R.I.P Virtual Reality

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very so often, the games industry heralds the arrival of a new revolution in gaming that will change literally everything about videogames. These revolutions came and went however, and they never really changed much. Mobile gaming was meant to be the next big thing. Now it’s largely a laughing stock. Motion controls were declared to be the future, and now the Wii U is a rotting carcass and even Microsoft has stopped bothering to attempt to sell Kinect. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the next supposed revolution in gaming, the advent of virtual reality, already seems to be dead in the water.

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For Virtual Reality, the death knell came last week, when Oculus, perhaps the most well-known VR manufacturer, announced its £499 price tag, far more than Oculus had ever indicated that it would be. That price in itself is steep, but what makes it even more egregious is the fact that to even be able to run the machine, you need a supremely powerful PC, meaning the total price would likely be over £1000. Only hardcore VR supporters are ever going to accept that ridiculous price point; the average consumer doesn’t have that amount of money to spend on something that at the moment appears to be little more than a shiny new gimmick.

Oculus is the biggest name in the world of virtual reality. For the technology to ever be a success, it needed to be popular – cheap, easy to understand and something that even your granny could play. But for over £1000, that just isn’t happening. I understand that the technology behind the Rift is high-end, and therefore expensive, I do. Even with all of these factors, the price is still insane, meaning that, for the moment, the Oculus is all but dead.

Now you may be thinking ‘Wait a minute, there are loads of other headsets’, but that just isn’t the case. The other headsets are in danger, perhaps more so than Oculus. According to reports, the HTC Vive is going to cost around $1500, and this is without the high end machinery that you’ll need. That leaves the PlayStation VR.

Key figures have even said the headset will be the future of Sony for the next 25 years. This is clearly a big move for them, and more clearly, it is a massive gamble, and it is one that is likely to fail.

Sony have been slowly upping their coverage concerning their headset. Key figures have even said the headset will be the future of Sony for the next 25 years. This is clearly a big move for them, and more clearly, it is a massive gamble, and it is one that is likely to fail. PlayStation VR has certain advantages over its competitors, namely that you only need a PS4 to play it, which means that it automatically costs hundreds of pounds less. However, what’s salient here is that the PSVR is a peripheral. It’s an add-on that can be used for the PS4, which remains the core machine. Peripherals don’t have a good history. They’re expensive and then fade into obscurity at lightning speed. For the PSVR to avoid this, it needs to be worthwhile, and fairly cheap. I have no doubts that the machine will be of good quality, but it’s the price that worries me. For it to succeed, it needs to have a reasonable price point that the average console gamer will be willing to pay, and I don’t think that they can do that. Realistically, anything over £200 will be a lot, but the odds of them being able to achieve a price under that that is unlikely.

For it to succeed, it needs to have a reasonable price point that the average console gamer will be willing to pay, and I don’t think that they can do that.

Virtual Reality has been touted as the future of gaming for a while now, but, honestly, it’s not the future at all. The major names going into VR all seem to be falling into the same trap of selling their machines at ridiculously high price points that most consumers have no intention of paying. They are only going to be accessible to those who have a lot of disposable income. Sadly, that means that the supposed Virtual Reality will be over before it even begins.

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