The sorry state of gaming

[Kalahari Inkantation]

why an industry rife with anti-consumer practices is never ever going to change for the better:



he hates this game so much that he happily purchased it three times, at full price, on three separate platforms

ubisoft actually earned 3x as much from this shoddy product than they would have had they released a good one

yeah i'm sure they're absolutely devastated by that thumbs down lol

there is no incentive whatsoever to move away from exploitative business practices when your consumer base is comprised entirely of people who are as stupid and as incapable of self-reflection as this

[spoiler]

don't even get me started on the fact that there are apparently people out there willing to spend $15 on fukken tetris in the year of our lord 20XX[/spoiler]

[bluaki]

don't even get me started on the fact that there are apparently people out there willing to spend $15 on fukken tetris in the year of our lord 20XX

I spent $50 on Puyo Tetris not very long ago

But at least that's more than just a Tetris game. And neither Ubisoft nor EA had anything to do with it.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2016/01/05/shenmue-3-confounds-again-as-paypal-backers-wont-get-kickstarter-rewards.aspx

man, shenmue is full of good things

kickstarter: where irrelevant, washed-up has-been game """developers""" with wholly undeserved cult followings go to piss what little remains of their reputation away

see:

keiji inafune
peter molyneux
tim schafer
yu suzuki
chris roberts
soon, those rareware rejects making yooka laylee

there's a very good reason these guys lost their jobs with mainstream devs and were forced to go """independent""" and resort to begging on virtual street corners

and yet somehow nostalgia-drunk and misinformed """gamers""" don't realize this until they've loaded them up with millions for promising a dream they're too incompetent and dishonest to ever actually deliver

[bluaki]

Oculus Rift was put up for preorder today
and they announced the price: US$599 for the headset + xbone controller + oculus remote + sensor bundle

[spoiler=@KazHiraiCEO][/spoiler]

Also, they have a list of minimum recommended PC specs: GTX 970 (or R9 290), Intel i5-4590, 8GB RAM, 4 USB ports (3 at 3.0 speed, 1 at 2.0 speed)
That's almost exactly the standard PC gamer build from late 2014 / early 2015, except that most people went for the overclockable equivalent CPU

4 USB connectors is a lot, but I guess I'm not too surprised considering how much video bandwidth and power they consume.

[don't let's]

[TooB]

599 US Dollars?

[C.Mongler]

lol me and my bud were making price guesses this morning and i fuckin' nailed it


but really yer a dingus if you thought this was gonna be much cheaper, shits packed with da technologies. inevitably this will come down in price, assuming VR every becomes popular considering its really high barrier to entry right now, to probably 400 or so in the next 3-4 years. once again, assuming it doesn't flounder and die right out of the gate.

i'd imagine PSVR is going to be in the 4-500 range, and Vive is probably going to be 700 or more looking at its kit but i guess we'll see

[TooB]

I feel this will be akin to 3d, be that 3d movies, or the 3ds.
people will experience it, say "oh thats pretty cool!" and then proceed to turn it right off (3ds)

an while 3d movies are still around, and still do pretty well, I'm sure most people prefer normal 2d

[C.Mongler]

eh probably, though i wouldn't exactly say that 3d movies in the theater have hit niche novelty yet as they're still pretty prevalent and relatively popular

but yeah i feel the sentiment, it's like i have an hour to play a game, i'm not going to spend 10+ minutes setting the damn thing up just so i can be like WOW ITS LIKE IM REALLY THERE. but then again, i've never used VR and i can't really offer a perspective on just how immersive it is; if it's as cool as it sounds i feel like this would be WAAAAAY more appealing to use regularly than something like the 3ds's shitty 3d

[don't let's]

If it was cheaper it could catch on, or if it was its own console or something. But it's basically a $600 peripheral that you still have to have a good PC and games for. And then any newer models would probably be similarly priced and they're going to run into the same problems.

[C.Mongler]

am i the only one who learned about market penetration in college come on bros

most gen 1 products wallow in their own shit out the gate. remember a little guy called THE IPOD? remember how gen 1 came out and the ipod sold TRILLIONS on launch day and was an instant success that overwhelmed the market? well u fucked up son cuz the 1st gen ipod barely sold shit because the 10 GB gen 1 model was 500 fucking dollars (a little over 650 in todays doalrz).

[spoiler][/spoiler]

the only people who bought it were diehard apple fangays. but it didnt matter because those fangays went and told two fangays about how cool and FUTURISTIC the ipod was and those fangays told two fangays, and then the fangays who told some fangays went and bought a gen 2 and eventually everywhere you look everyone is a fuckin apple fangay with an ipad in their butthole and an applewatch on both wrists. market penetration for new technology does not happen overnight and it does not happen just because something is considered 'affordable' or not. can it help? sure! but even if the occulus was 200 bucks, it's still a decent chunk of change with another huge barrier to entry, that being having a rig that can actually play games on it.

the point of the first consumer Rift is to get DIEHARD ENTHUSIASTS to get their hands on one. it's to get them into the ecosystem and then to eventually bring other people into the Rift world as well. and IT WILL get cheaper. if you looked at the price and scoffed and thought it was too much, well guess what, you aren't the audience they want yet. but in 3 years when there's gen2/3 and the rift has more features and is down to 350-450 dollars, and the PC parts you need are down hundreds of dollars as well, and your neighbor has one AND WHEN YOU TRIED IT IT WAS THE TIGHTEST SHIT OF YOUR LIFE AND FUCK I JUST GOTTA HAVE ONE, thats when you'll finally come to terms with it being time to get a Rift.

and yeah maybe it will fail, but honestly that's more to blame on the market not being interested in VR tech in the long term than it does with the launch price of some extremely pricey new piece of technology

[don't let's]

But I figure this thing has no chance at all until it hits $200 or below. (Maybe $400) Unless something that's just so amazing (or a bunch of somethings) comes out for it. And I don't see the price getting lowered anytime soon, especially when/if newer models come out. Unless the new models don't really add anything and are just about lowering costs.
And it's not like this is like the consoles where they can sort of take a loss with it and make it up with game sales.

It's higher priced than the consoles right now, but it's not going to have the same support as it's not its own self contained thing. It needs another machine for it to work in addition to its high price.

I figure it will go the way of the Kinect or Move or some of Nintendo's endeavours. You might get some unique things early on or sprinkled around here and there, but almost nobody is going to have one, so most people won't put much or any effort into developing for it, and it'll be mostly an afterthought if people include support for it. But it's going to do even worse than those things because of how expensive it is.

VR tech may one day still catch on, and these guys may be a catalyst for it, but I don't this product from this company is going to live unless something drastic happens/changes.

The ipod at least had the luxury of being an mp3 player and its own self-contained thing back CDs were still big and digital music and mp3 players in general were starting to hit their stride, especially since they could hold thousands of songs.

Almost the same deal with the PS3 at launch when it was so expensive. It had the luxury of being a cheaper Blu-ray player when they were hitting prominence, and then it was also the next PlayStation.

[C.Mongler]

i mean i don't disagree per se, but i think it's a bit naive to see a $600 entry fee and just go WELP ITS GONNA FAIL. it's still waaaaaaayyyy too early in the VR game to draw any conclusions like that. even at 600 dollars Oculus sold out on all their pre-order units and they are shipping units to all their kickstarter backers too; at this point in time their install base is literally as big as they have the capacity for it to be.

[don't let's]

I just have my doubts that this particular product will get enough support or enough good support from third parties with it being at that kind of price point. Might see a boom of it initially but I expect it to taper off pretty quick unless it's just more or less effortless to add the VR support to stuff. And even then...

But who knows, they could just keep sinking more and more money into it and keep pushing it until it finally does catch on.
And I guess you can do more than just games with that kind of thing so there is that to take into consideration.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

http://allthingsd.com/20130606/oculus-co-founders-luckey-and-mitchell-on-the-rifts-progress-price-and-limitations-qa-part-one/

Luckey: If something’s even $600, it doesn’t matter how good it is, how great of an experience it is â€" 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.