Facebook buys Oculus Rift

[updog]

Basically, I consider immersive games character driven narratives that make the character feel like the exist with the world of the game. In general, this requires a great concept, great acting (if any), great writing and graphics solid enough to not detract from the previously mentioned elements. Even though they don't follow statement, simulators and racing games obviously count too. Games categories I would exclude from this entirely (or almost) are mobile games, puzzle games, fighting games, casual games, mmorts, and trivia games. Obviously there are exceptions.

I agree with all of that. But surely then you can't really see a problem with what I said? Would anybody really buy Oculus Rift to play mobile, puzzle or fighting games, or perhaps chat with their friends in some new, quirky and unnecessary way?

We could argue about what makes a game great (certainly not simply being an AAA title), but let me make an example. Casual games such as the types you listed are like watching a sitcom, as opposed to playing immersive games is like watching a movie (often a much broader and longer experience however, so in that sense it's rather like reading a good book)

Some people like easy entertainment, and that's fine. But those type of games are of a completely different depth of entertainment. If you had those type of games on a virtual reality platform, what you'd essentially have would be a bag of gimmicks nobody would remember a month later. AAA's will jump the gimmick train as well, I'm sure - but regardless, Rift has great potential for serious games which I'll continue to hope they'll actually get to use.

 

[updog]

Still waiting for someone to convince me it isn't this:

Who better than yourself! You should totally try it, at least once the Development Kit 2 comes out, which seems to be soon. I think most game expos and other such events at least have a few Oculus Rifts to try, for displaying new software that's being made for them.

Besides that, here's a few points that I can list you right now to convince you it's not like the Virtual Boy:

- it's not a console but a display device. You plug it in your computer via HDMI - this means there's no restrictions in performance, other than those posed by the actual display technology, like resolution and such. They're working on getting the resolution up for the commercial version as well.

- it doesn't cause instantaneous headaches like the Virtual Boy did. If the motion tracking technology (obviously there was nothing of the sort on the VB back then, the neon-red and black display simply hurt your eyes) wasn't good enough, it would also cause motion sickness to use the Oculus Rift, but it didn't really do that even with the first DK version, and the DK 2 will have even more advanced motion tracking.

- since it's not a console in itself, it won't have the huge lack of games Virtual Boy did. More to the point, there are more games already for the Oculus Rift than there ever were for the Virtual Boy, despite Oculus Rift not even actually being released on the commercial market.

 

[egan.]

I agree with all of that. But surely then you can't really see a problem with what I said? Would anybody really buy Oculus Rift to play mobile, puzzle or fighting games, or perhaps chat with their friends in some new, quirky and unnecessary way?

My point is that you can be in to good and great games without your goal being a completely immersive experience. Basically I thought you were being dismissive of the idea that there are plenty of gamers for whom this isn't going to be the holy grail.
That said, I hope OR is successful and we see some killer games.