Another year oVR. A new one just begun
It’s also been a year of interesting shifts. What was proclaimed the inevitable future of VR eighteen months ago – the Metaverse – is now dead in the water. Or at least, it’s crawling weakly toward the ocean while our hero follows slightly behind, almost pitying the poor wretch, but still intent on drowning the malignant charlatan in the shallows. Meanwhile, the headsets that have dominated this year point to the growing platform-based nature of VR. Where a few years ago you only needed a headset and a PC to access the full suite of VR games, now you need the right headsets (and a PC). It’s a trend that could have significant ramifications for PCVR in the future, although we’re not there quite yet.
Meanwhile, Meta has spent the last few years buying up VR developers and signing either outright or timed exclusives its Quest headsets, meaning PCVR gamers have had to wait for some of its biggest hitters to land. And even then, some of them landed belly first, such as The Walking Dead: Saints And Sinners Chapter 2, a disappointing sequel to one of the best VR games around. There were some fun highlights from smaller developers in the spring, like the VR rogue-likeThe Light Brigade, and the charming perspective-based adventureAnother Fisherman’s Tale, but by late summer PCVR’s cupboard was starting to look pretty bare.
It was rumoured that the reason for Meta’s purchasing spree was so that those developers could make content for its Metaverse platform Horizon Worlds. The Metaverse dominated headlines last year and was destined to be the future of VR, if you believed Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to mimic the human emotion “enthusiasm”. But the prospects for Horizon seemed flimsy from the start, and while Horizon Worlds is still theoretically in development, with Meta still pouringbillions of dollarsinto it, the Metaverse has had its lunch thoroughly eaten by this year’s technological fad, AI. Asnoted by the Verge, at this year’s Meta Connect, Horizon Worlds received significantly less attention than Meta’s AI initiatives, like a virtual assistant that can be integrated into chats across the company’s messaging platforms. Oh well, at least everyone in Horizon Worldshas legs now.
Yet while Meta’s vision for the Metaverse remains more watery than American tea, the company’s still right at the forefront of VR headset design. In October, Meta launched the Meta Quest 3, which offers a substantial hardware upgrade from the Quest, alongside improved passthrough and mixed reality capabilities. The higher price and the lack of decent launch titles put me on the fence about whether it was worth the upgrade, but now it has a slew of games likeAssassin’s Creed Nexus, Samba Di Amigo: Party Central,Lego Bricktales, and Asgard’s Wrath 2, it’s a much more viable proposition.
Indeed, VR gaming has saved all the good stuff for the last three months. Alongside the Quest 3’s slightly-after-launch titles, we’ve seen PCVR releases forArizona Sunshine2,Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 (which, like it or not, is a massive VR game), and the wonderful remake of ye-olde spooky puzzler the 7th Guest. If you own a Quest 2 or 3, you’ll have access to nearly all of this because of Quest Link, making it one hell of a Christmas list for VR fans.
And while Valve has its own headset it wants to sell, it also seems to understand the importance of Meta’s continuing presence in the PCVR scene. Earlier this month, Valvepartneredwith Meta to update its Steam Link application to stream to Quest 2 and 3, a sort of reverse system to Quest Link and Air Link. As well as providing further PCVR functionality for Quest, it points to a continuing overlap between Meta headsets and PCVR.
As for what else the future holds, the short answer is: more headsets and more games. It’s likely we’ll see Apple’s Vision Pro next year, possibly as early as January. Apple’s headset is unlikely to have much relevance in these here parts, but it’ll be interesting to see the response to it nonetheless. More significant is Valve’s mysterious “Deckard” project, purportedly some kind of follow-up to the Valve Index. There are no firm details about Deckard, although some cryptic word uttered to James by Valve designer Lawrence Yanghintedit might take inspiration from Valve’s work on the Steam Deck. “Just like Steam Deck is learning a bunch of stuff from controllers and VR, future products will continue to learn from everything we’ve done with Steam Deck.” My money’s on a Valve equivalent of the Quest, a standalone, inside-out tracking headset that can connect wirelessly to your PC (which, incidentally, Steam Link would be ideal for).
