Sony VR Headset/Project Morpheus/PlayStation VR

[Shifty Geezer]

If everyone waits for a 'second gen model', what'll happen to the software supporting the device? If I was a dev who jumped onto the VR bandwagon and had a product ready, I'd be pretty pissed at this news. If the early message had been a $600 device, devs could factored in a likely smaller audience to their decision making. VR needs a low cost option that'll see wide adoption or it'll crumble, unless there's a champion who'll invest in software even if said software doesn't sell because there's no audience.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

If everyone waits for a 'second gen model', what'll happen to the software supporting the device? If I was a dev who jumped onto the VR bandwagon and had a product ready, I'd be pretty pissed at this news. If the early message had been a $600 device, devs could factored in a likely smaller audience to their decision making. VR needs a low cost option that'll see wide adoption or it'll crumble, unless there's a champion who'll invest in software even if said software doesn't sell because there's no audience.

I think they'll be fine and with other helmets out too, mainly the Sony one there should soon be a healthy market for VR-games and VR-modes in regular games. I'm sure the price points will "grow" lower as time allow some maturity. The time for large budget VR only games isn't here yet, but you got to start somewhere and imo the interest around these products seem good enough for a good future.

 

[London Geezer]

It seems to be Sony's priority to launch big and try to open up the market, hopefully they'll get te pricing right cause they seem to be doing most other things right (ease of use and access with ps4, games being developed etc).

 

[orangpelupa]

Yeah, psvr also the most family friendly with social screen and asymmetric gameplay.

 

[cheapchips]

Palmer stated that if they'd released a tarted up DK2 as CV1 then it wouldn't be that much cheaper (a plan ditched at some point). Which is interest for PSVR, as it's essentially a tarted up DK2. Those console launch price comments might be close to the mark for PSVR.

 

[London Geezer]

'Tarted up DK2' seems a bit inaccurate, now that we know about the high framerate OLED screen and the separate box.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think they'll be fine and with other helmets out too, mainly the Sony one there should soon be a healthy market for VR-games and VR-modes in regular games.

Except I don't think that's realistic. Before VR was investigated, I think everyone assumed it was just a 3D rendering mode. But it turns out VR games need to be designed around VR to work. So adding it as an option in other games probably isn't going to happen in most cases. You'd need to start with a VR game and adapt that for single screen, which'll mean two rendering modes (simpler VR mode and prettier single-screen mode), or releasing a single style that can't hold up against the fancier pixels of single-screen games. Neither option is great for devs if there isn't enough VR interest.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Except I don't think that's realistic. Before VR was investigated, I think everyone assumed it was just a 3D rendering mode. But it turns out VR games need to be designed around VR to work. So adding it as an option in other games probably isn't going to happen in most cases. You'd need to start with a VR game and adapt that for single screen, which'll mean two rendering modes (simpler VR mode and prettier single-screen mode), or releasing a single style that can't hold up against the fancier pixels of single-screen games. Neither option is great for devs if there isn't enough VR interest.

But I think games like Alien Isolation, some racing games and even hacked up Half-life 2 work pretty well with VR and I don't think a ton of resources were put on them with VR in mind, obviously there surely are a ton of games where VR simply won't work or would require too much work. I'm a big believer in VR, I'm sure it'll be a great new thing/success regardless of it taking 1 or 10 years.

 

[iroboto]

Way too many assumptions in this thread and in he oculus thread. I want to post but honestly the cross talk of oculus here is really making it hard, unless you've read both threads and keeping up to date.

I know people are trying to use Oculus as a baseline for BOM and market price but these being new markets we have little to no idea how the market will react once the product is actually in use.

pre-orders is but of course one thing, but maturity of these devices requires usability! That means to go to market they must believe that a majority of their population can use the device.

how all three devices approaches this is different hence we are unsure of what the price points will be when they launch, and also we are unsure of how effective the approaches are for ourselves until we've tried them all.

For PSVR the lower resolution and 60fps will hurt some people but the 120Hz refresh will really help. For the other two products the 90FPS will help but it would be better if they could get it all the way up to 120Hz.

Which is better for you is hard to say. Then comes lens technology! I'm not fit to comment.

 

[DieH@rd]

"Luckey: I’m one of the few people where it’s different. I would spend whatever it was. Gamers are not known to be the most affluent population of people. If something’s even $600, it doesn’t matter how good it is, how great of an experience it is — if they just can’t afford it, then it really might as well not exist. We’re going for the mainstream, but time will tell what the market is."
Palmer Luckey - 2013 interview

The original vision changed, but they continued talking about "higher than $350 but in the ballpark of it" price even in September of 2015. They fumbled the PR a lot, and adding a 100€ more than regular "$ to € tech conversion" price seems incredibly strange to me.

 

[orangpelupa]

thats for oculus thread right? anyway, palmer himself also admitted that he is wrong in the messaging thing

 

[dobwal]

Why would they produce $350 dollar develop kits only to release a $600 product?

Might as well sell the dev kit as a cheaper sku. Their whole development community revolve around that hardware anyways.

Its no way Sony is releasing anywhere near that price point as they won't be able to drive much adoption from their userbase. If they do, the whole VR landscape is in for a long trek to relevancy.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I really hope Sony can hit $250 to 300. It's looking like PS4 is my best VR option. If the games are there, I'll definitely consider jumping in.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can we keep OVR discussion in the OVR thread. Thanks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I really hope Sony can hit $250 to 300. It's looking like PS4 is my best VR option. If the games are there, I'll definitely consider jumping in.

I'd be very surprised at $250. I expect ~$350 or more. I think that's low enough for early adopters with a $100 price drop in the following year, and high enough to keep Sony's accountants happy. But it would be awesome if Sony went low cost and took control of the the VR revolution. They could then follow that with PS Home VR, extending that as a platform to other VR devices but having the largest VR community to begin with.

 

[London Geezer]

People should start thinking in terms of access to VR. On PS4 it's whatever the price of the PS4 is right now, plus PSVR. On Oculus they already said that it should be around ~$1400 all inclusive of a PC that can actually run the thing.

I hope Sony don't end up thinking that they can 'afford' to charge up to ~$1400-PS4=PSVR, which right now is quite a bit more than $600.

For all we know they could launch at the same price as the Rift and then say "oh but you don't need a $1000 PC to run it! It's a great deal"

No, Sony. No.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

For PSVR the lower resolution and 60fps will hurt some people but the 120Hz refresh will really help.

Existing PS4 owners are unlikely to be fussed by resolution or frame rates - anybody for which one (or both) are important factors are probably not gaming on a console in the first place so this would only be a detracting factor for those who don't currently have VR capable gaming hardware but are keen to get in.

Then you're back to the status quo of PC will probably* be better if you have the money and console will be a much easier cheaper option.

*probably because until all these things are in the wild with software, the actual user experience really is unknown.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'd be very surprised at $250. I expect ~$350 or more. I think that's low enough for early adopters with a $100 price drop in the following year, and high enough to keep Sony's accountants happy. But it would be awesome if Sony went low cost and took control of the the VR revolution. They could then follow that with PS Home VR, extending that as a platform to other VR devices but having the largest VR community to begin with.

I'm just thinking in terms of the overall price. If the console is $300 USD and the headset is $300 USD, I might be able to swing that. If you start going over $600, I'm out. The Canadian prices are much higher because of the exchange rate. I wish I was paid in USD, but I'm not.

 

[upnorthsox]

So my initial thought was an unveiling at GDC but then this really needs its own event so the next best would be a week or two before GDC so that Sony and VR Devs could then do followup discussions at GDC. With that in mind, I expect the PSVR event to be on March 1st. I then expect a launch date before E3, otherwise E3 runs the risk of becoming a PSVR only event which is not what Sony wants. With that in mind, I'm predicting a launch date of June 2nd.

 

[MrFox]

People should start thinking in terms of access to VR. On PS4 it's whatever the price of the PS4 is right now, plus PSVR. On Oculus they already said that it should be around ~$1400 all inclusive of a PC that can actually run the thing.

I hope Sony don't end up thinking that they can 'afford' to charge up to ~$1400-PS4=PSVR, which right now is quite a bit more than $600.

For all we know they could launch at the same price as the Rift and then say "oh but you don't need a $1000 PC to run it! It's a great deal"

No, Sony. No.

This is my fear too. But not necessarily because they can change it, more because I fear the low price point we expected was never possible to begin with using these optics. That would be worse since drops in sales could not be corrected by lowering the price later, it would already be rock bottom. Material processes like optics fabrication don't drop over the years, they have been almost constant for 20 or 30 years, unlike silicon.

There's a research group saying the ideal price point for consumers adoption is $300, so I think $400 would still be okay. Not $600.