Nintendo President: VR Not Ready For The Mainstream

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Am I the only one that was really surprised to hear Reggie Fils-Aime say that VR isn't ready for mainstream consumers? I think most people can agree that VR is just taking off but I was still taken back by Fils-Aime's comments.

Last year at E3, the biggest complaint Nintendo president and CEO Reggie Fils-Aime had about virtual reality was that it simply wasn't fun. That may have changed a bit, because as Fils-Aime told Bloomberg West yesterday, his concern about VR now is about how mass market the tech can be. "In my judgment, I think VR is a bit further out there for mainstream, mass market applications and applications that consumers can invest a lot of time in versus short snacks of entertainment," Fils-Aime said.
 
OFC it isn't ready for mainstream and nor is it ever going to be. At least not unless we have a drastic shift in the paradigm of how people "want" to play their games. I'm sorry but I just don't see that happening. All I see is another nintendo wii fad where everyone buys it, breaks all their shit on youtube and then a year later 90% of them are collecting dust as people realize that a mouse, keyboard or controller and sitting in your chair or chilling on your couch with friends is just more enjoyable.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
90% of them are collecting dust as people realize that a mouse, keyboard or controller and sitting in your chair or chilling on your couch with friends is just more enjoyable.
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I've definitely been having to take breaks from playing the Vive, it's tiring standing and swinging your arms around for and hour, especially when you're used to a more sedentary lifestyle. Feels great to to take that headset off, sit on the couch, grab a controller and a drink and play on the TV.

But the difference between playing on a screen to playing on a vive is like the difference between playing a board game and then firing up GTA, it's totally worth the extra hassle, there's just a big software vacuum right now, and seeing major software dev's pull back from VR is a shame, but it's a chicken & egg scenario.
 
well at least he is not as far off as last year where he said, VR IS NOT FUN, for someone selling entertainement console industry, i found that hilarious, complete lack of vision.
now at least he seem to change his mind, or concede that ppl actualy find it FUN so he run with it, the issue here is that the NX spec wise is probably crap, so he is announcing that they wont have VR, well maybe a cardboard :D
but true it's not mainstream on PC, but sony is getting there with 399$ they are on the edge, we will see how well they will sell, although it could have been way better at 299$, it's definitely possible to have mainstream VR this generation on console, nintendo will be out of the game, well they were for quite a few years now, their E3 conference was a laughing stock, 2 games, pokemon on 3DS and zelda on wiiU
 
I think he might have a valid point. It's still very early in the game for VR. It's expensive and there really isn't a lot of software available yet.
However, I do think its on the way in a big way. I've played with the Oculus developer kit and more recently the Samsung Gear VR. The Gear doesn't give me motion sickness (although I haven't used it for more than 15-20 minutes at a time). Some of the experiences are amazing - I love the Cirque De Solei videos. Kind of a shame Nintendo is not willing to take a chance and blaze new territory - I'm trying to imagine Mario Kart in VR. If it didn't make my eyes explode, it would an awesome experience!
Curious how Sony's device will fair. I have two kids and one PS4. If one of them is wearing goggles, the other (I assume) can't play the game. So, do I need to have two PS4's? Ain't happening in my house. They'd need to drop the prices a lot.
 
How could any company be late to the boat at this point in time? VR consumer units have only been out for a handful of months ... lmao. They ... JUST ... shipped.

And anyone with common sense know's VR is not ready for mainstream. The numbers are very very very low with what's out there. There's no killer software yet to really show-case VR, costs are high, we are first generations. Etc etc etc

Why people won't to ignore these facts to me is just idiotic. People like to Bitch and Moan for know real reason. Even I do it.

VR is very cool. I've tried it a few times.

2nd generation and around $300 - $350 will really help VR.
 
This guy has his head so far up his own ass....

If anything isn't ready for mainstream its Nintendo's latest gimmick.
 
SixFootDuo said:
How could any company be late to the boat at this point in time? VR consumer units have only been out for a handful of months ... lmao. They ... JUST ... shipped.

And anyone with common sense know's VR is not ready for mainstream. The numbers are very very very low with what's out there. There's no killer software yet to really show-case VR, costs are high, we are first generations. Etc etc etc

Why people won't to ignore these facts to me is just idiotic. People like to Bitch and Moan for know real reason. Even I do it.

VR is very cool. I've tried it a few times.

2nd generation and around $300 - $350 will really help VR.
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because their console shipping mid 2017 doesn't support it, that gives it 3-5 year without VR, their next opportunity would be 2020-2022 with their next console, thats how bad it is, and it could get even uglier if psvr works, VR could be a major selling point in entertainement, an argument that the NX wouldn't have for all that time frame.
he talked about gyro and touch screen, one of the points of the success of these consoles, was the novelty, they jumped on something not yet known and made it mainstream, and had it as an argument to sell and it worked, would that work again once the novelty aspect is gone ? ofc not
same applies to VR sony, take novelty and make it mainstream, they will have a field day for 5 years.
he can flip it how ever he likes, nintendo had an outstanding lack of vision in this, and i really have a bad feeling about the NX, nintendo might as well join sega right now, they are just stretching it out.
 
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I remember way back, when AMD had started shipping their 64bit processors and Far Cry was planning on releasing the 64bit version of their game. A fir number of people were screaming 64 bit was the future and HAHA on Intel who said 64 bit wasn't there yet. it only took what 10+ years for 64bit to finally become the norm? I say 5 more years before VR is consider the new cool thing to have and 7-8 years before it's the norm. I personally don't want any game company to spend any real resources on it before 2020.
 
Nintendo keeps playing it safe but eventually all that happens is you are left behind. I've already felt a lack of need to get a wii-u and this just helps further my feeling that reggie and NOA don't really care.
 
Dalexx said:
I personally don't want any game company to spend any real resources on it before 2020.
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Have you actually tried the Vive in person? My reaction was that flat screen games are becoming stale and the sooner AAA devs get on this the sooner we get a new experience worth paying $60/title for.
 
SixFootDuo said:
How could any company be late to the boat at this point in time? VR consumer units have only been out for a handful of months ... lmao. They ... JUST ... shipped.

And anyone with common sense know's VR is not ready for mainstream. The numbers are very very very low with what's out there. There's no killer software yet to really show-case VR, costs are high, we are first generations. Etc etc etc

Why people won't to ignore these facts to me is just idiotic. People like to Bitch and Moan for know real reason. Even I do it.

VR is very cool. I've tried it a few times.

2nd generation and around $300 - $350 will really help VR.
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What about the 1st generation in the mid 90's? We had consumer VR stuff then that didn't catch on.

I feel we are in the 2nd generation now for consumer VR. Gaming has a much higher following now, so it should increase sales a bit. With costs so high for entry, I don't see it being a whole lot, though.

VR is ready for the mainstream. It's just not affordable for most, and the software needs to catch up.
 
Nintendo doesn't even feel that internet connected consoles are ready for the mainstream, or they would be doing a much better job with the Wii U...
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
Have you actually tried the Vive in person? My reaction was that flat screen games are becoming stale and the sooner AAA devs get on this the sooner we get a new experience worth paying $60/title for.
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Except that they will jack up the price to 120 dollars to cover the costs of developing for a totally new platform.
 
Koolthulu said:
And he is totally right. The average consumer isn't going to spend that kind of crazy money on some goofy looking headgear that gives them motion sickness after a couple of minutes.
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Who cares what the average consumer thinks? Meanwhile the Vive is perpetually sold out.

Has to start somewhere. There will be no "mainstream" version before early adopters and enthusiasts have worked out the kinks and improved on earlier generations of.
 
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Its the newest fad designed to sell unneeded merchandise just like 4k TV or 3D TV. Early adopters will swear its the best thing ever (because they find it hard to admit they were suckered into buying a turd) until people lose interest and the whole thing gets forgotten for 15 years.

It wont be ready until it has full sensory input, you sit or lie down and control things directly with your brain.
 
Tak Ne said:
Its the newest fad designed to sell unneeded merchandise just like 4k TV or 3D TV. Early adopters will swear its the best thing ever (because they find it hard to admit they were suckered into buying a turd) until people lose interest and the whole thing gets forgotten for 15 years.

It wont be ready until it has full sensory input, you sit or lie down and control things directly with your brain.
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TV is an unneeded merchandise.
 
Flogger23m said:
VR is a niche and 90% of all games do it wrong. [...] It's useful for flight sims, worthless for 3rd person action shooters and the like.
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That's what I can't get over. The only FPS I like on the Vive is one where you stand still and shoot around you, but you don't move or walk through the map or anything, and the teleportation mechanic some games add is just odd and makes it a non-fps.

Fallout 4 is coming to the Vive, and if you have to teleport around I'm going laugh, then cry, then play it with a KB&M like a normal civilized human being.
 
Tak Ne said:
Its the newest fad designed to sell unneeded merchandise just like 4k TV or 3D TV. Early adopters will swear its the best thing ever (because they find it hard to admit they were suckered into buying a turd) until people lose interest and the whole thing gets forgotten for 15 years.
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Yep, all those 4K TVs will be collecting dust in people's attics a couple of years from now, when they all go back to good old HD. Uh, what?
 
Ur_Mom said:
What about the 1st generation in the mid 90's? We had consumer VR stuff then that didn't catch on.
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I was in college during that first generation, so I got to try them there. What you saw was a small 4:3 rectangle, like a 14 inch screen floating in a black space about arm's length from your face and with exactly that much sense of depth. I was used to a ViewMaster and I was disappointed that the VR headset did not have as much depth as the ViewMaster did. We ran doom 2 on it, so I guess a sprite based game didn't help. The colors were so washed out that if I got colors like that on an $50 monitor, I'd return it without a second thought. And the screen door effect did not look like a screen door. It looked like an iron bar cage. Seriously, it was as bad as pressing your face against a CRT. It was at least half a foot long and heavy.

Last week I finally got to test a 2nd gen headset. It was an old Oculus model. There is absolutely no comparison. You put the thing on and you are inside a cartoony apartment. There's no screen or edges. You move your head and there's no way to describe it other than you are moving your freaking head. The colors are nice and normal. There is a noticeable screendoor effect but it's more like looking through a mosquito net than through bars. I read that the final model (and the Vive) has higher resolution. I am 100% sure that if I had worn the thing for 10 more minutes, I would have started walking around and crashed against everything in the tiny office. It was so surprisingly light that I can't imagine even the Google cardboard could be lighter.

I personally don't believe that it's going to catch on in the mass market because it's too hard for the common person to find anywhere to try it, and it's too expensive to buy without trying it. However, the previous generation cannot be used to predict the current gen's success because they are not even remotely similar experiences. It's not that the current gen is like the old gen but much better. It's like riding a pig and riding a horse.
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
That's what I can't get over. The only FPS I like on the Vive is one where you stand still and shoot around you, but you don't move or walk through the map or anything, and the teleportation mechanic some games add is just odd and makes it a non-fps.

Fallout 4 is coming to the Vive, and if you have to teleport around I'm going laugh, then cry, then play it with a KB&M like a normal civilized human being.
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It can work for some shooters, like realistic ones (ArmA has full head tracking). It can also work in other first person games, horror games maybe. People seem to think you use VR for aiming or moving. That is not that it is good for. Flight sim, racing sim or other cockpit based games? It makes sense. For a game like Mass Effect, Sleeping Dogs, Dishonored it is worthless.
 
Rev Lemmon said:
Except that they will jack up the price to 120 dollars to cover the costs of developing for a totally new platform.
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Honestly, if I can get some solid immersive hours worth of play out of it, and some replay value beyond that, I'd drop $120. If say the next GTA/Elder Scrolls/Valve title is done just right for VR, I could justify that. There's a lot of "if's" there though.
 
I want a VR tron game. Put me on the grid! let me pilot a tank and shoot at recognizers! let me feel like i'm raiding a computer system and have my user try to cover me. or fuck, a light cycle game! Heck have part of the cockpit screen show the jetwalls nearby.



There has to be more original ideas out there. there just has to be. Nintendo is foolish if they think VR won't become something.
 
Litfod said:
Yep, all those 4K TVs will be collecting dust in people's attics a couple of years from now, when they all go back to good old HD. Uh, what?
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I doubt he was suggesting that people don't use their 4K TVs. More than likely, he's pointing out that people watch much more HD content on them than 4K content (since the 4K offerings are still pretty slim). Most people aren't getting a large benefit from 4K over HD TVs at this point.
 
Flogger23m said:
It can work for some shooters, like realistic ones (ArmA has full head tracking). It can also work in other first person games, horror games maybe. People seem to think you use VR for aiming or moving. That is not that it is good for. Flight sim, racing sim or other cockpit based games? It makes sense. For a game like Mass Effect, Sleeping Dogs, Dishonored it is worthless.
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i dont know what you mean by arma's head tracking but,VR doesn't work with regular FPS, the problem isn't head tracking or aiming, that works great on VR, the problem is movement, you can move forward aim with touch controller and look around with your head, but try moving forward and turning on the side, you get sick, because it throws off your brain, thats why these games like fallout, resident evil etc going for VR will make ppl sick, VR FPS need a complete new model for movement, not necessarily teleportation, you have hover junker and battlezone they are FPS kind of games with movement and work perfectly.
 
Koolthulu said:
And he is totally right. The average consumer isn't going to spend that kind of crazy money on some goofy looking headgear that gives them motion sickness after a couple of minutes.
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You don't say...

Wn0EX9I.jpg
 
viscountalpha said:
I want a VR tron game. Put me on the grid! let me pilot a tank and shoot at recognizers! let me feel like i'm raiding a computer system and have my user try to cover me. or fuck, a light cycle game! Heck have part of the cockpit screen show the jetwalls nearby.



There has to be more original ideas out there. there just has to be. Nintendo is foolish if they think VR won't become something.
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Rebellion made your dream come true i guess! and it's coming to PC too.
 
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I'll skip out on the VR train for games. Unless they give it a Picture in Picture option for VR. I like to watch videos while I game. Would just feel like a huge step backwards from my 3 monitor setup.
 
He's right in the cost perspective and the maturity of the the software. Gotta get the cost of a entire setup to where a base console is now.

We'll probably see VR parlors/ cyber cafes 1st, like we had video arcades back in the 80's, before VR moves into the home. Unless the cost of the tech comes waay down fast and the gpu power to drive it gets really small and efficient in the next few years.
 
When you see Nintendo say that, you have no choice but to :ROFLMAO: . Coming from the company that had R.O.B, the Super Scope 6, the Virtual Boy, the Gameboy Printer & a Santas list of other crap. They sound more pissed than anything else that they are not the ones making the big innovative leap this time around.
 
Steve said:
Am I the only one that was really surprised to hear Reggie Fils-Aime say that VR isn't ready for mainstream consumers? I think most people can agree that VR is just taking off but I was still taken back by Fils-Aime's comments.

Last year at E3, the biggest complaint Nintendo president and CEO Reggie Fils-Aime had about virtual reality was that it simply wasn't fun. That may have changed a bit, because as Fils-Aime told Bloomberg West yesterday, his concern about VR now is about how mass market the tech can be. "In my judgment, I think VR is a bit further out there for mainstream, mass market applications and applications that consumers can invest a lot of time in versus short snacks of entertainment," Fils-Aime said.
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All he would have to say at the end of his message ask Woz :) .
 
I agree with him, and it's also not so surprising. It really isn't ready for mainstream (and my never be),

Even Palmer Lucky (the oculus guy) kind of used to talk that way too, that this first gen of VR is about getting the foot in the door and it'll be a few years before it can hope to be a mass-market thing, but when the hype train and facebook money started rolling he kind of toned that down :p

The fact of the matter is that right now the tech is still too bulky and weird (but not by much), the systems driving it still aren't really powerful enough (but not by much), and other than short "experiences", there's almost no compelling content that's more than a few hours worth of novelty (unless space cockpit sims is the only thing you play).

The operative words being "right now", I absolutely love the idea of VR and totally want it to succeed, and limited though the content is it's shows a lot of potential and some serious innovation in gameplay, but I'll wait for gen 2.
 
viscountalpha said:
Nintendo keeps playing it safe but eventually all that happens is you are left behind. I've already felt a lack of need to get a wii-u and this just helps further my feeling that reggie and NOA don't really care.
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Not sure nintendo is the company to tag the meme 'playing it safe' they have taken several big gambles.
Playing it safe in so me aspects is exactly what they need to do.
A powerful console, yes they need that (I would define that playing it safe, you know follow the market), if they can do more than PS4 that would be great.
Would doing cartridges be gamble, or playing it safe? (I'm really asking, we don't know if they are doing this of course, but I hope they do)
I do agree, their console needs to be powerful enough to support VR, but if I was the big N I would definitively play it safe, and wait for the market to stabilize, and I think 2020 as mentioned previously makes sense.
 
This immediately reminded me of when Blackberry execs said touch screen was a fad.
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
I've definitely been having to take breaks from playing the Vive, it's tiring standing and swinging your arms around for and hour, especially when you're used to a more sedentary lifestyle. Feels great to to take that headset off, sit on the couch, grab a controller and a drink and play on the TV.

But the difference between playing on a screen to playing on a vive is like the difference between playing a board game and then firing up GTA, it's totally worth the extra hassle, there's just a big software vacuum right now, and seeing major software dev's pull back from VR is a shame, but it's a chicken & egg scenario.
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Even for those like me who are very active it becomes tiring quick. Actually those like me are more likely to shun it because we are active on our feet all day, the last thing we want to do to "relax" is run around with a contraption on our head. Don't get me wrong I am not saying the experience isn't cool. I have used new VR extensively testing it out. I'm saying that for the average person the novelty will wear off extremely quickly. I would happily wager that 80% of all the units sold will end up with less than 50 hours invested into them before they are shelved. These will of course be huge at amusement places like dave and busters where people can use them for short periods of time. That all aside there are many industries that VR is going to revolutionize. Gaming just isn't one of them.

5icko said:
This immediately reminded me of when Blackberry execs said touch screen was a fad.
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There is a big difference between improving the average user experience and not fundamentally altering how people use something (touchscreens) and trying to fundamentally change how people use something (VR Gaming). This isn't anything like blackberry making a terrible business decision.
 
Fuzzy_3D said:
I've definitely been having to take breaks from playing the Vive, it's tiring standing and swinging your arms around for and hour, especially when you're used to a more sedentary lifestyle. Feels great to to take that headset off, sit on the couch, grab a controller and a drink and play on the TV.

But the difference between playing on a screen to playing on a vive is like the difference between playing a board game and then firing up GTA, it's totally worth the extra hassle, there's just a big software vacuum right now, and seeing major software dev's pull back from VR is a shame, but it's a chicken & egg scenario.
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I agree. VR will never replace traditional gaming and it shouldn't. They're very different experiences IMO

Something like job simulator, which is really enjoyable in VR, just wouldn't work in a traditional game. And likewise, traditional games... while they might work in VR, wont give you the best experience. I fear that a lot of AAA developers, who aren't sure what the success of VR will be, will end up shoe horning their games to work with an HMD opposed to building experiences from the ground up and leaving people with a less than stellar impression of VR.

For example, while really cool, there is nothing fundamentally different about luckys tale that it needs to be done in VR. You could just as easily sit in front of your TV with a controller in hand and have just as much fun with it. Those kind of gimmick experiences are, IMHO, bad for it.
 
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