Gabe Newell Is Comfortable with VR Being a Complete Failure

[polonyc2]

It has absolutely nothing to do with that.

If you read this statement in context, it has nothing to do with him thinking it's going to fail, either. He is merely saying that whether or not it ultimately succeeds or fails, Valve is going to put full effort into it because they believe it's the future.

I have seen this quoted a number of times now on various sites like "OHH NOOO VR IS FAILING" when in reality it's anything but

sure his statements are taken a bit out of context but for anyone of his stature in the industry to talk about if/when VR fails is a big black eye to the industry...whether you say VR is failing or VR is not succeeding it's basically the same meaning....the fact of the matter is that 3D in its infancy was way more successful then VR (I have a Panasonic 3D plasma)...and the people that are comparing 3D to VR are not doing so in terms of the technology itself but rather the barriers that are preventing people from purchasing it...VR and 3D suffer from the same types of obstacles to consumer acceptance

 

[TorxT3D]

He must be at odds with HTC because i wouldve never expected this tone from him about VR.
At least hes being honest and realistic, but nothing optimistic.

if gabe and company had come out with more games and demos than... the lab.. then maybe we'll see more AAA attempts from other companies.
lighten up the vive+cable+basestation design update.. and lets move on. People seem to forget this is VR version 1 basically.

 

[zalazin]

It doesn't matter such a statement will be seen by how many on the bench? That will hurt VR sales. It also makes me think that Valve doesn't give a damn taking this attitude in other words no passion for the technology...

 

[steakman1971]

The same thing was said about 3D when 3dFX first hit the market and at that time we had 2 or 3 games and cards started at $350 then we got Voodoo 2's and a $500 price tag and you wanted 2! what is holding it back is content (Valve has one demo pack out and no real games) not the price of the headset when you look at the tech $800 is not a lot for a hud and all the other kit you need. But you will find out fast you will want a GTX 1070+ to run it so you end up spending more on your PC upgrades than the Vive. We are only now seeing the first AAA game hitting the market and the VIVE has been out for almost a year, yes we have hundreds of games BUT they are all Beta/Demos at best and most are as in depth as games you find on mobile phones.

Yeah, I mostly agree with your comparison. I was an early adopter and spent a lot of cash on a 3DFX card. I had 3-4 games - Quake was interesting with GLQuake - I think that was a killer app and I know a few of my friends bought 3D cards after seeing it on my computer. Heck, I was dumb and eventually got two Voodoo 2's in SLI mode (when I was a poor college student). Those were fun times!

 

[MavericK]

He must be at odds with HTC because i wouldve never expected this tone from him about VR.
At least hes being honest and realistic, but nothing optimistic.

What? Did you not even read the interview?

"We're optimistic. We think VR is going great. It's going in a way that's consistent with our expectations," says Newell. "We're also pretty comfortable with the idea that it will turn out to be a complete failure.

"If you don't try things that don't fail you probably aren't trying to do anything very interesting. So we hope that we'll find stuff that gamers will say is awesome and is a huge leap forward."

 

[Ebernanut]

I don't think it's a stretch to consider it a niche product or that lack of software is the biggest hurdle now that the hardware has reached a level that's acceptable to a decent amount of people.

A friend told me last spring after picking up the Vive that he didn't think he would want to ever play a normal game on a monitor again, flash forward to this fall and he had already tired of all the VR titles that interested him enough to pick them up. In addition to the cost of the Vive he also upgraded to a 1080, spent several hundred on VR titles(I hesitate to call most of them games), and shortly after buying it had to spend almost the entire cost of the Vive again to get it fixed after it got fried from some sweat.

Anything that requires me to wear something bulky on my head is already a hard sell but his experiences have made me not want to even bother trying it, I was going to when he first got it but he fried it before I got over to his house. It also sounds like the motion sickness issue hasn't been completely eliminated and I had problems with that in some early 3d games(Wolfenstein 3d, I'm looking at you) and don't have any desire to deal with that again.