Comment by chaostheory
3 years ago
I use my Quest pro to play video games that trick me into cardio workouts. Due to my body tiring out and the battery life, I play a max of two hours a day.
It probably eats up less than half of my video game time. I find that I play less video games now since VR is a different experience from pupetting an avatar with a game controller. You tend to use your whole body, which is great if you cant find the motivation to workout.
That makes sense.
One of the interesting questions for me is whether VR will get other platforms to take this use case more seriously. I have a Switch and regularly play Fitness Boxing. It's great in that I'm much more likely to stick with the workout versus just doing calisthenics on my own. But the fitness catalog is limited. I'd love for the next generation of the Switch to include better motion control so that movement games can be richer.
Good news: nearly every VR game on the Quest (that isn’t 3rd person) is a fitness app even though it’s unintentional. There is a ton of variety. Feel like boxing one day, slashing ninjas the next, rowing a boat, riding a bike, slashing boxes with lightsabers, dodging bullets like neo; all of that is possible and the variety is nice even with the small market VR has now. (I believe that will be the same with Apple Vision)
I think the quest 2’s price point is back to being close to the Nintendo switch.
As a personal anecdote, I lost 15 lbs playing VR video games. Every time I don’t have the motivation to workout, I just tell myself that I’m just going to play some video games.
Sure! But I would enjoy most or all of those the same way I play Fitness Boxing: with a screen. I think what makes VR good for fitness is the motion controllers, not the facehugger stereoscopy.
Conversely, when I rented the Quest, the kids ended up playing Beat Saber by sitting on the couch and twitching their wrists. They liked it, but they didn't find the motion part compelling. So although I totally believe you and others get fitness value out of VR, I just think that's not an intrinsic to VR.
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