Hey everyone,
i’m running a small indie studio and ever since the release of the VIVE and Oculus i’ve been thinking to dive into the VR market. The idea and concept of VR is fantastic as it opens up new experiences but every time i’m about to make a decision the outcome is always negative. The reason behind it is this big financial risk behind it, i’ve been monitoring sales of VR titles closely and every time a new game comes out it seems to confirm my concerns.
Yesterday Star Trek Bridge Crew came out, a fully AAA title by Activision and looking at the amount of Steam Reviews and total current players of about 450 you can pretty much judge they haven’t sold more than maybe 2000 copies of the game. And this isn’t your Jack Average Studio, it’s Ubisoft, they invited streamers and ran a pretty decent marketing campaign for the game. If i would guess the development costs i’d come up with a number around 5 million - but that’s just a wild guess - if you look the current numbers i’d guess they won’t do another VR game any time soon.
VR today feels like you trying to sell customers a fantastic egg-cooker while there are no eggs around. As an indie studio i usually budget my titles not to exceed 100.000$ in funding when funding it 100% on my own, even with investors involved we’ll try to keep it below 250.000$ - with a roughly development time of about 10-14 months. But for VR even these - as i would consider in our industry - low numbers are a big risk for VR titles as the audience is simply way too limited. Not limiting your game to VR opens up your possible audience to over a 100 million potential customers while VR limits you to - i’d guess less 1 million - that’s a big risk even for an indie studio.
So i’m asking you guys - is there anybody out there who has made a profitable VR title ? And if so, what was your budget ? I don’t understand why neither Oculus or Steam have taken some cash - let’s say 4-5 million away from Hardware Development to push game-development of their VR platform, giving each studio about 100.000$ in funding - bam, there you have 50 titles being developed - i wouldn’t mind even if i had to give 100% of the revenue back to them until the money received upfront is recovered. It’s one thing to send out VR SDKs for free so developers can make games, but it’s not really an incentive.
From personal experience i both got a VIVE and the Oculus SDK sent for free but hell, they are in the closet just taking up space. As a gamer wouldn’t bother buying a VR set, there is simply not enough product out there to backup the costs to run VR titles. Lately i don’t even look a lot for VR titles even though i have both systems.
So personally i believe both platforms have to increase their incentives for development studios to support their system - otherwise VR is gone again for another 20 years.
In my personal opinion, the VR will “die”. By “die”, I mean it won’t be a big deal anymore. It will be just another peripheral, just like a steering wheel for racing games.
But don’t worry, it will come back to the spotlight again in 10 years.
VR is one of those things that it’s only cool and awesome for a while, then it gets boring … real fast.
It’s not dead, it’s just the extreme levels of hype created an inevitable gap between expectations and reality. A very large gap. This has been talked about at some VR sessions at various conferences keynotes etc, especially last year. Whether this gap closes enough in the next few years is important, but I certainly wouldnt bet the house on it. I certainly wouldnt try to build a VR business with expectations of true mass market appeal arriving quickly, and would be looking for ways to hedge my bets and explore non-gaming niches that may provide revenue in the meantime.
As for headset manufacturers & VR platform companies throwing money at developers, I think this has happened to some extent via exclusivity deals and it has a role to play at this stage but I doubt its a game-changer for that many companies and doesnt guarantee all that much.
VR is doing fine from the perspective of the HMD makers expectations. Oculus has stated several times that they expect this first generation to sell in comparably low numbers. And I think I’ve heard something similar from Valve/HTC. It is the media and the analysts who predicted/demanded an immediate huge success, and the same people who are shouting doom right now. VR (and AR) got a long road ahead of it, but I’m sure it will eventually become “the next smartphone”. Just don’t expect it to happen within a couple of years.
As for funding, Oculus has funded lots of third party games, just because the risk in doing VR content is currently too great for most studios. Epic’s own Robo Recall was entirely funded by Oculus. Both Valve and HTC are doing something similar, but the details on how much and to whom are sparse.
So no, VR is not dying. But yes, the risk of making VR games without funding from one of the big VR-stakeholders is huge. Right now the money is much better in professional applications.
I think this “Fake VR” is dead and will be worse. That limitations only for a little “deeper” reality gaming doesnt worth it. Its only empty hype.
IMO “True VR” like Matrix or SAO will exist (i really believe in it) and may completely replace standard gaming, but its question of time… 30-100-200 years?
It’s not going anywhere. As prices continue going down people continue picking them up. I can see a boom coming as the graphics card technology pushing vr is getting more, and more cost efficient.
It wasn’t that long ago that an 8gb graphics card was around $4,000. I think VR will be like kinect later, and just a bit more expensive to buy.
Well if you are willing to put your trust into steam and it’s datas, let’s try the publicly available and their “legit” steam survey first where you can do some actual measurements. September of 2016, VR headset users about 0.18%. This year January was about 0.23%. Current stats for VR is 0.23%. Nothing more to say.
This indicates two things only. The number of reviewers who was very quick to write some garbage called “unbiased review”. Hah. And the number of players which i’m sure you got from some third party “unbiased” website source who claims to give you the truth. Hah!
Even if that would be the case, it is not because they got “burned” by the low sellings or anything. They did make the game to be on the market, flash something for the industry and it has nothing to do with actual sellings or incomes. They can afford to make thousands of games like that, because these studios are financially on the top. They can do whatever they want to do, and they are willing to put their stones into these holes on the shelves to keep up the good profile.
If you can afford to risk 100-250 grands of investment to accidently just loose, then there you go, just put your stones where you want them to and make your luck with an another VR title. Business is all about risks and opportunities, and its 100% up to your bravery how do you approach all this. If you are affraid the title won’t sell, then don’t do it. It always the game that is sells not the grand total you put in it. Make good and innovative games, create the required amount of hype around it and you will have less to worry about at the end of the day.
I pry went a little too far with my comment, just take it or leave it.
VR was the daddy of all hype trains created prematurely and forced into early development when neither the technology nor real public demand was there for it. Eventually other corps followed because they all dreamed of that piece of the big easy $$$ pie when it hits the market, after all Facebook must know what its doing right? investing billions! into a technology that one could argue could have probably been created in a basement with a few smart techies and a fair amount of investment, one starts to wonder where all that money really went.
So they gathered in a room with suits and said yea that’s a great idea, after all using keyboards and mice and joypads are sooo old fashioned and will die…
Those of us in the industry working in the trenches knew what it was all about and how it was going to hit the wall hard. Too bad it shows once again the nature of people, how they expect to make billions overnight (both some developers and corporations).
All this doesn’t bother me much. what does however is the fact that EPIC went in full throttle and rockets blazing as VR tools were given superior priorities and hit the roof flying while a 100 infinitely more useful features of the engine meant for ‘traditional’ game development were either delayed or disregarded. Epic is not my uncle’s company so i don’t have a say in it but we do use it for our dev and years of planning in our lives depend on such tech in the market, so yes it does merit the criticism from time to time.
VR will come one day in the distant future, and when it properly does, it will neither replace nor take over the market, it will just be another platform experience done right, that is if we didn’t get plugged into the matrix before that.
Personally I’m really glad Epic embraced VR early and I’m not convinced they really had the option to ignore it completely at this stage. I dont mind people moaning about it though, except those who seriously imagine that if Epic hadnt spent any energy on VR then they would certainly have done ‘feature X’ instead (feature X inevitably being whatever is missing from UE4 that a particular developer desperately needs).
I’m pretty sure a significant part of the money Facebook paid Epic to make Robo Recall went into VR related engine improvements and tools. (And I’m also pretty sure Facebook is ok with that.)
So VR features didn’t push away many (if any) other improvements.
VR have a long and proud history of experiments and developments which inarguably a product of visionary people who have realized the nature of the sensation of objects in three dimension and virtual worlds a long long time ago. Virtual reality - Wikipedia
Not to mention the fact that in 2017 we are still developing, and showcasing virtual 3d worlds thru a 2 dimensional flat screen. This is insane and very poor just think of it!
Technology gets improved, humans are not so much. But there is hope, it is always on the corner.
It’s easy to justify a company’s priorities, but i’m not convinced of such statements. Visionary people we are talking about, and they deserve the respect and support to bringing the long awaited technologies on the front line, but living up to the market’s expectations gives lots of pressure on them too, which results in great confusion and small mistakes. Can you truly blame them for working hard on the VR?
Yes it is the only way to properly showcase the 3d worlds, thus enabling the full experience which virtual reality deserves.
Whenever a new technology comes out people forget a simple truth most people don’t give (fill in with desired term).
I won’t be buying a HMD for the same reason I don’t own a smartphone. I don’t need it and it’s expensive.
Has anyone looked at a smartphone adoption chart besides me? It’s really interesting to look at. In fact anytime an adoption chart looks different from that I would become worried. Because new technology has an established adoption rate. Early adopters buy it 1st generation. Hesitent early adopters join the pool for the 2nd generation. Ectera ectera this is preschool level thinking here.
VR isn’t dead it simply tried to hard to fast.
I think VR works well enough that it’s not just a fad and once the hardware pricing comes down the sales will pick up to make it more successful. Look at stuff like the GearVR which has millions of sales–that’s due to how it’s <$100 and people already have the phone. But the best VR experience right now is getting a $1,000 PC and a $600 headset which is a lot of money.
The biggest advantage of VR though is that since it genuinely works, there’s enough developer interest to make content for it without the expectation of financial success.
If you want to make profit though, you’re going to have to analyze how many sales you can make and balance your budget for that.
I don’t think anyone is putting down visionary people on the contrary. And I have enjoyed very much looking into the history of VR since back in the days I was starting in this field.
When I say basement i follow it up by mentioning it could be made by techies or visionaries in a small room with modest investment, that is how it has always been done. but when you speak of billions upon billions of dollars then i raise my eyebrows. Especially for VR! when Nasa is begging for a few million more to go to mars, same goes to many creative tasks in large corporations, look no further than Hollywood, a film that would usually cost 50 million gets made for 150 million minus marketing/distribution, that money isn’t going into the pockets of the craftsmen or visionaries making the film in fact it is being taken out of them by cutting down their cost.
Second I very much doubt ‘vision’ was the reason for the VR hype, VR was forced into early creation by the corporations not because of ‘vision’ but because of reasons of pure profit by making it look like it is a visionary product and trying to sell it on that basis when it is still just a very early prototype. It’s like a salesman selling you a good looking car without the engine. And I don’t buy the fact that it is the article A or B’s fault for hyping it that much. all those guys are paid by the VR companies to hype it for them.
If they kept the hype modest with true intentions no one would be here saying we told you so.
But hey if this helped just a little bit with moving technology forward then so be it, but the way it was done just makes you feel irritated from it all.
No blame it’s their choice, it is also a personal point of view I don’t see VR as a the epitome of visionary products especially in an engine like Unreal where so many other things would be easily far more impressive to tackle and are still half broken or missing. I also don’t see working with VR to create landscape as any form of a visionary approach, visionary in a tool should also mean practical, so if its not practical to the every day working man then that vision as a tool may not be beneficial to the working man, but more so a show, sure its nice and all and may have its uses in a clientele world, but not really.
That’s just fine, I am happy with my flat screen I still enjoy black and white movies from the 1920’s and 30’s that move me emotionally far more than any color HD 3d modern day movie and i’m not an old person, I take those over 2 mins of eye burning and head spinning VR experience. Things take time, don’t rush a baby out you wont like what you see, same goes to technology, especially visual tech. We are doing just fine and as hardware gets better we will try new things but don’t rush. And don’t make the mistake to think that new is better it is simply not the case not all the time and especially not in the creative field.
I among a lots of people, we generally believe in science and technological improvements which are milestones of human ingenuinity. These milestones cannot and should not be measured by worthless empty paper bills called money, which is pointless to bring it into the same sentence. The way the world works, and money investing people trying to redeem their greedy souls by injecting and extracting money from projects is a digusting activity which usually is superficial supported by empty words thru the usual phenomena of “hypes” with the only intention to manipulate people and get more money from them. This is the exact reason i did not mentioned the money and investments to these projects, and so i resent these accusations.
What i am talking about purely the technological side of the 3d phenomene and virtual worlds which is the clear representation of human genuinity that enables the possibility to experience the virtual worlds as they intented to be showcased. Since you have mentioned the support of the money investments to these projects, i can ensure you that yes the improvements of said technologies went to the right direction and we all have received a better quality of the equipment as a result, because the engineers have managed to reduce the most of the issues to a large extent, thus allowing many new people to try the experience. To give a better word for the actions of certain companies and engineers the technology have become more approachable, and this is the sign of the “money well spent” to the last cent.
I see that many people have found unreal engine to be the good choice for creating simple 2d games, sticking to the old fashioned gameplay experiences and possibly showing the respect to the so called “Hero” era of gaming which i also born into in the very beginning of the 80’s. I can respect that. But Unreal engine is not a 2d engine, more like a 3d engine which have a 3rd axis available and high end graphical solutions/effects that presents a new quality for the gameplay, and virtual worlds. These qualities cannot and should not be experienced by looking at them from a distorted reflection of a mirror, and i find very fortunate that this technology have managed to present them 3 axes for everyone. To bring up an example, one cannot fully experience a piece of a cake without taste receptors on a tongue, and the same applies to 3d which is impossible to sense the true nature of the presentation without the necessary displaying mechanisms.
Improvements come from experiments, and these kind of experiments were never caused harm to anyone - not to my knowledge - which is a very nice way to try them out. Not all improvements can help to everyone, but if there is one thing for sure, it is enabling anyone to try and experiment more with the technology so to create new results that will come to a success one day. It needs time to be developed properly, and VR will present the new ground for all sorts of new tools. Just give it a little time and you will see, none of these will come out useless.
That is very nice you have nostalgic feelings of the history, since it keeps the artworks of many people from the past living in the present and the future. The same applies to improvements such as VR, and working on it helps the technology to improve more to the right direction where it is aiming to. I actually believe that new movie flicks are poorly developed, and the possible reason for that is the lack of the need for such experiences, since the new technologies have already made it possible to create similar experiences which the viewer can fully interact with, and it improves creativity in people that goes hand in hand with the abstract way of thinking that is very much the current state of mind of the human kind.
I was really hoping someone who actually released a VR title would come along and share some experience here. I think one of the reasons we are only seeing these minigames for VR is because developers actually limit the time they spend on developing a VR title - it’s obvious some sort of risk management, knowing that the audience is still very small.
As for UE4 supporting VR or not i simply do not care at this point. I tried the editor in VR once but that’s about it, mainly because i use multiple monitors where i skype with people, code in VS or search for documentation on things while developing - can’t do that while wearing a helmet. It feels rather toying around than being productive.
I released 2 games on Steam so far more or less successful and i’d say both each sold more than a VR game could return in revenue. At this point my guess is i would only consider VR as an option in a game if the game-play would support it as i wouldn’t want to risk 50k-100k on development that i might not get back - and a Minigame with a 3-6 months development cycle already sounds half-arsed to me.
