Comment by chaostheory
3 years ago
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.
> I just think that's not an intrinsic to VR
It is for now for at least half or more of the current apps. The exceptions tend to be the driving or flying sim games. Developers do try to cater to less active users, but from my personal observation if you don’t like being active then you probably won’t enjoy VR in its current state, which your first hand experience supports. It looks like Apple will change it though, and I’m sure their competition will copy them shortly
When I say it's not an intrinsic to VR, I mean that one can have physical motion games without having facehugger 3D, which currently defines the VR space.
I'll note that Wii Sports came out in 2006, for example. And it sold 8.9 million copies. But I also note that motion games remain a niche interest. I like them a lot, but they're a small fraction of game usage. That suggests to me that VR can't bank on that as a big enough consumer interest to keep VR economically viable.
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