To clarify in advance, I am not posting this as a stab at VR, these dudes seem to have serious fun, even though they look seriously funny as well.
I never understood why some people dislike something they clearly know nothing about, then get on the chat boards and make stuff up. ... That's a complete VR kit with headset and controllers for about the same cost as a good monitor, keyboard and mouse.
... 26 million VR headsets were sold in 2020 alone. Claiming it's anything less than the future of gaming is silly.
Monitor/keyboard/mouse are ubiquitous and are always needed, they are not (at least not yet) replaced completely by a VR set. So I do not think the money comparison offers much. The VR set cost should be reasoned about separately.
Personally for me VR is not the future because I do not want something that completely detaches me from reality. I still want to have visual and audio cues from the real world when gaming or doing anything else online.
I would be sceptical about VR being the future, at least in its current form because, even though it has been a mature technology for some time now, it would have already taken over/be ubiquitous by now.
You can get a monitor for cheap. You can get a mouse and keyboard for cheap, if not free when you buy a computer.
I'm referring to the fact that, as gamers, we generally spend a quite a bit of extra money on a nice gaming monitor, gaming mouse and keyboard... as much as a VR headset. Spending hundreds of dollars to game on a flat screen isn't somehow better than spending hundreds of dollars on a VR headset, which is in essence a nice gaming screen and controllers.
Most new VR headsets use headphones that hover over the ear about a half inch to an inch away from your ear. You can also see down the nose a bit if you really wanted to, but they all have external cameras that allow you to see the "real world" if it bugs you that much.
That said, your odd gaming quirk about being detached from reality while gaming doesn't invalidate the idea that it's the future. That's just an odd hang-up that you have with gaming.
I would say that VR going from a couple hundred thousand units sold in 2016 to 26 million sold last year alone makes it pretty ubiquitous. It went from "neat tech" to over 25 million units sold annually in a 5 year period of time and is expected to keep growing.
And... at the end of the day, any MMO that can get a million or two purchases is a success, and that's almost guaranteed to happen if the MMO is a well built VR game.
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I'm referring to the fact that, as gamers, we generally spend a quite a bit of extra money on a nice gaming monitor, gaming mouse and keyboard... as much as a VR headset. Spending hundreds of dollars to game on a flat screen isn't somehow better than spending hundreds of dollars on a VR headset, which is in essence a nice gaming screen and controllers.
Most new VR headsets use headphones that hover over the ear about a half inch to an inch away from your ear. You can also see down the nose a bit if you really wanted to, but they all have external cameras that allow you to see the "real world" if it bugs you that much.
That said, your odd gaming quirk about being detached from reality while gaming doesn't invalidate the idea that it's the future. That's just an odd hang-up that you have with gaming.
I would say that VR going from a couple hundred thousand units sold in 2016 to 26 million sold last year alone makes it pretty ubiquitous. It went from "neat tech" to over 25 million units sold annually in a 5 year period of time and is expected to keep growing.
And... at the end of the day, any MMO that can get a million or two purchases is a success, and that's almost guaranteed to happen if the MMO is a well built VR game.