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You're still talking about an audience that's predominantly gamers. The mobile phone market by default has a much larger market. My parents have phones that can

You're still talking about an audience that's predominantly gamers. The mobile phone market by default has a much larger market. My parents have phones that can do VR, they don't have a Playstation.

MBCook 10y ago
The gamer audience is pretty damn big. It's not an obscure hobby. A huge number of households have gaming consoles. It's way way way bigger than the number that have custom built ultra-high end PCs. Phones that will be powerful enough to provide a good experience for more than a short amount of time (due to battery, etc.) and with the abilities of other VR systems (hand controllers, positional tracking, etc) are going to be a fair ways off.
- Snowdax 10y ago
  A vast swathe of "the gamer audience" is on mobile though. The bulk of the numbers are people playing the likes of Candy Crush and Temple run, not COD or Halo. Just the ones who flesh out the most money for gaming.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    Does that really detract from my point that the PS VR is probably the most mainstream way of introducing VR we'll have for a while that isn't heavily constrained and doesn't require thousands of dollars of hardware? Yes all gamers (including phones) is a bigger group than console gamers, but there are still a TON of console gaming households who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games.
    - _pmf_ 10y ago
      > who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games It remains to be seen how many of these will buy a VR headset. Peripherals have always been a very marginal aspect even on dedicated gaming hardware. If there's an actual killer application (i.e. a must have game) I could see myself buying into it, but as long as the VR "games" are either glorified demos or badly converted regular games that are worse than their non-VR counterpart, I won't spend a cent on it.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    Those aren't gamers.
    - MBCook 10y ago
      They're games. Not the kind I was talking about but they ARE games. I'm not a big fan of "console/PC or it's fake" attitudes towards games. Some of the best games I've played in years were on iPhone/iPad.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-usage-comparison-games.png?w=680&h=429 https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/pokemon... With some exceptions like Game of War, Candy crush and Pokemon Go the average mobile user doesn't play that much. They just need a quick 5 minute distraction. That's the wrong mindset for VR.

You're still talking about an audience that's predominantly gamers. The mobile phone market by default has a much larger market. My parents have phones that can do VR, they don't have a Playstation.

MBCook 10y ago

The gamer audience is pretty damn big. It's not an obscure hobby. A huge number of households have gaming consoles. It's way way way bigger than the number that have custom built ultra-high end PCs. Phones that will be powerful enough to provide a good experience for more than a short amount of time (due to battery, etc.) and with the abilities of other VR systems (hand controllers, positional tracking, etc) are going to be a fair ways off.

Snowdax 10y ago
A vast swathe of "the gamer audience" is on mobile though. The bulk of the numbers are people playing the likes of Candy Crush and Temple run, not COD or Halo. Just the ones who flesh out the most money for gaming.
- MBCook 10y ago
  Does that really detract from my point that the PS VR is probably the most mainstream way of introducing VR we'll have for a while that isn't heavily constrained and doesn't require thousands of dollars of hardware? Yes all gamers (including phones) is a bigger group than console gamers, but there are still a TON of console gaming households who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games.
  - _pmf_ 10y ago
    > who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games It remains to be seen how many of these will buy a VR headset. Peripherals have always been a very marginal aspect even on dedicated gaming hardware. If there's an actual killer application (i.e. a must have game) I could see myself buying into it, but as long as the VR "games" are either glorified demos or badly converted regular games that are worse than their non-VR counterpart, I won't spend a cent on it.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Those aren't gamers.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    They're games. Not the kind I was talking about but they ARE games. I'm not a big fan of "console/PC or it's fake" attitudes towards games. Some of the best games I've played in years were on iPhone/iPad.
- imtringued 10y ago
  https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-usage-comparison-games.png?w=680&h=429 https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/pokemon... With some exceptions like Game of War, Candy crush and Pokemon Go the average mobile user doesn't play that much. They just need a quick 5 minute distraction. That's the wrong mindset for VR.