Board games could be projected on a table as a start
Yeah it could, but A: board games = casual shit, like I said, and B; in what way is a board game greatly enhanced by having it float in front of my eyes? How do I play said board game by the way, by pointing my eyes and blinking...? Sounds fiddly. Not to mention potentially dangerous if piloting a vehicle/board/skates, or even out and walking about in an urban environment...
Also, I can't wait seeing headlines in the papers of the first biker to crash due to playing games whilst riding and playing games on one of these things.
That'd be a hoot, it'll be "the new menace!" in the media.
Anyway, speaking of AR glasses and vehicles, extreme care would have to be taken to cover things like not wrecking drivers' night vision for example. Also, how will ergonomics be solved during bright summer days? I can imagine contrast might suffer pretty bad in such conditions. Just dimming the outside might again prove hazardous in some situations. I can foresee screams for new legislation to limit or even ban these glasses in some situations, especially after a couple car crashes and such have occurred.
Remember that real-life Pacman game some university guys played on the streets of Manhattan?
Nah, never heard of it. Anyway, zombies and pacman and so on in real life situations would require extremely detailed maps of your current location (including indoor layouts, which generally does not exist anywhere) as well as very precise motion tracking. All for very gimmicky gameplay. I'm far from convinced re. viability here.
Er, the many millions (40? 50?) of Steam users are already quite a big thing
40 or 50 million steam accounts don't translate into millions of VR glasses sold, much less 50 million... Also, even 50 million VR glasses in the wild (which will take quite some doing) is a spit in the ocean in comparison when just samsung sells somewhere around that many smartphones each quarter.
Does anyone have any idea about the resources they have?
Valve is privately held and doesn't publish any revenue figures (they're not required, not being publically traded it would seem), but was valued last year at about $3bn by some business publication whose name I can't remember. It's a substantial company, but not enormous. Gabe owns 51% of Valve according to that article, which places him amongst the 250 richest people in the US apparantly. ...In paper wealth at least, since the vast majority is tied up in his business, whose wealth mostly consists of its people, which Gabe himself alluded to when he said in some interview he expected the company to implode and its employees scatter rather than let itself get sold out to a big-name publisher.
I'm not saying VR glasses isn't exciting tech; it is, but I think it's going to be far from pervasive. I think that not all that many people are so excited by technology they're going to wear it on their faces, even if they do own a smartphone and/or tablet.
