Nintendo Switch

[revlob]

Some very clever people like Luckey, Abrash, and Carmack, all worked out what it would take to make VR a 'thing'; the tech required to deliver true presence, at a price which would put it within reach of a large enough audience. I think they got the tech right, but the price of entry is still several times more than it needs to be for it to foster a healthy market of interest. I think OR and the Rift are a few years too early. I think PSVR will be too early too. VR will be a thing one day, but not yet.

[Stolly]

I'm a dad and, although I'm not yet a granddad, both of my daughters are old enough to sprog so theoretically I could be. What I need to know is what dad games I should be playing?

 

As for the NX, that mock up on the previous page looks awful. Don't get me wrong I'd love to play the same game on the TV and handheld but I really don't want to look a plonker while doing it. The same goes for VR but with knobs on.

 

Not at my age anyway...

[scottcr]

12 minutes ago, dood said:

I want to get scottcr round my house for some Oculus time. 

 

I've used it a few times... there's no doubting it's really very cool. 

 

There's also no doubting that if I got one, I'd end up with a divorce and dying in a horrific car accident.

 

I agree with revlob, the cost of entry is just beyond normal punters and VR is still perceived as something nerds do... probably to watch porn.  

 

This is why I think the revoluion will come when they are remote based devices where the main use case is *social interaction* and not gaming.  That's why Facebook invested so heavily.  When I can have a group chat with my pals in some kind of virtual 'zone' - or meet up with family in a similar way... with 3d scanned avatars and real time face movements and do all this by shoving on my headset and having it remote connect to my phone.... then it'll be massive.

[scottcr]

in fact, all I want it a tap switch on the leg of my glasses that turns them semi-opaque and into a lightweight VR helmet... I'm sure some some clever vision tricks and shaped glasses could also remove peripheral vision.  

[scottcr]

1 hour ago, Cyhwuhx said:

it's as of yet culturally unacceptable to walk around with a headset

this is going to be a very difficult thing to over-come.  People simply didn't trust folks with google-glass.  Especially as it could mean either that person could be filming you without you knowing or watching some LOLs on youtube.  I dare say this kind of things is the kind of attitudinal change that can take a generation.

 

Anyway, I've often said that I can't wait to be an old bastard stuck in an old folks care home.  Right now, the most entertainment they get is a pack of cards and a telly permanently stuck on channel 5. 

 

When we're all old bastards, we'll get plugged into a special chair with a bucket under it for shite, a tube for pish and another tube for sustenance.  Strapped into a haptic feedback suit with a top of the range VR helmet on... and left to wander around in whatever virtual world we want till we croak.  Family will visit remotely by interrupting us from our (ahem) adventures to say hello... Sounds fucking brilliant!  

[Cyhwuhx]

2 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

I don't even know what to say to this 

 

Hey, remember when the tech press were talking up those consumer 3D printers a few years ago as the next big thing? "It's just early days, soon we'll all have fabricators in our homes!".  That was a technology that had existed since the mid-80s, prototyped by businesses and academia, now was it's time to shine, it was becoming cheap enough to be democratised! Those companies were getting IPOs and acquisitions in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. Sound familiar?

 

Those companies went bankrupt and laid off most their employees, the tech press doesn't talk about them anymore.

 

You may want to read this.

 

[edit] To add to this, you seem confused on the point that for a technology to be successful it needs to be in the consumer space. People may wish that, but often that requires a completely different set of requirements. For instance, HTC Vive roomscale VR is currently the best set-up, but only if you live in a Kinect-compatible Standardised American Living Room™. In the case of 3D printing, you get a vastly less intensive process to create 3D shapes. That doesn't mean every home should as of yet have one to print random 3D objects. It could however mean that a shop/library will gain a Samsung-endorse printing point to make quick repairs. But even that is some time off. Nothing happens instantaneously. If it would, something like graphene would've given us interstellar mecha wars by this point in time.

[Cyhwuhx]

35 minutes ago, scottcr said:

this is going to be a very difficult thing to over-come.  People simply didn't trust folks with google-glass.  Especially as it could mean either that person could be filming you without you knowing or watching some LOLs on youtube.  I dare say this kind of things is the kind of attitudinal change that can take a generation.

 

Anyway, I've often said that I can't wait to be an old bastard stuck in an old folks care home.  Right now, the most entertainment they get is a pack of cards and a telly permanently stuck on channel 5. 

 

When we're all old bastards, we'll get plugged into a special chair with a bucket under it for shite, a tube for pish and another tube for sustenance.  Strapped into a haptic feedback suit with a top of the range VR helmet on... and left to wander around in whatever virtual world we want till we croak.  Family will visit remotely by interrupting us from our (ahem) adventures to say hello... Sounds fucking brilliant!  

 

Could be pretty fast. Most people were anti-mobile phones in 2000. Not having a mobile phone now practically makes you a fourth-world citizen.

[RubberJohnny]

I don't know, if some of us are saying "this will flop and people will stop making games for it" and other people are saying "yes, but in another five or ten years we might try again and the current stuff will look as outdated as the Virtual Boy does today", aren't we basically all in agreement that it's going to do badly?

 

Like I kind of don't get your actual disagreement.

[scottcr]

I don't know anyone who was anti-mobile in 2000... and besides, that was 16 years ago.

 

Sure - before the providers sorted out how to scam customers into paying for expensive handsets over long periods of time and pretending it was some kind of 'tariff', then they were clearly a status symbol... but then it was clearly a small thing, easily used outside and *very very* useful.  People wanted one.  If anything, they were just a bit jealous that they couldn't afford one.

 

Anyone walking around the streets with a VR helmet on will make you look like a prize prick.

[scottcr]

I'm not anti-vr... I just think it's killer app for mass adoption is a while away yet.  And it will involve small things that don't intrude so much in normal life, don't make you look like a total arseblanket and will almost certainly not be gaming.  It'll be social and portable, just like the mobile.

[Cyhwuhx]

9 minutes ago, scottcr said:

Anyone walking around the streets with a VR helmet on will make you look like a prize prick.

 

This will never happen; that's what AR and MR are for. The problem with those two currently is that people are sensitive to privacy (well, physical objects invading privacy, nobody cares about what happens with their data for some reason, just click OK).

[RubberJohnny]

26 minutes ago, Cyhwuhx said:

[edit] To add to this, you seem confused on the point that for a technology to be successful it needs to be in the consumer space. People may wish that, but often that requires a completely different set of requirements. For instance, HTC Vive roomscale VR is currently the best set-up, but only if you live in a Kinect-compatible Standardised American Living Room™. In the case of 3D printing, you get a vastly less intensive process to create 3D shapes. That doesn't mean every home should as of yet have one to print random 3D objects. It could however mean that a shop/library will gain a Samsung-endorse printing point to make quick repairs. But even that is some time off. Nothing happens instantaneously. If it would, something like graphene would've given us interstellar mecha wars by this point in time.

 

I think you miss that consumer technology gets adopted by the mainstream because it's social, we're social animals, interested in new social activities or interactions - cars meant you could visit far away friends and relatives, people enjoyed listening to the wireless together, or getting around the TV, landlines meant you could speak to them, mobile meant you could be reached more often. The first videogames were arcades, in pubs or built around same room multiplayer.

 

People aren't interested in "technology" in general outside of a nerdy niche. What does 3D printing do that's social? What does a smartwatch do?

 

AR is social, just look at Pokemon Go, but VR involves locking yourself off from the world, it's going to have much more of a hill to climb.

[Harsin]

17 minutes ago, Cyhwuhx said:

 

Could be pretty fast. Most people were anti-mobile phones in 2000.

 

They really, really weren't.

[Cyhwuhx]

20 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

I think you miss that consumer technology gets adopted by the mainstream because it's social, we're social animals, interested in new social activities or interactions - cars meant you could visit far away friends and relatives, people enjoyed listening to the wireless together, landlines meant you could speak to them, mobile meant you could be reached more often. The first videogames were arcades, in pubs or build around same room multiplayer.

 

People aren't interested in "technology" in general outside of a nerdy niche. What does 3D printing do that's social? What does a smartwatch do?

 

AR is social, just look at Pokemon Go, but VR involves locking yourself off from the world, it's going to have much more of a hill to climb.

 

This is the kind of stuff I don't get on a forum like Rllmuk, you're basically saying the same things, parents were saying about video games in the 80s and 90s. You don't lock yourself off from the world, you enter another, that's the entire point. Like books, music, games, etc.

 

People don't always understand how tech can be social or help them to start with. The mobile phone thing I was alluding to is a well-known video in the Netherlands were people around the turn of the century are asked about whether or not they want a mobile phone. Just about everyone answers it negatively, nobody knows what to do with it, nobody can anticipate the added benefit of communication.

 

3D printing might not be an end goal in itself, it might just be a part to make a production chain better. Using it as an example of things going wrong is similar to hyping yourself up for No Man's Sky and then being surprised at it being Proteus in Space like how it was initially presented. Hype is just that, hype. It similar to writing off the Apple Watch as a failed product, while it is a necessary step to start tapping into a physiological API, which is a far more important thing than just having notifications on your wrist (but that's the thing that makes it 'useful' at the moment).

 

You're completely correct in that people aren't interested in technology, but that doesn't mean that if people aren't interested the technology has failed. Often it hasn't even started by that point and is still in an experimental phase. Not everyone is an early adopter.

 

ANYWAY…

 

To get slightly back on topic, if the NX manages to finally consolidate digital libraries (from 3DS and WiiU) I can see myself swapping over to it completely, disregarding other consoles as I enjoy a portable device for gaming on the go, but really would like to play certain games on the big screen. Current example: I love Odin's Sphere, but buying both the PSV and PS4 version is overkill. Being able to 'cast' the portable version to the big screen would be great.

 

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that recycling hardware over 3 generations (GC/Wii/WiiU) means that backwards compatibility might be incredibly easy (see also the Dolphin emulator), potentially allowing them to dodge Sony's Lovecraftian hardware horror stories.

 

[edit] Completely skipped this one, but Pokémon Go is about the worst example of AR out there (turn it off and nothing changes about the game, even Snapchat filters are more interesting). Granted though, it did make the term a household concept. Pokémon Go is much better as an example of location based gaming becoming popular in ways that Ingress could've never hoped to attain.

[RubberJohnny]

1 hour ago, Cyhwuhx said:

This is the kind of stuff I don't get on a forum like Rllmuk, you're basically saying the same things, parents were saying about video games in the 80s and 90s. You don't lock yourself off from the world, you enter another, that's the entire point. Like books, music, games, etc.

 

No one pretends books or listening to music alone are social. I don't think people ever made anthropological points about how videogames would lose the mainstream back then? Look, I like big virtual worlds, but I can recognise there's nothing social about the Witcher 3.

 

And games back then did lose the mainstream audience they had with bars and ended up with a nerdy niche who do just like technology, until Wii, which brought back party social interaction. Like you kind of just proved my point about technology only getting the mainstream if it's social.

 

Quote

You're completely correct in that people aren't interested in technology, but that doesn't mean that if people aren't interested the technology has failed. Often it hasn't even started by that point and is still in an experimental phase. Not everyone is an early adopter.

 

You're kinda dodging the question I asked on the last page about what's the difference between me saying VR flopped and you saying people aren't interested but some other stuff might happen in the future, when they're both the same point in regarding PSVR and Oculus and Vive and what we're actually talking about?

[scottcr]

50 minutes ago, Cyhwuhx said:

 

[edit] Completely skipped this one, but Pokémon Go is about the worst example of AR out there (turn it off and nothing changes about the game

 

You've obviously never played PG with young kids then... They absolutely love seeing Pokemon appear in the real world.

[mushashi]

6 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

Considering they only sold mid-to-low six figures in the first place, I don't think there's even a million devices out there yet.

 

Which would be perfectly in line with Facebook's expectations for it at this point in time, they only forecast it to sell >1 Million in the first year (400K being the target according to a report citing a former employee). Only the deluded would think the first commercial iteration would fly off the shelves at $600+, its a long game play for Facebook, not a 100 metre dash.

 

Quote

Oculus “would almost certainly be a rounding error inside of Facebook for now,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, who said he’s not estimating sales yet. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, called Facebook’s investment in Oculus a “non-event in 2016.” He expects them to sell a few hundred thousand units at a loss.

 

You mention AR, something which has been around for years already as the new hotness, which kinda disproves your own point on how doomed VR is at this point, as it too had to wait for many years before any software came around to make a large enough group of people give a shit, despite many earlier attempts, some with even commercial success, like the AR game series Invizimals.

 

 

 

 

 

55 minutes ago, Cyhwuhx said:

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that recycling hardware over 3 generations (GC/Wii/WiiU) means that backwards compatibility might be incredibly easy (see also the Dolphin emulator), potentially allowing them to dodge Sony's Lovecraftian hardware horror stories.

 

If you take the rumours of the hardware as factually accurate, then the exact opposite will occur. PS to PS2 was easy as they kept the actual key hardware to enable easy hardware-based BC, PS2 to PS3 was initially easy(ish) due to similar reasons until they removed the PS2 bits. PS3 to PS4 was a no-go because they completely changed the hardware, which is the situation the NX is likely to find itself in, so no easy BC. Software emulation isn't a 100% replacement for a hardware solution when it comes to compatibility, as Microsoft are only slowly working their way through their X360 back catalogue at the expense of human engineering time to prep the games for use on the X1.

 

Sony could have theoretically done a Microsoft and built themselves some form of recompilation/emulator hybrid but they'd rather spend that money elsewhere, they've done a better job of emulating the PS2 than the PS3 was capable of in software on the PS4 so I don't think it's something they couldn't find the technical talent to do if they considered it worthwhile.

 

[Oh Danny Boy]

1 hour ago, scottcr said:

I'm not anti-vr... I just think it's killer app for mass adoption is a while away yet.  And it will involve small things that don't intrude so much in normal life, don't make you look like a total arseblanket and will almost certainly not be gaming.  It'll be social and portable, just like the mobile.

 

The Wii made you look like an arse blanket 

[Festoon]

Shigsy just turned up ay Apple keynote.  Games on iOs.

[RubberJohnny]

 

 

MEGATON

[Harsin]

So it's iOS runner 864357746744885 but with Mario?

[auntyclimax]

So, the NX could be a pair of controls that bolt on to an Android or IOS device that casts to a TV..?

[Nespresso]

 

[the_debaser]

That looks really good, cannot wait for it

[gone fishin]

With 500m Pokemon Go downloads, I wouldn't be surprised if the NX had a mobile sim slot in it. Nintendo could even do a deal with a network provider for free data in return for a percentage of the profits...

[Protocol Penguin]

For Nintendo can keep Super Mario Go completely unleaked and under wraps, I can imagine that we know a lot less about the NX than we assume.

[RubberJohnny]

39 minutes ago, moora said:

With 500m Pokemon Go downloads, I wouldn't be surprised if the NX had a mobile sim slot in it. Nintendo could even do a deal with a network provider for free data in return for a percentage of the profits...

 

This is not how anything remotely works.

 

Also Nintendo don't get any share of the profits from Pokemon Go.

[gone fishin]

37 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

This is not how anything remotely works.

 

Also Nintendo don't get any share of the profits from Pokemon Go.

Strange... What with Nintendo owning 33% of the Pokemon Company you think they'd get some of the profits...

[RubberJohnny]

Did you miss the whole bit where their stock skyrocketed because people thought they were the developer, then they said "it wasn't made by us, we don't get a profit share" and then their stock fell by the biggest amount allowable? Because it was in all the papers and on the BBC and mainstream sites and everything for weeks!

[Nespresso]

Don't be mean RJ. Maybe he doesn't read the papers or watch the BBC.