doesn't have plans to develop for VR soon.  It looks like a very tough and small market on PC.

http://www.pcgamer.com/htc-vive-launch-title-developer-breaks-down-difficulties-of-making-money-from-vr/

Offline Aklyon

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2016, 10:03:59 am »
Last I'd heard it was rather demanding hardware-wise since you needed to hold 90fps, so it was limited to higher-end computers. Might be related?

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2016, 12:43:42 am »
There are also MASSIVE amounts of walled gardens in the world of VR, and that is hurting devs as only a small subset (say Oculus) can access their small subset (VR games) of games. The solution is to make everything platform agnostic and agree on a standard. We've seen this happen with multiplayer games. The game is moderately popular and in a desperate attempt to make it more popular, the devs make more modes or release DLC maps or whatever, leading to a fractured playerbase and subsequently worse matchmaking and people get the feeling "the game is dying" and quit.

Same with VR. So many walled gardens that it's just not worth getting VR unless you're getting all of them, and that's a ridiculus investment.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2016, 04:24:05 am by Mánagarmr »
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Offline kasnavada

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2016, 03:11:32 am »
The standard will happen sooner or later...

That said them struggling ain't really a surprise, going VR is quite a shift from the current gaming habits and it's limited a lot by gear. It will get better as the equipment gets much much cheaper than it currently is.

I don't have much doubt that it's a large part of the future of gaming though.

Offline Toranth

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2016, 12:36:35 pm »
Right now, Steam lists more than 1000 VR games - and a quick glance shows that most of those are shovelware. 
While I can easily believe that it is very difficult to create a good game that uses VR in an immersive and interesting manner... most of what I see is tech-demo garbage being sold for $10.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2016, 09:11:17 am »
Where is the "many" coming from? In the article only 1 developer speaks, and the game is (imo) mediocre, visually and gameplay wise. It has zero long-term stay, no longterm binding gameplay elements (progression... dynamic changing worlds, new content, no workshop), no community interactions. So the real problem was that HTC didn't have good launch titles. Also priced at 8$ when steam tells you specifically not to do that is another sign, that maybe the problem lies in the games and the devs, not VR or steam....

And if you browse the VR section in Steam you better put your biker goggles on, because you gonna trudge through some serious sewage. To put it kindly.... there are entire youtube channels dedicated to weeding through that mess and finding good games, they don't find many.

But that will change, when the hardware isn't more expensive than the GPU you need to run it...

At this point, I also suspect many are waiting for VR gen 2, which if rumors are true, gonna require entirely new GPU's because of HDMI/DP limitations. And so the market is still not even there, this is early adopter territory. And as always the customers with patience are rewarded.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 09:13:28 am by eRe4s3r »
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Offline jenya

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2016, 03:11:12 pm »
Would be interesting to see the results of current Arcen VR project (I quote from kickstarter "But we'll be working on a different project, focusing on VR actually").

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Many VR Devs (possibly most) Struggling to Break Even
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2016, 10:17:32 pm »

 

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