for what it’s worth i think the oculus is the least attractive design of the bunch…i understand how it is attractive as a concept with the diy beginnings, but it seemed a bit weird to me that so many big players were developing consumer versions? i had a co-worker that was super into the whole oculus experience (speaking of design & eyesight, it came with a few different cumbersome to change out lenses to accommodate for different sightedness-es, an adjustable diopter seems like a better solution around that, but that was the early version), almost evangelical about it…they had the dev kits 1 & 2, would bring in to work to let people experience it and already has the bid in for the consumer version; so i got to see/use on a couple of occasions…and while it was/is pretty cool i don’t really see the individual consumer application for it yet? i guess everyone has to start in on it but it just doesn’t seem like it is close to being even a niche thing…there are some interesting use cases for it as a business tool though(virtual education/training?, nursing homes, treatments for ptsd, 3d creation tool?-imagine the replay value of films made for vr, every replay could potentially be different!)
as a consumer device for video games, it seems to have a limited utility for an already niche audience? while not exactly the same thing , it shares the same problem that the nintendo wii, playstation move, and the xbox kinect all had…they all were cool but didn’t really have a must have game, nor in the case of playstation & xbox were marquee games built to make use of them, mostly they were optional or unnecessary to those games, and it seems like the big game developers will be put in the same situation for vr, while vr is probably less involved than those other technologies it still seems unlikely that it will be easy to build games that work equally well for both non vr- & vr gamers for the same game?
fundamentally i think home videogames are (or at least to this point have been) a passive medium, i tend to think those that want to “plug in” and be immersed matrix/total recall style are the minority, this could be my biases showing as i never could get into 1st person style games, but the idea of having to mentally prepare for the vr experience when i want to play a game seems daunting…