Betamax was proprietary to Sony, whereas VHS was gleefully licensed to anyone as much as asking it. Technically, Betamax was superior (and it actually became the professional standard for analog video) but Sony’s intent to keep the home market for itself eventually lost it as everybody and their uncle was manufacturing VHS devices, whcih in turn gave a wide market for VHS tapes, combined with the rent system that allowed people to see as many films as they wanted without actually buying the tapes. All this made VHS widely prevalent.
BTW, the ones who got REALLY shafted, were those who betted on Video 2000…
Also: there was a project for high definition VHS or D-VHS. This is promotional film and it’s kinda eerie to see high definition content recorded in 1993:
The porn industry went to VHS because the production cost were lower on VHS than Betamax. Porn was a rather large market segment back then so it did give a rather large boost to the VHS side. IIRC, porn was supposed to go on HD-DVD but this did not matter in the last home video media battle because it was a much less large market since everybody and their uncle use the internet for porn now.
i’d like to point out that, despite making everyone believe it, VR does not require a superbeefy machine. This is a marketing thing, adressing the same target audience that identifies with their machines, the horse power and shiny graphics.
if you remove the shiny, you can fknd out that there are a lot of games out there, even in 3d, that easily scale to the necessary resolution and framerate. the industry is mostly holding itself back right now and lack of (widely known) options is what keeps it down.
The biggest issue for me with VR is strapping a heavy box to my face and burning my goddam retinas.
Could you imagine this ever making it to Eve?
This screen 2 inches from your eyes, waiting 2 hours for the FC to get off his hole and launch the fleet?
There is such a small selection of games that make this worthwhile, but nothing that deserves a $1500 pc and 700$ facehugger.
Don’t get me wrong, it is really cool. That first time i tried it and loaded up the vr space station tour, i was just drooling and muttering “spaeeece”
Plenty of people play in VR for 4 hours plus without much eye fatigue or motion sickness issues. VR is especially awesome in racing sims. Not to ment Elite Dangerous supports VR as well. As far as from the ground up AAA VR games they’re coming. VR has only been out for a year so in about a year we should see more, and better games that at least support it.
That’s not correct in general. It is correct for all those games who offer nothing but shiny. Then yes, if you remove the shiny then all you have left is a bad experience. It’s possibly also correct for all those who have lost their imagination and now depend on graphics to enjoy games, which means they actually significantly downgraded, because they miss out on thousands of good games out there.
The generalization doesn’t stand. There are way too many games out there for such a claim to hold and a great amount of them surpasses what The Big Ones offer in terms of gameplay and replayability.
The same is valid for VR. Gameplay > Graphics, unless you’ve lost all imagination.
Sadly untrue. If your game isn’t hyper-realistic you’re dismissed. Heck even SW:TOR gets called “cartoony”. I’ll admit that these days I need a minimum level of graphical capability. I have some dear friends still playing in a Neverwinter Nights persistent world and I just can’t deal with it.
VR is at least one generation away from mass-market viability and that generation had better be revolutionary. AR won’t become a thing until the equipment is no more irritating than a pair of sunglasses.
Years ago, the industry went for shiny graphics, because the game lacked interesting gameplay. Eventually people noticed that, but the trend never stopped. it ruined your imagination and pushed the treshhold, which means you lose out on a lot of fun.
We’re both right, but you’re talking about how it is a necessity, else no onewill care. that’s not true at all! There’s Steam i use to back up my words, with lots of indy games being far superior in terms of gameplay, while at the same time lacking great graphics.
a personal note, seriously, force yourself away from this and you’ll be much happier in the long run. your “sadly untrue” tells me that you’d love not being restricted by graphics.
For a lot of players, those Indy tile don’t really have that good game play either but since they don’t have the graphic card to play at the same time, their market remains smalls. Like it or not, if you want the industry to go forward, you will need the behemoth to shove their weight around.
hm. graphics as an extension to an imaginary status symbol, linked to the graphics card and horse power of the machine the (possibly insecure) gamer owns.
Yeah, sure, but the reasons why they think so, are important. regarding dwarf fortress, or mine craft even more so, there’s actually a big overlap between people who care about graphics and people who don’t. vOv so even for graphics “enthusiasts” its not necessarily a killer when it looks “simple” or not “AAA”.
i’m still waiting for a game which you play with a headset on, which is mostly dark (think: horror) and only works because of the atmosphere. or something close enough. it’ll happen eventually, hopefully putting the silly idea of high performance machines being a requirement for VR to an end.
that’s all i was trying to point out. there is no absolute requirement dictating that people need superfast machines for it to work. it’s just the industry repeating this message over and over again.
I am surprised in CCP investing in such a blue sky venture. The reality of the market is that VR is unpopular - It’s expensive, It’s clunky, it looks ridiculous and It’s graphically inferior (which is a huge impact on the believability of the virtual world). Even investment by some of the world’s biggest companies has failed to shake this image.
As an unpopular platform, I find myself astonished that CCP would deliberately choose to target a fraction of such a small market, particularly given lessons learned from Dust514. There can be little value other than experience to be gained even from successful titles while unsuccessful ones may cripple the company’s finances. Experience itself is not necessarily a useful acquisition either as it can be headhunted by larger studios entering the market should it prove successful. A far more sound rationale would be to wait until the market is showing green shoots before investing.
There really is little reason that an independent studio should want to invest all of its available capital into a single blue sky market. Placing all of one’s eggs into one basket is a gamble, but when the basket is made of newspaper and the rain pours down one really has to question the sanity of the decision.
What else are they supposed to do? They know that Eve will not last them forever. By all rights it should have been dead 10 years ago.
Of course they could do what everyone else does, make yet another F2P Moba, or something with Tanks and Ships and Airplanes, and compete with the gaming industry behemoths out there, but where’s the fun in that? Adapting new technologies is what drives PC Gaming as a whole forward, and what allows a relatively small player like CCP to make a place for themselves. It’s risky, true, but where there’s no risk, there’s no reward.
Let’s say that Hilmar is very very, VERY interested in VR and so he was glad to see the prototype of Valkyrie. He wants CCP to spearhad the VR market, which would be good for everyone if that market was a real and lasting one… if it was.
Given the CEO’s track record, I would say CCP is betting on the wrong thing. People will simply not wear something that large on their face. The tech is likely at least 5 years away from being good enough to miniaturize the headset down to comfortable goggles.
Whether CCP can survive that long relying on Eve is an interesting question.
