While some have said over the years that VR will be the next great medium for entertainment – and that it will replace all current types of games and the ways we watch movies and TV – I think they were dead wrong.
In 1980, years before I was born, a song called “Video to Kill a Radio Star” caused a stir when it was launched along with the new music television channel, known today as MTV. I have suggested more than just that music videos will replace audio-only music, ushering in a new visual age for music.
Over the years, music videos and audio-only music have come to live their own separate lives with apps like YouTube Music (Opens in a new tab) which constantly blur the lines between the two seemingly disparate mediums. Recently TikTok style redesign for Spotify (Opens in a new tab) It further proves that neither the video nor the radio killed each other. They are stronger in coexistence.
Likewise, we won’t see some future where everyone wears a VR headset all the time and only plays VR games. As gaming grows, so do the ways in which people play games. Once upon a time, people only played games on a monitor or TV. These days, anything with a display can play games, and that reality isn’t going to change anytime soon. Virtual reality provides a more physical way to interact with your games, but not everyone wants to move around all the time that’s good.
Zero reasoning error
If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably seen the “don’t you guys have phones?” meme. It originated from BlizzCon 2018 when the developers of Diablo Immortal were booed at the announcement (Opens in a new tab) Immortal was a mobile-only entry in the series.
As if one wing of Activision Blizzard’s massive empire couldn’t develop a mobile-only and PC/console-only version of a storied franchise.
The best part is they all have phones, and most likely – based on the money Activision Blizzard got from the game – have all played Diablo Immortal. Now, we’re dealing with Diablo IV, a “proper” entry in the series that fans are already starting to enjoy on their PC and consoles.
It is this zero-sum thinking that kills the discourse in the video game industry and, ultimately, causes so much conflict where none actually exists. In economic terms, a zero-sum game is a game in which a win for one party is a direct loss for the other.
It is a series of political tribal antics that claim that there are only a finite number of seats of power in the gaming world and that your favorite video game company has to have the most seats to win it.
The video game industry is big enough to accommodate different tastes in gaming without affecting the success of others.
Wake-up call: There’s no ceiling here. We can all play and have fun. The only winners are the gamers – who are having more fun than ever before – and the developers who can keep making the games they love because of all the new opportunities.
Virtual reality offers a new way to be physically engaged and more active by being in the game. Just as handheld game consoles or smartphones allow gamers to play games on the go, VR gives gamers another way to play a game that is different than just sitting on the couch. But it’s also okay if you are Just You want to sit on the sofa. This is why traditional games aren’t going anywhere.
So why am I talking about this now? This week, a new study came out, as CNBC reported (Opens in a new tab) Editorially, it means that teens are “not interested in virtual reality” because only 4% of them play it daily.
So I posted it on Twitter and got a lot of comments.
With so many ways to play games these days, does *anyone* use any piece of hardware every single day? Another stupid, meaningless metric used to distort virtual reality. https://t.co/KocZZJsflVApril 5, 2023
Responses run the gamut from people completely uneducated about Quest’s success (Opens in a new tab) (And the fact that it’s been beating Xbox Series X|S since both systems debuted) To the Xbox fans who somehow accuse me of being a Sony fan because I support VR and everything in between.
It’s an amazing thread that ate up most of my morning and made me realize just how deep this kind of zero-sum thinking can go.
Once again, it feels as though the demise of virtual reality — be it meta itself or the entire medium — will somehow open up a new era of dominance for games played on a two-dimensional screen.
But that’s not how it works.
history of growth
The graphic above is an old one from an article I posted a year ago, but it makes a good point. Some people will look at this graph and just see the idea that their color wins.
Good for you, I hope you enjoy the false sense of success you get by being an armchair quarterback.
However, for the rest of us, the above graph means one thing: gaming keeps growing, and the thing we love to spend our time with is getting bigger, better, and more diverse than ever.
Games continue to grow, becoming bigger, better, and more diverse than ever before.
Case in point, let’s look at console sales (Opens in a new tab) In the early days:
While we can get into the weeds and have many conversations about trends in the chart above, I’d like to focus on the most important column: the total number of players.
As each generation progresses and a new competitor enters, a particular company may sell more or less than the other but the number of people buying consoles only increases as competition increases. More options mean more fields are taken up, and as a result, more people want to spend money on games built by developers who love to tell stories and push the medium forward as art.
More options means more players, and therefore more games. Just try to enjoy them instead of fighting about it, okay?
The same goes for virtual reality, mobile gaming, mobile gaming, or any niche or segment you want to break into the market. No matter how many people buy one system or play one type of game regularly, the rest of the medium doesn’t suffer from it.
Just because there are 6.5 billion smartphones (Opens in a new tab) Their use in the world does not mean that no one plays games on TV or computer anymore. Just because the PlayStation sells more than the Xbox doesn’t mean you can still enjoy the next Halo game.
People will play games on the device that makes the most sense to them at the moment. Unique experiences like virtual reality headsets and dedicated gaming phones (Opens in a new tab) Offer more opportunities, not less.
As the old saying goes: “Can’t we all get along”?
Forget the “metaverse” and try some great VR games on Quest 2, the easiest and most affordable way to play the best VR games out there.