Then they could use very powerful machines so 4k screens are viable and have threadmills so you can acctually move somewhat propperly, but it'd be a very limited arcade thing.

How is switch more localized than previous nintendo?

that's difficult to say; i may have misspoke, but at least from their marketing material, they do seem to be trying to recapture a more seamless local multiplayer experience

Gaming in general has become much less local, online is now the standard and ps4/xbone has few splitscreen titles.

i specifically mean a local group vs an online team, in the same vein as a team of folks playing CS or league

with the emphasis that the experience locally is assymetical ala "keep talking and we don't explode" or whatever

and less throwaway than people locally on the screenless controls manipulating a single cursor or a turret and using their lower level of attachment to a display to use their cognitive skills in other aspects of the "competition", e.g. strategy or planning, support and comms, etc

so anyway

none of that stuff would have anything to do with raw computational power, save the niceties of having the capability to real-time encode video for built-in twitch streaming or whatever else

it's a lot of hard dev work and UI work

Yeah then they have to make a good modern game..

And they'll probably be pretty reluctant to do realistic settings with the weak system

i'm risking getting into philosophy here, but I get the feeling that the folks who emphasize graphics and immersion are less in it for gameplay and competition as much as experienceporn and extrareality eyecandy

i can appreciate it all, but those games don't so much tickle my need to play a game as much as titles that focus on actual problem solving or mechanics

all this shit is risky compared to sitting backseat like Valve is or churning out metrics-driven development like blizzard

maybe nintendo is being risk-adverse too but we'll see how their first party titles pan out

I think the VR devs are playing it safe though by pricing so high, that they wont lose bad if it flops

They could risk more and push it out significantly cheaper but that's a risk

software or hardware? the hardware is arguably as cheap as it gets now in the current incarnation

Hardware, but software too

close to being subsidized by title sales but that's another rabbit hole

VR won't reap too many benefits from moore's law and is limited by the physical kit

big deep rabbit hole but if people pay $450 for a pair of sunglasses and $400 for a cell phone it's kinda silly to say that VR is overly expensive

The rift is mostly a cheap ~1080p screen, gryros, expensive headphones and the sensor

it costs $400 for a 70" 4k TV at walmart in the US now

so the redirection of funds could go towards the VR kit if popular culture and a team of attractive streamers starts to generate that mindshare to create demand

people seek the lust-worthy items instead of investing in something silly like a 401k

a $500 VR kit seems like a natural progression

Also yes, they're different experiences, competitive games and casual games are more like board games, either something you want to be good at to prove yourself but for most people something to do with friends while immersive games try to immerse you in a different world and amaze you

yup... so VR is perfect for that market

the Nintendo Switch takes the more common ground road

there's an intersection of the two that would hopefully evolve things further

be it AR or local multiplayer "copilots" who remain in the "real world"

The BoM of a rift is ~$200(and could be reduced even more by larger scale), they could cut the price quite a bit if they were confident and wanted to get VR into homes

the worst thing is lukewarm press

tohsaka rin has left!

if it was slashed in price today and people bought them up cheap, and it became like pokemon go, it would be a disaster

But they're playing it safe and making customers pay for all the RND so if they fail they wont have huge losses.

a VR shop needs good rapport with developers

if they made a dust-magnet doorstop right off that bat for the sake of being first to market then they might as well say they're making it a totally open platform for everyone and they're just going to liquidate and become a nonprofit organization

because it commodizes everything they've made