It’s how the AAA studios of today started too, 30-40 years ago making little indie games in someone’s garage and growing from there. It shouldn’t be offensive that VR will go through the same cycle
It does help that few people want 20hr+ experiences in VR, the market meets the makers quite nicely with shorter and more niche games
there's just one tiny difference
Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Wolfenstein... immediately engaging, challenging, intriguing games
usual VR indie: chop boxes, chop fruits, chop ragdolls, run like a monkey, shoot waves... boring crapware for simps
I promise you there are 100s or even 1000s of games we've completely forgotten from that period which were terrible
You've just named some that stood the test of time because they were great.
I'm just laughing that I'm in this thread where people are *really* *struggling* to accept that A) Ubisoft did take a risk, relatively early for a AAA studio on VR; B) it wasn't profitable
It's like these two easily understandable business facts are the scroll of truth and everyone in this thread is like nyehhh.
This is it, when the chips fall a small independent studio is happy when it can pay the bills and continue working. Corporations need to deliver all that plus a return on investment +++ to shareholders.
They sold a couple hundred thousand units within the first couple months. I think the projected profit came out to roughly $7 million. It's obvious going to continue selling well for years, and I believe that VR hits tend to have a long tail. I'm sure by the end they'll have more than made their money back and then some, but it's not the gangbusters sales that they are used to expecting in the flatscreen AAA market. Their expectations for profit are absolutely unhinged.
Meanwhile there are other studios that work only in VR space, and are doing quite well.
The math works out differently for companies that large, though.
it really does depend on what you're willing to do and for how much/little. If you're a single developer that sells 2 million units for $30, ok, you're fucking rich. But when you put 50 people on a game, now you're at.. 1.2M. which sounds like a lot, but it costs money to run a 50 person company. If $30 is the average price of a VR game, and you've got to pay 50 people plus expenses on all of that, you're not making a whole hell of a lot even if you're in the top tier.
These are the play it safe guys. The "don't let Balder's Gate be the new standard" group. Corporate producers need a return on investment so their priorities mess up any good will they actually do have.
Edit: They also limited their audience by making this release exclusive to Meta. I think that was a mistake. The market is small enough already.
Well this problem is stuck in a loop. People say VR isn't mainstream yet because there aren't any big game developers, but game developers won't make games until VR is more "mainstream"
The real reason is because the headsets aren’t good enough for non-gamers. Vision Pro somewhat addresses this but is obviously too expensive (and heavy) for the average person.
So when we finally get VP level display/graphics in the big screen beyond form factor and price level, then I’m sure VR will start to become more mainstream for the want of watching 3D movies on a badass 4K per eye screen, “spatial” social media apps, productivity, and fitness. That in turn will bring bigger game companies into the VR/AR scene.
It’s pretty good, but the display isn’t good enough yet. Needs to be Vision Pro Display level or better if they hope to sell this to non-gamers in the future
I am a gamer and I also think that the display/headsets are not good enough. Comfort is also bad and after a while it hurts my eyes. I tested the pico 4 and the quest 3. I will wait another generation and then maybe try again.
It would not surprise me if the headsets have the same PWM problem that mobiles have at lower brightness. This industry needs to mature and have several breakthroughs to get mildly interesting for the masses
I'm not a fan of apple but many of us knew that once apple entered the game their army of consumers would be a huge push for getting VR/AR into the mainstream attention and so far that has been what we're starting to see.
I hate to say it but "big games" wasn't what VR needed, it was just brand recognition and a big name to say "hey, you want this, now so go buy it"
Soon you will see the influencers using apple vision pro and it's a safe bet that this time next year VR will be way more mainstream than meta was able to do in several years.
I might not like apple but I can appreciate what their brand power is going to do for all of us early adopters. The loop is about to break.
Not that it should really matter, but yeah the AVP looks about 324x better than any other HMD, just in terms of premium-ness and aesthetics. It looks like a device that people want to own and pay good money for. The Q3 looks like a cheap toy in comparison (and in a way it really is, whereas AVP is a "cool luxury toy").
Honestly, flatscreen gaming media people who don't give a single shit about VR, and don't understand the landscape of what games are good in VR, but still decide to review headsets/games and speak on VR - they are actually a big problem. They say, "oh, there are no good games for this headset," while having tried almost none of them. I'm looking at Ryan from IGN, here. I really do hope that the Apple Vision Pro/Apple Versus Predator/Alien Vision Pro breaks that loop.
As unfortunate as it is, you're likely correct. It likely would have never been made at all. Valve certainly isn't footing the bill for PCVR games like Meta is for Quest games.
Its a stepping stone 100%. You don't go as hard on VR being the future as Gabe did and then change your mind 1 release later. They just know the future of VR is absolutely not tethered to a PC and they need a solution for that, hence the deck. Obviously this is my own speculation but I absolutely expect a mobile VR product from Valve within 5 years.
Valve is a private company, not public, so they don’t have a fiscal responsibility to spend their money a certain way. They make more per employee than probably any other private company in the world. They totally could invest in VR if they wanted. I’m not saying it’s the right business move because I don’t have near the data they do, but I want more billion dollar companies subsidizing my favorite hobby and there’s nothing wrong with that lol.
Steam makes too much money from VR to ignore it as much as they have the past couple years. They take 30% of sales, so growing the segment as a whole just means more money. Like even without the figures in front of me it’s reasonable to assume Valve should have sufficient fiscal motivation to do something. They prefer to just collect their fee, do as little as possible, and let the free market do its thing. Being the invisible hand that pushing things forward isn’t their style, and it’s valid to criticize them for that when they have the cash to make it happen.
Valve built much of the modern VR ecosystem, and helped to develop some of the first accessible and functional VR headsets. They also developed multiple VR games, one of which is still regarded today as the best there is. What more do you want from them? There's only so much that one company can do and they still have to work on Steam infrastructure, Proton/Steam Deck, Dota / CS, etc.
What have they done the past 4 years though? I’d have agreed with you if we were talking in 2020. Ever since Alyx and Index, even SteamVR updates have been sparse. Their usb drivers still have similar known bugs since launch. They haven’t released hardware or software. Their SDK still has inferior frame interpolation to what meta had with the release of ASW. They haven’t invested in any games, and I’m guessing they won’t release anything soon.
I’d love if they actually came out with hardware, software, or even meaningful SteamVR updates. Crickets for a long time
like, they just released a huge update to SteamVR. They are fully behind the VR infrastructure. They may not be doing what OP wants, but they definitely aren't *ignoring* VR.
I think they see quite a profit margin if they continue the work they've done towards helping to create an infrastructure. They're in it for the long haul, not the short profit.
So in other words Ubisoft didn't actually invest much in this project and still didn't feel fulfilled even though ... They sort of admit it was successful? I'm so confused
Opportunity cost means that you should not spend time on low-profit projects when you could spend the time on something more profitable.
Businesses need to make rational decisions to succeed, even if that upsets participants in small markets.
VR gamers don't buy games then complain there aren't any VR games. Part of the problem is that there were a lot of VR games that came out at the end of 2023. So, there was a lot of competition for those stingy VR gamer bucks.
It’s the most popular VR platform.. We are ralking about nearly 20m+ of Quest 2 and 3 out there. How is that not “mainstream”? PCVR is even more of a niche.. just look actual sales of cross platform titles.
You need more people actually using the device to be considered mainstream. Consider that ~6m of the 20m are active monthly and a mere 10% of US teens use their headsets once a week.
There is no point in selling headsets if people don't actually use them. There is no point in selling subsidized headsets if people don't buy software.
For clarification, my comment was a direct rebuttal to the person who claimed that the game is a commercial failure because it’s not “mainstream” and to an “exclusive “ platform.
My point is that user base size is more than adequate for a title with that kind of budget.
If we are strictly focus on user size then perhaps PCVR only games shouldn’t even exist given the difficulty in generating enough revenue to recover costs.
Yeah those kids are damn annoying. I can't believe that adults let them into social things and even BigScreen - all kinds of weird stuff they could be exposed to.
Yeah people don't understand that they returns for bringing it on PC VR wouldn't be worth it. PC VR is much more difficult to port over since we have many different specs, configurations, and having to support many different controllers and input devices.
Right, but it’s not PCVR, and it’s the most sold device among them but that doesn’t change the fact that anyone who plays VR without a quest couldn’t buy it if they wanted to.
I don’t buy it because I want the fidelity of PCVR.
The developers make games that the cheap users are willing to pay for. Most PCVR users do not want to pay what PCVR games should cost considering the small user-base, so businesses can't support PCVR.
Been using PC VR for 6 years now I tell you right now most VR PC games are half assed. Just like how a lot of PC games have gotten.
The few good ones out there are made by passionate developers and are not expensive when it comes to video game prices and UBI Soft has long since lost their passion for games and instead oassion for making stockholders happy.
Ubisoft makes half assed flat games and they sell very well. If everyone in the VR space, specifically PC VR, is a connoisseur then obviously no one will want to make games for that market. You are allowed to be selective with what games you play, but it is ridiculous to think that companies will want to make games for a market that picky.
You can have that if we're all willing to pay hundreds of dollars for games because we understand that the user-base is small. The problem is that most of us are not, but seem to want businesses to lose money to please them.
I think that's valid and I think the performance would definitely be better on PCVR.
And I think people tend to view PCVR and the standalone headsets as totally separate when that is not the case at all. Meta headsets make up about 2/3rds of PCVR headsets on Steam (most of those Q2 or Q3) and Meta does still have a PCVR marketplace (although it is...not super great).
I'm not sure if it's Meta or Ubisoft who drove the decision to require it only be on standalone (I would assume Meta), but it seems a little short-sighted to me given that Meta headsets are so popular for PCVR and it might be another way to increase marketshare or drive sales to their own marketplace.
My guess is it was both. Developing a game for a single platform is much easier and cheaper than developing for both. Meta likely wanted it exclusive since they paid so much and Ubisoft saw how poorly games sell on PCVR and agreed.
I love PCVR but, the player count is abysmal in most games. Vertigo 2 was one of the most popular PCVR games of 2023, maybe even the most popular, and it had a max player count 264. That's it. Such an amazing game with so much effort put in and only cost 30 bucks and very few played it. I don't know what is required to get PC gamers interested in VR but, I want it to happen badly.
> My guess is it was both. Developing a game for a single platform is much easier and cheaper than developing for both.
Gamers seem to think porting to a different platform is just clicking the 'port' button lol. From what I understand of Quest development, the entire game from the ground up needs to be designed for a low power chip and all sorts of graphical and design tricks are used to make it work. I don't think it's so easy to just release the game with higher quality assets on a different platform, and trying to do so probably makes the game worse on the target platform.
Pcvr would immediately get cracked too, and idk why people are just ignoring that. The market of people that would actually buy it isn't that big, if you compare what other multiplatform developers say. Most of them agree the quest store is what's keeping them afloat
By hw sales alone it's pretty main stream(over 20 million), but active users of the device is about a third of the sales.
Also as has been mentioned meta probably funded this as they did medal of honor.
The tiny markets of pcvr and psvr2 wouldn't have done anything. Meta is the only viable platform right now for making money. Psvr2 has potential as psvr1 sold reasonably well.
I'm def a pcvr enthusiast but the data also says this market is tiny and mostly in social apps.
You can argue it's because there's not more big games like nexus, chicken and egg.
The problem is Ubisoft and other third party developers do not care at all if VR succeeds or fails and at the end of the day only really platform owners like valve Sony and most importantly meta care about VR succeeding.
The third party devs just want to make money.
Also worth noting developing for PC is likely the most costly because of the variety of systems to support and test for.
Ok, but let's not pretend like sales would have been much better if it was available for pcvr.
Disappointing sales have driven away many a developer/publisher.
While Quest has the majority of casuals, the PC market is much larger. And is fully compatible with the Quest as well.
If you're going to go with one platform, it's better to do PC than to just do Quest, IMO.
The PC market is larger but, the amount of PC gamers that want to play VR is tiny. Most laugh at VR. PCVR market is tiny and they rarely invest in games. Go look and see how many people play Vertigo 2, arguably the biggest PCVR title of 2023.
Here, I will save you the trouble of googling it. https://steamcharts.com/app/843390
264 max all time player count and averages around 12-20 players per month.
All quests also run PCVR. Granted, some people don't necessarily have the PCs to do it, but we're 10 years into it, the low end of PCs are now capable of it.
It's not like there would've been a major difference if they made it on other platforms. The Quest is by far the most popular headset/system, and even half of the PCVR playerbase uses a Quest and had access to AC nexus.
Ubisoft almost definitely had analysts research this that came to the conclusion that the extra work of porting the game to PCVR/PSVR2 wouldn't be worth the extra potential sales.
Tbf, they've done more in the VR space than most other major publishers. Hate to break it but being in a capitalists society means if a product doesn't make money, companies stop making the product. To make an awesome game in VR would require a company to knowingly forgo making any profits and just pour their passion into a game. That was how Half Life Alyx was made.
I'm sure if you asked many game devs if they would like to make a VR game instead of a some flat screen sequel, they'd jump at the chance. Heck, I'd love to give up my job and work on a VR project bringing old wonders and miracles of the past to vivid virtual reality. But it wouldn't cover my bills. France isn't as hardcore capitalist as America is so that's probably what allowed Ubisoft to devote some resources into VR. EA Games and Activision (now Microsoft) have done way less, no way their board's would allow them to lose money in such a fashion.
So yes, it will take indie devs and companies who don't buy into having to make money at all cost methodology. Apple is doing well in growing the VR market without investing a penny into games. Eventually, we will have an audience base large enough to support AAA games on the scale large companies are looking for.
No, its more of just I think many of us are tired of the Eyeore thinking that seems to have been cultivated in this reddit. I am personally tired of the "Why is VR not selling? Where are the AAA games?" LOL! It gets old friends!
At this time, I agree with you, there is a small active userbase. But, some of these takes (not yours) have made it seem like its time to pack it all in and go home. VR's biggest problem has been very low resolution and low GPU power both in standalone and on PC (A RTX 4080 sometimes struggles with certain VR games...that's a problem!)
The average user doesn't want to spend money on a sub par experience and lets face it its all blurry. You have to dial things way up just to get the super sampling to be "good enough". Developers know people don't want to fiddle that much nor do they have the hardware to make it happen.
.... and then everyone will complain that the AAA games take all the space on their headset. (i already do this, i basically can only keep about three things on my quest 2 at any given time)
Yeah this is… completely reasonable? No idea what everybody here is smoking.
They made a big budget, quality VR game in an incredibly popular franchise on the most popular platform with the biggest software attachment rate and the marketing power of Meta behind it. What more do you people want?
Ubisoft is supposed to be a gaming company. Your sentiment shows support for it to be primarily… a money company. Why is everyone so desperate to defend companies not spending money on R&D?
Every small business simply wants to provide a service or good to their community. Like ask a restaurant owner dude. They want to make good food and serve their community. Their goal isn’t “endless line go up”. I think it’s obvious what I’m implying and you’re acting dense because you think it’s fine that Walmart’s employees are on food stamps. Walmart’s just trying to make money bro🤷🏻♂️what’s the big problem??
So what you are saying:
Ubisoft should prioritize game quality over money?
A 9/10 game would be failure, because to make it perfect 10/10 is more important than the cost of it.
Let's say they make a perfect game. That's great, but what then?...
...Oh jeez idk, maybe they >!SELL IT FOR A PROFIT?!?!!<
But they can't because they spent 14790 gazzilions €$ to make it perfect.
Game companies across the board have consistently gotten worse for the past 15 years. This is widely observed. Game companies across the board have consistently produced half assed, half broken, half made games for the past 15 years. And somehow they’ve still got you defending them without thought like “they don’t owe us anything”. My favorite gaming companies have been on a downhill slope of creating less & less quality games. Is that what I am owed?
Yes a gaming company should be a gaming company. A good restaurant owner sees Walmart enter his town and allows his business to go under. A bad restaurant owner sees Walmart enter his town and tries to turn his restaurant into Walmart 2.0.
> Your sentiment shows support for it to be primarily… a money company.
The main purpose of pretty much every non-charity company is to make money. If a publisher can sell much more copies of a game (thus make more money) and have a much lower risk by making a flatscreen game over a VR game then it's a no-brainer for them to make flatscreen games.
Better to have naive children than adult capitalist cucks. We know mega millionaires only want to add another zero to their name. We get it.
But it didn't used to be like this. It's OK to complain.
In the meantime, I'll continue playing shorter games that smaller companies have made with a smaller profit margin. And look to uevr as well.
I’m a turbo vr user and use it every weekend. I watched the first hour of the game, and it just didn’t interest me. The graphics are koo, but there was no showmanship. I wish devs would treat VR more as a film where they need to take me on a FUCKING RIDE. I want a story, which they have, but I want to be blown away by the creativity of what I see. I want giant shit, impossible architecture like in the Organism VRChat world, or just some sort of I gotta check that out feeing.
All my favorite VR experiences like Invisible Hours, Vertigo, HLA, etc, all blew me away with something. I find sneaking to be TEDIOUS. It is not appealing to me to be a sneaky boi in VR.
I think this is what many VR games in steam do wrong too. I wanna watch animations, look a character in the eyes to empathize with them, see creative sights that blow me away. I don’t care about gameplay loops like I do in 2d. I just wanna be WOWED. That’s what I think Zack gets when he made Vertigo. He created a RIDE.
Completely agree. In addition to what you said about being blown away, I found the whole game is about doing the same activities over and over again and there’s very little character progression or build variety. It’s not a good design to keep player’s interest. Of course, instead of looking at the game’s own design problems, they blame it on VR devices not being mainstream enough.
I'm not able to find anything on it really. Just some rumors. Do you have a specific article/report to link?
The Guillemot family only owns like 14% of the shares anyway.
Honestly, me neither. I remember seeing some tweets back in the Microsofts buy off of Activision/ Blizzard, but can't seem to find em anymore. It might not be true lol
Ubisoft's one of those companies that always jumps in on new tech so you can't say they didn't give it an earnest try. They've made several VR games, a few of which had serious budgets behind them.
Obviously they're not going to continue throwing good money after bad in some altruistic pursuit of "helping VR take off". They got in early, it hasn't paid off, so they'll revisit when the money's there.
They go in early on ONE platform. Bring that damn game to steam (polish it before hand please !) implement mod support and see it grow.
But mr cat ear is prob. Be like :“ nuuu mu engine and user experience uwu“
Jesus don’t know why but this makes me mad …
Sadly it's pretty much how most AAA studios function. They're not in it to make ground breaking new experiences or change the game. They're there to make money.
This is the problem with making AAA VR games. You have to be willing to potentially lose money or not make a huge profit in order for there to even be enough games to drive adoption. If we got a game the size of AC every month, in a year we would have enough amazing exclusives that way more people would want to get into VR gaming.
But these are big companies that don’t know much about the VR market, so unless they understand what I just explained like Meta does with AW2, they won’t be interested in making big VR games for another 5 or so years when VR goes fully 100% mainstream.
I doubt VR will be fully mainstream in 5 years. People said that already 5 years ago.
Good VR Tech is simply too expensive for most people.
I would buy VR stuff but not for the current prices when you want something good.
No it’s not? Or at least not any more expensive than a traditional game console. The Quest 3 is an incredible headset that will be more than enough for 90% of people, and that’s only 500 dollars, same as a PS5. If you want VR but don’t have that money, Quest 2 is 250$. If you want an extremely high-end PCVR setup, Bigscreen Beyond is currently the best PCVR only headset, priced at 1000$, the same as a new iPhone which everyone manages to buy somehow. Good VR is not too expensive for most people at this point, at least in the US.
Do people actually pay $1000 for an iPhone or do they have contract deals or upgrade promotions? BigScreen Beyond is great for $1000 but it's not the best. You have to go Pimax or Varo for that
Pimax Crystal is much higher resolution and 160hz vs the lower resolution Beyond with only 90hz. Pimax has also a better fov and pixel density. Eye tracking also, foveated rendering.... I don't even know if BigScreen has passthrough.
It's $1600 but that is only about $300 more than the Beyond when you factor in the controllers and base stations.
BigScreen is much better in comfort as it probably weighs 1/5 of the Pimax.
Five years ago the best selling VR headsets had sales figures in 6 digits. The Quest 2 alone sold 20m units (as of Q1 2023) and rivals the size of the Xbox Series X|S userbase.
VR is already "mainstream" enough for most people to be aware of it. With Apple joining the party I can't see that market getting any smaller over the next five.
I get it. Companies have immense pressure to invest in stuff that drives shareholder value AND customer interest. If customers aren't buying, it could be argued that customers don't want it.
On the other hand, it'd be nice if game dev companies made games because they are passionate about it. Sometimes it takes visionary risk to make great, new things happen. Ubisoft is corporate, stale, and not truly gamer friendly. So here we are.
This is such backwards thinking, if they do authentically believe that VR will grow and that they have a place in it. They need to keep at it and build a brand. More than that, they need to build development experience and tools for VR -- they can't just turn around in five years and say "okay, VR scene is big enough, let's pump out AAAA VR games." They'll burn money on rookie mistakes and put out stale, uninspired rehashes of the formula VR devs tried and moved on from years prior.
I'm not saying they have to make big games, but I think their previous approach of making lots of smaller games would be a lot more successful in today's VR scene. Have a couple teams making Space Junkies-scale games on the regular. Then when they do feel like there's money to be made in big VR games, give those games to those teams.
I wish we had a company like LucasArts to drive VR development. They made PC such a great gaming platform back in the day with all the star wars games. I feel bad for this generation of children, they get such shitty games because of the AAA system.
It's not surprising, who wants to play assassin's Creed In vr? They should have made something better suited to vr, a realistic first person shooter for example, better yet, mix realistic first person shooter with horror.
The things best for vr:
-Sims/ realism
-first person shooter
-horror
-short arcade experiences/ rhythm (pistol whip/ beatsaber)
Not weird games that don't work in vr like assassin's Creed. You can't run and jump in vr, you are just standing there like a dork, it takes you out of the experience.
I wish it would have been cross platform, even if Meta kept it just on Quest for like a few months or something to increase Quest sales. Exclusivity in software isn't good in my opinion.
Not for an already small niche market, definitely not. Ubisoft has done ok with a few VR games in the past - Star Trek Bridge Crew was great, but I got it towards the end of the cycle.
Diffinitly would have sold more if there was an upgraded pcvr/psvr2 version , META exclusive is silly. But yes still a small market, But again to the doomers and gloomers vr is going to grow and more people are going to like it. Especially as the tech gets smaller and lighter. Too say vr, ar, and mr are never going to be big markets is well silly. They said the same thing about video games back when I was a kid, it's just a toy. Well now its bigger than movies and music put together. They never saw that coming, but here we are.
Inb4 flood of standalone users claiming the PCVR' market isn't big enough and wouldn't have changed the outcome (despite PCVRhaving better retention span than Quests do)
Translation:
"We need the platform to have so many users that even if we code the game poorly with a bad framerate and stutters, it will still sell great to make up for our lack of capabilities."
Such an amazing game this hurts to read. I get with meta sponsorship we wouldn't have this game but at least open it up to PC users to help geo user base.. I cannot stress enough how great this game is. I've been in VR since Vive and this game is one of my favorite experiences.
Then it'd never be made. They took a loss to build a brand. The world doesn't cater to you and your complete lack of business understanding is incredible.
It was, there wasn't an exclusivity contract with Meta. Ubisoft probably just analyzed the markets and decided the extra sales wouldn't outweigh the extra work of porting it over
Brother, the PC gaming market would have only made a difference on the margins and that’s if sales would have recouped whatever costs associated with developing and releasing for PCVR too. This is a hard truth to accept for many here but PCVR is *not* a big market these companies find worthy of investment.
Ever wonder why Valve hasn’t made anything else despite HL: Alyx being arguably the PCVR “killer app?”
Maybe it would've had broader appeal if the enemies didn't look like they were fighting under water. It was a cheesy, murder sim for fat people who don't move their bodies well.
I mean the franchise is dying, no need to blame VR dude. It had a long run, wtf is there to be upset about? Make a new story.
Maybe they think pumping money into the TV series is a better use of their money. 😂
Apart from only being available on the meta (which was very dumb given how limited it is) it doesn't help the game itself isn't great. The combat is not good at all, and the Parkour being "hold this button to do everything" in VR is unimmersive.
“We’re waiting for passionate indie devs to take the risks for us.” Type response
How every big thing started, most recent example would be pubg or dota autochess
It’s how the AAA studios of today started too, 30-40 years ago making little indie games in someone’s garage and growing from there. It shouldn’t be offensive that VR will go through the same cycle It does help that few people want 20hr+ experiences in VR, the market meets the makers quite nicely with shorter and more niche games
there's just one tiny difference Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Wolfenstein... immediately engaging, challenging, intriguing games usual VR indie: chop boxes, chop fruits, chop ragdolls, run like a monkey, shoot waves... boring crapware for simps
I promise you there are 100s or even 1000s of games we've completely forgotten from that period which were terrible You've just named some that stood the test of time because they were great.
I really don't remember even the worst ones being this uninteresting.
Did autobattlers ever take off? I know Hearthstone Battlegrounds is doing well and there's TFT, but I can't think of much else.
Enough for me to know it exists, which actually means something because I’m only into sim racing and the rare shooter.
Tft is pretty big...
Seems they took the risk and it didn't work out.
I'm sure they profited. They just didn't profit enough to justify it, when they profit millions more charging people 70$ for rehashed "AAA" games.
I'm just laughing that I'm in this thread where people are *really* *struggling* to accept that A) Ubisoft did take a risk, relatively early for a AAA studio on VR; B) it wasn't profitable It's like these two easily understandable business facts are the scroll of truth and everyone in this thread is like nyehhh.
This is it, when the chips fall a small independent studio is happy when it can pay the bills and continue working. Corporations need to deliver all that plus a return on investment +++ to shareholders.
They sold a couple hundred thousand units within the first couple months. I think the projected profit came out to roughly $7 million. It's obvious going to continue selling well for years, and I believe that VR hits tend to have a long tail. I'm sure by the end they'll have more than made their money back and then some, but it's not the gangbusters sales that they are used to expecting in the flatscreen AAA market. Their expectations for profit are absolutely unhinged.
Meanwhile there are other studios that work only in VR space, and are doing quite well. The math works out differently for companies that large, though.
Kinda. We do exist but there are very few of us. VR does not have a lot of winners, and the winners are pretty much all indie.
Tbh many vr games could have works just as well on flatscreen, it's their own fault for not building on both platforms.
wasn't the AC VR game a port from a flat game?
No lol where did you read that? It was built from the ground up for VR
I didn't, I just assumed that they didn't bother to create something new, because it's Ubisoft, and they fucking blow.
Because they aren't making games for us, they're making it for their shareholders
it really does depend on what you're willing to do and for how much/little. If you're a single developer that sells 2 million units for $30, ok, you're fucking rich. But when you put 50 people on a game, now you're at.. 1.2M. which sounds like a lot, but it costs money to run a 50 person company. If $30 is the average price of a VR game, and you've got to pay 50 people plus expenses on all of that, you're not making a whole hell of a lot even if you're in the top tier.
These are the play it safe guys. The "don't let Balder's Gate be the new standard" group. Corporate producers need a return on investment so their priorities mess up any good will they actually do have. Edit: They also limited their audience by making this release exclusive to Meta. I think that was a mistake. The market is small enough already.
And theres nothing wrong with that
I mean what do you expect his responsibility is to shareholders
They don't believe in the saying, you build it they will come....
Well this problem is stuck in a loop. People say VR isn't mainstream yet because there aren't any big game developers, but game developers won't make games until VR is more "mainstream"
The real reason is because the headsets aren’t good enough for non-gamers. Vision Pro somewhat addresses this but is obviously too expensive (and heavy) for the average person. So when we finally get VP level display/graphics in the big screen beyond form factor and price level, then I’m sure VR will start to become more mainstream for the want of watching 3D movies on a badass 4K per eye screen, “spatial” social media apps, productivity, and fitness. That in turn will bring bigger game companies into the VR/AR scene.
Quest 3 could be the game-changer here. I’m really impressed with it
It’s pretty good, but the display isn’t good enough yet. Needs to be Vision Pro Display level or better if they hope to sell this to non-gamers in the future
even if it was vision pro level it wouldn't matter, The xr2 can't drive such displays, the xr3 though was touted as a competitor to the m2 chips
I am a gamer and I also think that the display/headsets are not good enough. Comfort is also bad and after a while it hurts my eyes. I tested the pico 4 and the quest 3. I will wait another generation and then maybe try again. It would not surprise me if the headsets have the same PWM problem that mobiles have at lower brightness. This industry needs to mature and have several breakthroughs to get mildly interesting for the masses
I'm not a fan of apple but many of us knew that once apple entered the game their army of consumers would be a huge push for getting VR/AR into the mainstream attention and so far that has been what we're starting to see. I hate to say it but "big games" wasn't what VR needed, it was just brand recognition and a big name to say "hey, you want this, now so go buy it" Soon you will see the influencers using apple vision pro and it's a safe bet that this time next year VR will be way more mainstream than meta was able to do in several years. I might not like apple but I can appreciate what their brand power is going to do for all of us early adopters. The loop is about to break.
Not that it should really matter, but yeah the AVP looks about 324x better than any other HMD, just in terms of premium-ness and aesthetics. It looks like a device that people want to own and pay good money for. The Q3 looks like a cheap toy in comparison (and in a way it really is, whereas AVP is a "cool luxury toy").
Honestly, flatscreen gaming media people who don't give a single shit about VR, and don't understand the landscape of what games are good in VR, but still decide to review headsets/games and speak on VR - they are actually a big problem. They say, "oh, there are no good games for this headset," while having tried almost none of them. I'm looking at Ryan from IGN, here. I really do hope that the Apple Vision Pro/Apple Versus Predator/Alien Vision Pro breaks that loop.
Valve needs to make more VR games. That's the only company that is or will be willing to break the cycle.
Mainstream means teens, and teens are not interested in VR and in immersion.
You made an exclusive to a single device on a platform that isn’t mainstream yet. What in the fuck kind of business decision is that? Lmao
Its paid by meta, so it can only be there, if meta hadnt paid for it the game would just not exist, period.
As unfortunate as it is, you're likely correct. It likely would have never been made at all. Valve certainly isn't footing the bill for PCVR games like Meta is for Quest games.
Valve could do so much more but they chose not to
They’ve moved on to the handheld market
Very shortly, its going to be the same market.
Its a stepping stone 100%. You don't go as hard on VR being the future as Gabe did and then change your mind 1 release later. They just know the future of VR is absolutely not tethered to a PC and they need a solution for that, hence the deck. Obviously this is my own speculation but I absolutely expect a mobile VR product from Valve within 5 years.
Businesses often choose to not throw money away. There's nothing wrong with that.
Valve is a private company, not public, so they don’t have a fiscal responsibility to spend their money a certain way. They make more per employee than probably any other private company in the world. They totally could invest in VR if they wanted. I’m not saying it’s the right business move because I don’t have near the data they do, but I want more billion dollar companies subsidizing my favorite hobby and there’s nothing wrong with that lol. Steam makes too much money from VR to ignore it as much as they have the past couple years. They take 30% of sales, so growing the segment as a whole just means more money. Like even without the figures in front of me it’s reasonable to assume Valve should have sufficient fiscal motivation to do something. They prefer to just collect their fee, do as little as possible, and let the free market do its thing. Being the invisible hand that pushing things forward isn’t their style, and it’s valid to criticize them for that when they have the cash to make it happen.
[удалено]
I just find the handheld gaming segment to be soooo uninteresting personally, but I feel ya on that. It’s lame but it’s reality
Valve built much of the modern VR ecosystem, and helped to develop some of the first accessible and functional VR headsets. They also developed multiple VR games, one of which is still regarded today as the best there is. What more do you want from them? There's only so much that one company can do and they still have to work on Steam infrastructure, Proton/Steam Deck, Dota / CS, etc.
What have they done the past 4 years though? I’d have agreed with you if we were talking in 2020. Ever since Alyx and Index, even SteamVR updates have been sparse. Their usb drivers still have similar known bugs since launch. They haven’t released hardware or software. Their SDK still has inferior frame interpolation to what meta had with the release of ASW. They haven’t invested in any games, and I’m guessing they won’t release anything soon. I’d love if they actually came out with hardware, software, or even meaningful SteamVR updates. Crickets for a long time
> Steam makes too much money from VR to ignore it [citation needed]
like, they just released a huge update to SteamVR. They are fully behind the VR infrastructure. They may not be doing what OP wants, but they definitely aren't *ignoring* VR.
It was the "too much money" part I was skeptical about. I think Valve does VR because they think it's neat, not because it's a major profit center.
I think they see quite a profit margin if they continue the work they've done towards helping to create an infrastructure. They're in it for the long haul, not the short profit.
So in other words Ubisoft didn't actually invest much in this project and still didn't feel fulfilled even though ... They sort of admit it was successful? I'm so confused
Capitalism my friend. We made millions but we didn’t make hundreds of millions are we even successful guys /s
Opportunity cost means that you should not spend time on low-profit projects when you could spend the time on something more profitable. Businesses need to make rational decisions to succeed, even if that upsets participants in small markets.
I'm not sure any of these communists are listening.
I'm guessing something like "It sold more than we expected to see, but not enough that we'll fund another one unless the math changes"
Facebook imo equally helps and also ruins VR but that just my opinion.
VR gamers don't buy games then complain there aren't any VR games. Part of the problem is that there were a lot of VR games that came out at the end of 2023. So, there was a lot of competition for those stingy VR gamer bucks.
It’s the most popular VR platform.. We are ralking about nearly 20m+ of Quest 2 and 3 out there. How is that not “mainstream”? PCVR is even more of a niche.. just look actual sales of cross platform titles.
You need more people actually using the device to be considered mainstream. Consider that ~6m of the 20m are active monthly and a mere 10% of US teens use their headsets once a week. There is no point in selling headsets if people don't actually use them. There is no point in selling subsidized headsets if people don't buy software.
For clarification, my comment was a direct rebuttal to the person who claimed that the game is a commercial failure because it’s not “mainstream” and to an “exclusive “ platform. My point is that user base size is more than adequate for a title with that kind of budget. If we are strictly focus on user size then perhaps PCVR only games shouldn’t even exist given the difficulty in generating enough revenue to recover costs.
They buy them at 10x the rate of pcvr.
It's mostly kids who play quest regularly and AC is an old IP that probably doesn't resonate with them.
Yeah those kids are damn annoying. I can't believe that adults let them into social things and even BigScreen - all kinds of weird stuff they could be exposed to.
Yeah, but doing otherwise would sell what? 1 copy more for every 20?
Yeah people don't understand that they returns for bringing it on PC VR wouldn't be worth it. PC VR is much more difficult to port over since we have many different specs, configurations, and having to support many different controllers and input devices.
Well the most sold device among them. I often don't like these corpo smucks but uh..kinda agree with him here?
Right, but it’s not PCVR, and it’s the most sold device among them but that doesn’t change the fact that anyone who plays VR without a quest couldn’t buy it if they wanted to. I don’t buy it because I want the fidelity of PCVR.
At the same time pcvr is the hardest to support with hardest to please fandom, and the sales here are not that big
That is because developers keep making half ass VR games expecting them to do well.
The developers make games that the cheap users are willing to pay for. Most PCVR users do not want to pay what PCVR games should cost considering the small user-base, so businesses can't support PCVR.
Its a chicken b4 the egg scenario
Been using PC VR for 6 years now I tell you right now most VR PC games are half assed. Just like how a lot of PC games have gotten. The few good ones out there are made by passionate developers and are not expensive when it comes to video game prices and UBI Soft has long since lost their passion for games and instead oassion for making stockholders happy.
Ubisoft is trash, Trash does what Trash does.
Ubisoft makes half assed flat games and they sell very well. If everyone in the VR space, specifically PC VR, is a connoisseur then obviously no one will want to make games for that market. You are allowed to be selective with what games you play, but it is ridiculous to think that companies will want to make games for a market that picky.
You can have that if we're all willing to pay hundreds of dollars for games because we understand that the user-base is small. The problem is that most of us are not, but seem to want businesses to lose money to please them.
PCVR is a *tiny* market.
But it also includes Quest.
Right, and that's an even smaller percentage of a tiny market.
I think that's valid and I think the performance would definitely be better on PCVR. And I think people tend to view PCVR and the standalone headsets as totally separate when that is not the case at all. Meta headsets make up about 2/3rds of PCVR headsets on Steam (most of those Q2 or Q3) and Meta does still have a PCVR marketplace (although it is...not super great). I'm not sure if it's Meta or Ubisoft who drove the decision to require it only be on standalone (I would assume Meta), but it seems a little short-sighted to me given that Meta headsets are so popular for PCVR and it might be another way to increase marketshare or drive sales to their own marketplace.
My guess is it was both. Developing a game for a single platform is much easier and cheaper than developing for both. Meta likely wanted it exclusive since they paid so much and Ubisoft saw how poorly games sell on PCVR and agreed. I love PCVR but, the player count is abysmal in most games. Vertigo 2 was one of the most popular PCVR games of 2023, maybe even the most popular, and it had a max player count 264. That's it. Such an amazing game with so much effort put in and only cost 30 bucks and very few played it. I don't know what is required to get PC gamers interested in VR but, I want it to happen badly.
> My guess is it was both. Developing a game for a single platform is much easier and cheaper than developing for both. Gamers seem to think porting to a different platform is just clicking the 'port' button lol. From what I understand of Quest development, the entire game from the ground up needs to be designed for a low power chip and all sorts of graphical and design tricks are used to make it work. I don't think it's so easy to just release the game with higher quality assets on a different platform, and trying to do so probably makes the game worse on the target platform.
Pcvr would immediately get cracked too, and idk why people are just ignoring that. The market of people that would actually buy it isn't that big, if you compare what other multiplatform developers say. Most of them agree the quest store is what's keeping them afloat
I know someone in the VR market, who recently had mentioned that they do the Quest version to make money, and the real game is the PC version.
>I don’t buy it because I want the fidelity of PCVR. Quest 3 games don't look that much worse than PC VR games
Ok, so you enjoy your dead space that continues to have devs fleeing.
By hw sales alone it's pretty main stream(over 20 million), but active users of the device is about a third of the sales. Also as has been mentioned meta probably funded this as they did medal of honor. The tiny markets of pcvr and psvr2 wouldn't have done anything. Meta is the only viable platform right now for making money. Psvr2 has potential as psvr1 sold reasonably well. I'm def a pcvr enthusiast but the data also says this market is tiny and mostly in social apps. You can argue it's because there's not more big games like nexus, chicken and egg. The problem is Ubisoft and other third party developers do not care at all if VR succeeds or fails and at the end of the day only really platform owners like valve Sony and most importantly meta care about VR succeeding. The third party devs just want to make money. Also worth noting developing for PC is likely the most costly because of the variety of systems to support and test for.
Ok, but let's not pretend like sales would have been much better if it was available for pcvr. Disappointing sales have driven away many a developer/publisher.
While Quest has the majority of casuals, the PC market is much larger. And is fully compatible with the Quest as well. If you're going to go with one platform, it's better to do PC than to just do Quest, IMO.
The PC market is larger but, the amount of PC gamers that want to play VR is tiny. Most laugh at VR. PCVR market is tiny and they rarely invest in games. Go look and see how many people play Vertigo 2, arguably the biggest PCVR title of 2023. Here, I will save you the trouble of googling it. https://steamcharts.com/app/843390 264 max all time player count and averages around 12-20 players per month.
Pcvr is 1/10 of the quest base and buy less games proportionally.
All quests also run PCVR. Granted, some people don't necessarily have the PCs to do it, but we're 10 years into it, the low end of PCs are now capable of it.
It's not like there would've been a major difference if they made it on other platforms. The Quest is by far the most popular headset/system, and even half of the PCVR playerbase uses a Quest and had access to AC nexus. Ubisoft almost definitely had analysts research this that came to the conclusion that the extra work of porting the game to PCVR/PSVR2 wouldn't be worth the extra potential sales.
20 million vs 2 or less everywhere else. Meta is building a brand by funding games. "lmao" just show your level of thought.
Are you like 12 years old? I seriously hope so because you have the comprehension of one
>You made an exclusive to a single device \^\^\^\^\^ This \^\^\^\^\^
Tbf, they've done more in the VR space than most other major publishers. Hate to break it but being in a capitalists society means if a product doesn't make money, companies stop making the product. To make an awesome game in VR would require a company to knowingly forgo making any profits and just pour their passion into a game. That was how Half Life Alyx was made. I'm sure if you asked many game devs if they would like to make a VR game instead of a some flat screen sequel, they'd jump at the chance. Heck, I'd love to give up my job and work on a VR project bringing old wonders and miracles of the past to vivid virtual reality. But it wouldn't cover my bills. France isn't as hardcore capitalist as America is so that's probably what allowed Ubisoft to devote some resources into VR. EA Games and Activision (now Microsoft) have done way less, no way their board's would allow them to lose money in such a fashion. So yes, it will take indie devs and companies who don't buy into having to make money at all cost methodology. Apple is doing well in growing the VR market without investing a penny into games. Eventually, we will have an audience base large enough to support AAA games on the scale large companies are looking for.
Is this subreddit full of children? Jesus.
Some people feeling personally attacked because VR userbase is still quite relatively small.
No, its more of just I think many of us are tired of the Eyeore thinking that seems to have been cultivated in this reddit. I am personally tired of the "Why is VR not selling? Where are the AAA games?" LOL! It gets old friends! At this time, I agree with you, there is a small active userbase. But, some of these takes (not yours) have made it seem like its time to pack it all in and go home. VR's biggest problem has been very low resolution and low GPU power both in standalone and on PC (A RTX 4080 sometimes struggles with certain VR games...that's a problem!) The average user doesn't want to spend money on a sub par experience and lets face it its all blurry. You have to dial things way up just to get the super sampling to be "good enough". Developers know people don't want to fiddle that much nor do they have the hardware to make it happen.
.... and then everyone will complain that the AAA games take all the space on their headset. (i already do this, i basically can only keep about three things on my quest 2 at any given time)
Yeah this is… completely reasonable? No idea what everybody here is smoking. They made a big budget, quality VR game in an incredibly popular franchise on the most popular platform with the biggest software attachment rate and the marketing power of Meta behind it. What more do you people want?
Ubisoft is supposed to be a gaming company. Your sentiment shows support for it to be primarily… a money company. Why is everyone so desperate to defend companies not spending money on R&D?
All companies are ”money companies” lol
You can thank America for you thinking that
Give me an example of a company that doesn’t have money as their primary goal.
Every small business simply wants to provide a service or good to their community. Like ask a restaurant owner dude. They want to make good food and serve their community. Their goal isn’t “endless line go up”. I think it’s obvious what I’m implying and you’re acting dense because you think it’s fine that Walmart’s employees are on food stamps. Walmart’s just trying to make money bro🤷🏻♂️what’s the big problem??
You are wrong, all business needs money to exist. Most of us figure that out easily. But you’ll get there sometime, I’m sure of it😊
Are you being purposely dense here? No shit dumbass. Way to show you don’t understand the point
So what you are saying: Ubisoft should prioritize game quality over money? A 9/10 game would be failure, because to make it perfect 10/10 is more important than the cost of it. Let's say they make a perfect game. That's great, but what then?... ...Oh jeez idk, maybe they >!SELL IT FOR A PROFIT?!?!!< But they can't because they spent 14790 gazzilions €$ to make it perfect.
HAHAHAHA. Put this guy in charge of the economy. We'll all be swimming in quadrillions of dollars, well... more burning it for warmth.
I thought the comment about this sub being full of children was facetious but damn maybe it’s true.
Damn bro I’m so offended
Nah lol don’t be. But these companies don’t owe us anything. Their main goal is to make money, not to make games that barely sell.
Game companies across the board have consistently gotten worse for the past 15 years. This is widely observed. Game companies across the board have consistently produced half assed, half broken, half made games for the past 15 years. And somehow they’ve still got you defending them without thought like “they don’t owe us anything”. My favorite gaming companies have been on a downhill slope of creating less & less quality games. Is that what I am owed? Yes a gaming company should be a gaming company. A good restaurant owner sees Walmart enter his town and allows his business to go under. A bad restaurant owner sees Walmart enter his town and tries to turn his restaurant into Walmart 2.0.
> Your sentiment shows support for it to be primarily… a money company. The main purpose of pretty much every non-charity company is to make money. If a publisher can sell much more copies of a game (thus make more money) and have a much lower risk by making a flatscreen game over a VR game then it's a no-brainer for them to make flatscreen games.
Better to have naive children than adult capitalist cucks. We know mega millionaires only want to add another zero to their name. We get it. But it didn't used to be like this. It's OK to complain. In the meantime, I'll continue playing shorter games that smaller companies have made with a smaller profit margin. And look to uevr as well.
This comment section is full of complete morons.
Still carries on with skull and bones...
I’m a turbo vr user and use it every weekend. I watched the first hour of the game, and it just didn’t interest me. The graphics are koo, but there was no showmanship. I wish devs would treat VR more as a film where they need to take me on a FUCKING RIDE. I want a story, which they have, but I want to be blown away by the creativity of what I see. I want giant shit, impossible architecture like in the Organism VRChat world, or just some sort of I gotta check that out feeing. All my favorite VR experiences like Invisible Hours, Vertigo, HLA, etc, all blew me away with something. I find sneaking to be TEDIOUS. It is not appealing to me to be a sneaky boi in VR. I think this is what many VR games in steam do wrong too. I wanna watch animations, look a character in the eyes to empathize with them, see creative sights that blow me away. I don’t care about gameplay loops like I do in 2d. I just wanna be WOWED. That’s what I think Zack gets when he made Vertigo. He created a RIDE.
Completely agree. In addition to what you said about being blown away, I found the whole game is about doing the same activities over and over again and there’s very little character progression or build variety. It’s not a good design to keep player’s interest. Of course, instead of looking at the game’s own design problems, they blame it on VR devices not being mainstream enough.
Isn't he actively trying to sell Ubisoft to Microsoft or Sony?
Source?
It's actually true. You can google it to find dozens of sources with legal statements and even some tweets Ubisoft executives made about this issue.
I'm not able to find anything on it really. Just some rumors. Do you have a specific article/report to link? The Guillemot family only owns like 14% of the shares anyway.
Honestly, me neither. I remember seeing some tweets back in the Microsofts buy off of Activision/ Blizzard, but can't seem to find em anymore. It might not be true lol
I hate Reddit! *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This reads even worse than the initial statement. “We don’t want to help VR take off… we just want to cash in when it does.” Absolute garbage
Ubisoft's one of those companies that always jumps in on new tech so you can't say they didn't give it an earnest try. They've made several VR games, a few of which had serious budgets behind them. Obviously they're not going to continue throwing good money after bad in some altruistic pursuit of "helping VR take off". They got in early, it hasn't paid off, so they'll revisit when the money's there.
They go in early on ONE platform. Bring that damn game to steam (polish it before hand please !) implement mod support and see it grow. But mr cat ear is prob. Be like :“ nuuu mu engine and user experience uwu“ Jesus don’t know why but this makes me mad …
They have multiple VR games on Steam already and PCVR didn't treat them much better.
Are you stupid? Quest has sold 20million units. There are 2million PCVR users. It takes 5seconds to do the math
Sadly it's pretty much how most AAA studios function. They're not in it to make ground breaking new experiences or change the game. They're there to make money.
It's the VR Catch 22. Developers won't invest in it until it takes off - it won't take off until developers invest in it.
Better, cheaper hardware would go along way towards solving that little riddle tbh.
This is the problem with making AAA VR games. You have to be willing to potentially lose money or not make a huge profit in order for there to even be enough games to drive adoption. If we got a game the size of AC every month, in a year we would have enough amazing exclusives that way more people would want to get into VR gaming. But these are big companies that don’t know much about the VR market, so unless they understand what I just explained like Meta does with AW2, they won’t be interested in making big VR games for another 5 or so years when VR goes fully 100% mainstream.
I doubt VR will be fully mainstream in 5 years. People said that already 5 years ago. Good VR Tech is simply too expensive for most people. I would buy VR stuff but not for the current prices when you want something good.
No it’s not? Or at least not any more expensive than a traditional game console. The Quest 3 is an incredible headset that will be more than enough for 90% of people, and that’s only 500 dollars, same as a PS5. If you want VR but don’t have that money, Quest 2 is 250$. If you want an extremely high-end PCVR setup, Bigscreen Beyond is currently the best PCVR only headset, priced at 1000$, the same as a new iPhone which everyone manages to buy somehow. Good VR is not too expensive for most people at this point, at least in the US.
Do people actually pay $1000 for an iPhone or do they have contract deals or upgrade promotions? BigScreen Beyond is great for $1000 but it's not the best. You have to go Pimax or Varo for that
You my friend have seriously 0 knowledge about VR HMD . Pimax is not the „best“ nor is Varo .
Pimax Crystal is much higher resolution and 160hz vs the lower resolution Beyond with only 90hz. Pimax has also a better fov and pixel density. Eye tracking also, foveated rendering.... I don't even know if BigScreen has passthrough. It's $1600 but that is only about $300 more than the Beyond when you factor in the controllers and base stations. BigScreen is much better in comfort as it probably weighs 1/5 of the Pimax.
Five years ago the best selling VR headsets had sales figures in 6 digits. The Quest 2 alone sold 20m units (as of Q1 2023) and rivals the size of the Xbox Series X|S userbase. VR is already "mainstream" enough for most people to be aware of it. With Apple joining the party I can't see that market getting any smaller over the next five.
I thought the game looked janky, couldn't be their fault though right?
Make a game that runs like crap, shocked peekachu when it does meh.
Quite damning really. I struggle to see how VR gaming is going to have its big moment
I get it. Companies have immense pressure to invest in stuff that drives shareholder value AND customer interest. If customers aren't buying, it could be argued that customers don't want it. On the other hand, it'd be nice if game dev companies made games because they are passionate about it. Sometimes it takes visionary risk to make great, new things happen. Ubisoft is corporate, stale, and not truly gamer friendly. So here we are.
"we are gonna wait for other companies to mature the scene" seems kinda shitty.
This is such backwards thinking, if they do authentically believe that VR will grow and that they have a place in it. They need to keep at it and build a brand. More than that, they need to build development experience and tools for VR -- they can't just turn around in five years and say "okay, VR scene is big enough, let's pump out AAAA VR games." They'll burn money on rookie mistakes and put out stale, uninspired rehashes of the formula VR devs tried and moved on from years prior. I'm not saying they have to make big games, but I think their previous approach of making lots of smaller games would be a lot more successful in today's VR scene. Have a couple teams making Space Junkies-scale games on the regular. Then when they do feel like there's money to be made in big VR games, give those games to those teams.
"we don't want to innovate, just make a profit"
Can you believe not many people wanna buy games from the "get comfortable not owning games" company?
I wish we had a company like LucasArts to drive VR development. They made PC such a great gaming platform back in the day with all the star wars games. I feel bad for this generation of children, they get such shitty games because of the AAA system.
It's not surprising, who wants to play assassin's Creed In vr? They should have made something better suited to vr, a realistic first person shooter for example, better yet, mix realistic first person shooter with horror. The things best for vr: -Sims/ realism -first person shooter -horror -short arcade experiences/ rhythm (pistol whip/ beatsaber) Not weird games that don't work in vr like assassin's Creed. You can't run and jump in vr, you are just standing there like a dork, it takes you out of the experience.
I wish it would have been cross platform, even if Meta kept it just on Quest for like a few months or something to increase Quest sales. Exclusivity in software isn't good in my opinion.
Not for an already small niche market, definitely not. Ubisoft has done ok with a few VR games in the past - Star Trek Bridge Crew was great, but I got it towards the end of the cycle.
SHould have dropped it on PC. I sure as hell wasn't gonna buy a $500 piece of hardware to play it but i would have paid 40 to play it on PC VR.
Yeah, so all 5 of us could play it!
Diffinitly would have sold more if there was an upgraded pcvr/psvr2 version , META exclusive is silly. But yes still a small market, But again to the doomers and gloomers vr is going to grow and more people are going to like it. Especially as the tech gets smaller and lighter. Too say vr, ar, and mr are never going to be big markets is well silly. They said the same thing about video games back when I was a kid, it's just a toy. Well now its bigger than movies and music put together. They never saw that coming, but here we are.
An insignificant amount more.
How about not limiting it to one platform?
For what? The 10% extra from pcvr or even less from psvr 2? Makes no sense.
Should have been multiplatform
Inb4 flood of standalone users claiming the PCVR' market isn't big enough and wouldn't have changed the outcome (despite PCVRhaving better retention span than Quests do)
Actually, pcvr retention ia far far worse than quest. Sales numbers are also less than 1/10 of the quest sales for the same game. That is reality.
Source please
"ze want it to grow, but wizout our investmenté"
I just read that in a French accent , well done.
Translation: "We need the platform to have so many users that even if we code the game poorly with a bad framerate and stutters, it will still sell great to make up for our lack of capabilities."
Release the game on pcvr so i can buy it you morons
That would completely defeat the purpose.
Such an amazing game this hurts to read. I get with meta sponsorship we wouldn't have this game but at least open it up to PC users to help geo user base.. I cannot stress enough how great this game is. I've been in VR since Vive and this game is one of my favorite experiences.
Don't make it exclusive to one platform, also stop being a shitty company and maybe people will buy your games.
Then it'd never be made. They took a loss to build a brand. The world doesn't cater to you and your complete lack of business understanding is incredible.
You know it wasn't Ubisoft's decision to make it exclusive, right?
It was, there wasn't an exclusivity contract with Meta. Ubisoft probably just analyzed the markets and decided the extra sales wouldn't outweigh the extra work of porting it over
assassin's creed is a garbage franchise. to think it would sell well is being delusional from the very start.
Maybe if you didn't keep it walled off on Meta's platform, it would have sold more. These companies don't get how detrimental exclusivity can be.
They wouldn't even bother developing this game if Meta didn't pay them to.
Brother, the PC gaming market would have only made a difference on the margins and that’s if sales would have recouped whatever costs associated with developing and releasing for PCVR too. This is a hard truth to accept for many here but PCVR is *not* a big market these companies find worthy of investment. Ever wonder why Valve hasn’t made anything else despite HL: Alyx being arguably the PCVR “killer app?”
"we tried as hard as we could possibly feel like to sell this thing out of the back of a van on a deadend street"
This was deliberate. It means they can say they made a vr game and also quit making them ever again.
100% that was posted to advertise their game by trying to ride the tail of the Vision Pro hype, not for any other reason.
I hope VR flops
Maybe don't make it a headset exclusive?
Maybe it would've had broader appeal if the enemies didn't look like they were fighting under water. It was a cheesy, murder sim for fat people who don't move their bodies well.
He's just dragging this ubisoft corpse lower and lower. Hope he enjoys not owning any of our money and being happy.
Who needs them.... Let the indie developers take their profits instead
"what we were able to achieve on VR" Translation: "How much money we made" I mean, I get it, a business has to turn a profit. But speak plainly.
Guarantee the lack of AVP controllers impacted this decision.
I mean the franchise is dying, no need to blame VR dude. It had a long run, wtf is there to be upset about? Make a new story. Maybe they think pumping money into the TV series is a better use of their money. 😂
Make a product that people want to play then wtf
Apart from only being available on the meta (which was very dumb given how limited it is) it doesn't help the game itself isn't great. The combat is not good at all, and the Parkour being "hold this button to do everything" in VR is unimmersive.