Nintendo President says VR is not fun

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I wouldn't want to have VR as it is now. Admittedly, I wouldn't mind having it but it shouldn't become a standard for all video games. Just MMOs. I think they'd be more fun that way, and plus we can pretty much look like what we want to. Unless it's so that our character would still look somewhat like us regardless of whatever race we may pick. Which I'd still be all right with.

While I don't disagree with you, I certainly wouldn't compare it to the Dreamcast. DC's library is HUGE, and has the best great:garbage quality ratio of any videogame library out there.

As a side note, you can play almost every Game Gear title on the GBA if you have a flash cart B) It feels pretty dirty.

The comparison is based on third party support. A lot of companies (most notably Electronic Arts) didn't make games for the Dreamcast because of the difficulties they had with the Saturn.

I love the DC anyway and in some ways EA's absence works in its favour because it forced Sega to come up with brilliant alternatives like Metropolis Street Racer and the NFL games (way ahead of anything EA were doing at the time).

Actually that's not why EA boycotted Dreamcast.
EA demanded that Sega kill their then 2K sports line and any other titles that directly competed with EA's offerings, in order to get EA support.
EA also demanded some money and marketing support.
Sega rejected EA demands and the rest is history.

EA pulled the same demands on Microsoft and Nintendo, which both agreed to EA's demands (though Nintendo would eventually pull the plug due to the expense near the end of GC)

The only other major console developers at the time that skipped Dreamcast was Konami (Was never a big supporter of Sega), Square and Enix (Square and Enix ignored all Sega systems to date).

EA alone didn't kill Dreamcast.

Sony announced on 9/9/99 (NA DC launch) that PS2 would produce Pixar level graphics, have a full functional DVD player built in and launching next year.
By year's end, Sony began the PS2's marketing campaign in order to kill Dreamcast.
Sony also paid third parties to be exclusive to PS2 and threatened them for supporting other hardware.

Also in the West, Walmart and other major retailers refused to stock Dreamcast and it's games, after Sega didn't support at Saturn's launch.

Oh many of the video rental places wouldn't stock Dreamcast games either...

By the end of 2001, Sega was literally running out of cash, so they killed the Dreamcast to avoid insolvency.

The combined effect lead to Dreamcast failure

Off the top of my head, I know that Silent Scope was on the DC, and DDR, and of course they were planning an exclusive CastleVania. I'm sure I could find more if I searched.

I actually did do a quick search on Enix though, and this is pretty amusing: http://eu.square-enix.com/en/games?noco ... =new&p=334



That's a laugh =)

I've been playing games in VR for some time with the second Oculus Rift development kit. It's really great, though it really requires a certain type of game design. Not everything that works on a TV/monitor works well in VR (ie. parkour Mirror's Edge style games). Conversely there are certain games that make way more sense in VR than on a flat monitor (ie. racing and space games).

This is independent of how big your screen or resolution is; a huge screen can't match the immersion of even a low resolution HMD for an experience such as checking your six in a warzone in Elite: Dangerous or peeking between the crates you're hiding behind to see if the Xenomorph is still in the room in Alien Isolation. Even really old games retrofitted with VR like Doom or Quake 2 become incredibly immersive when they're not just things on a screen, but project a world around you (Doom particularly is surprisingly scary in VR and regularly makes me yell in fright).

That Nintendo wouldn't be pursuing VR is no surprise as for a long time they've not been looking to sell high end hardware. It would also not be a great fit for their IPs overall. Starfox and Mario Kart would be great in VR; Mario Kart Wii is already a great experience in VR using emulation. But most of their IPs are based around controlling a character in third person, with the exception of Metroid Prime which was commercially unsuccessful, and Splatoon.

Nintendo has never made and sold high end hardware, except for N64.

NES was blown out of the water by Sega Master System and other lesser competitors
SNES was weaker than NeoGeo, TG-16, Sega CDX, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive (it's processor was twice as fast and stronger in other aspects)
N64 was more powerful than every console on the market and most PCs too for a year.
Gamecube is still seen as having weaker specs than PS2 and Xbox
Wii was weaker than PS3 and 360
Wii U is weaker than PS4 and XO

Gameboy was weaker than all of it's competitors by far
Gameboy Color was also weaker by far
Gameboy Advance was weaker than WonderSwan, NeoGeo portable, N-Gage, and few others
DS was significantly weaker than PSP and iPhone
3DS is significantly weaker than Vita and iPhone 4s and up

I think Nintento's still sore after the Virtualboy failure..

Well they did lose a nice penny on it.
Actually they were forced to withdraw it from market due to regulators in Europe, U.S. and Japan due to consumers stating it was making them sick and giving them headaches.
It wasn't worth being taken to court over.

To get good VR, you need a high end spec'd computer and an headset with near top of the line components.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/15/86120 ... nded-specs

The PC specs required to get full VR from Oculus Rift costs well over $1,000+ on top of the $350 for the current DK2 (not for consumers).

To get the full experience you are looking at paying out $1,500 to $2,000+ for solitary experience (just operating one Rift).
Don't forget to make sure your PC has enough specs to play both the VR and the VR game in full graphic fidelity and frame rate (you need significantly more power to run 2 RIfts at the same time).

Sony's Project Morpheus ever makes it to market you will probably be paying over $1,000 for all the gear required

The requirements for Project Morpheus PS4:

*PS4 (currently $400)
*PS4 Camera $60 (Required for PS Move)
*PS Move (Required controller) $40
*PS Move Navigation Controller (analog sticks) $30 (if required for the game)
*Morpheus should come in between $400 - $700, depending on how much processing power Sony puts in it (PS4 really isn't spec'd out for VR) and whether or not Sony wants to sell it at a loss or profit.

Congratulations you just spent $900 - $1,500 for the full PS4 experience (PS4 can only can use 1 Morpheus currently due to processing power), no game included!

Oculus has deep pockets of it's Facebook master.
Sony has ~100,000 employees a crossed 25 divisions, easily able to use most parts a cross all the divisions letting it being able to absorb the cost of VR.
Microsoft has ~90,000 employees across it's 3 division, $90B in the bank, and $12B-$16B just from Windows and MS Office, allowing to sink money where ever it wants.



Nintendo on the other hand has ~5,200 employees, no true divisions (just internal teams and international branches), $10B in the bank... This means they cannot eat costs of doing VR at the current market rates.


Oh there is no guarantee that VR will get significant mass market penetration with good chances of it becoming niche in its current form (mainly with enthusiasts and certain business fields).
Also there is a very good chance that most developers will ignore VR until it proves it can sell software.

I think your prices are a bit off. I just made a small form factor PC that is fully VR ready for a family member. It cost $1490 to make in Australian dollars, and in some ways is over the recommended specs and has extra hardware features not necessary for VR (ie. integrated wireless and bluetooth, liquid cooling for quieter operation over the stock cpu cooler, solid state drive). The pricing for the parts in the US, which I'm assuming you're basing your values on is $1076. Without those extras it could probably go down to about $950-1000. By the time consumer hardware comes out I would assume these prices would be even cheaper. That would put the total price, with HMD at about $1350-1400, assuming the cost of an HMD to be about $400.

Completed build pictured below

https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/ (Parts actually used slightly different, CPU cooler and SSD are different as the brands I used were not listed).

It's based on the new graphics cards which are recommended (which Nvidia is advertising and developers are designing around).
Either way it is way too expensive for the consumer market, especially when consumers pay less than $400 for their PCs.
Though business and education also regularly buy cheap PCs as well to save money.

In the end VR is still too expensive...

They need to get VR below $700 with HMD and PC specs included before it has a mass market chance.
Though I am still expecting it to follow other 3D tech to the 3D graveyard.