Take Two CEO Says Gaming Isn't Ready For VR
During an interview with Bloomberg TV, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick provided his opinion about virtual reality and gaming, saying that the latter isn't really ready for the former. He indicated that the company was concerned that gamers will likely play Take Two titles for hours upon hours using a VR solution and become nauseated. Naturally, no publisher wants their game associated with vomiting.
"Having had the experience, I'm not sure how long you want an immersive headset on your head," he told Bloomberg. "We'll find out. I will say this. If that's what consumers want, we'll be first in line to give it to them."
The experience Zelnick mentioned was a VR solution provided by Microsoft. He said that the characters appeared to be real, and that the whole experience in interacting with these virtual individuals was "extraordinary."
Zelnick indicated that Take Two would rather be a "fast follower" and doesn't plan to jump on the virtual reality bandwagon any time soon. In fact, Zelnick admitted that he's rather comfortable letting other people and companies dump money into research and development.
Is gaming ready for virtual reality? We'll find out once the VR headsets begin to hit the market. I've toyed with the Oculus Rift a number of times, and each encounter was better than the last. The first demo centered on a virtual castle designed by Epic Games, and the second was a wilderness demo that had me chasing butterflies.
Did I feel any nausea? Not really. Then again, these were controlled events. In another demo, I interacted with NPCs in Half-Life 2, which was a real blast. That was technically my first gaming experience with the Rift, and I'm all ready for another dose when Oculus Rift and other solutions hit the streets.
That all said, is gaming ready for virtual reality? Based on my experience, it could be. However, we'll have to see what happens when these VR solutions hit the market. What do you think?
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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mamasan2000 And a VR-set needs decent amount of frames. I bet it is even more nauseating trying to play something at 30 fps.Reply -
universal remonster @mamasan2000 - That is absolutely correct. I actually just sold my Rift DK2 on eBay after using it for a couple months. A couple of the Unreal Engine 4 demos available were pretty taxing on my GPU dragging frames down to 30 or lower and it definitely caused some headache/eye fatigue issues. One the other hand, Code Masters released a Rift support patch for Grid Autosport which was a really nice experience because it ran well over 60fps. 75fps is what Oculus wants people to aim for and from looking in CCC was also the refresh rate of the screen. My biggest complaint with the Rift is the 100 degree viewing from side to side, which is not quite wide enough to encompass your peripheral vision so it kinda has black bars on the side. (Though this wasn't the case vertically). Also, the resolustion was lacking even at 1080p because your eyeball is so close to the screen, but the new Crystal Cove kit (and upcoming consumer version) has added a higher res screen (1440p?) and hopefully looks better.Reply -
Neverdyne I would argue that it's not so much that games aren't ready for VR, or that the headset isn't ready, but that the human input interfaces aren't ready. For VR to truly become what we all dream of, you need a way to make waving your hand in real life translate to waving your hand in game, and the technology to do that is still in a bad place (i.e. Kinect).Reply -
Alec Mowat Should be "Take Two CEO isn't ready for Gaming"Reply
Don't you have some patches to be working on? Like BE? -
mamasan2000 @ NeverdyneReply
http://www.cnet.com/news/hand-exoglove-lets-you-touch-a-virtual-world/
http://controlvr.com/
Theres others as well. -
Haravikk The problem is going to be that awkward transition where not enough gamers have a VR headset, which means that games will still need to be designed primarily for a TV or monitor. This means the VR experience won't be as good as it could be unless programmers are dedicated to developing it.Reply
It's also not suited to many games; for example first person shooters ought to be pretty cool, provided the controls are still good, but third person games are going to be harder to get right.
I dunno; I'm still hopeful for VR, but it's not as simple as just rendering two copies of the scene from two angles to get the 3d effect, which means it requires proper develop to really get right.
It's kind of like motion tracking games, though I do think there's more appeal for VR, but when Microsoft dropped Kinnect from the Xbox One they basically just relegated it to the same difficulties it had on the 360, which is that no-one wants to develop Kinnect only games because they limit their audience, and other games can't really be bothered investing the effort to properly integrate it alongside traditional controls; so you ended up with games adding weak voice command implementations and not much else.
But yeah, while VR may not be easy to add, it's hopefully easier than motion controls, and there's much more appeal to feeling like you're in the game than being able to wave your arms around clumsily, I think, though in future we may have both :) -
clonazepam Hopefully, VR doesn't get in the way of traditional game development. When designing a game, the first thoughts shouldn't have anything to do with VR. Movies designed for 3D tend to have gimmicky scenes just to utilize the 3D effect. I would hate to see cheap, uninspired games born solely to take advantage of any VR craze.Reply
I'll adopt VR if it seems worthwhile to do so, but I'm not holding my breath.