Comment by johnfernow

For the past 5 years or so, it has gone in spurts for me: no time in VR for months (sometimes even a year or more at a time), then nearly all my gaming time is in VR for a couple months or so.

Since the PSVR2's release, when I hang out with one of my friends, I play one of his VR games almost every time I'm there. That undoubtedly won't last forever, but it definitely has the best launch library of any headset so far IMO.

Maybe I'm just a really picky gamer, but for any given console generation, there are only a handful of games I truly love, but it's easier to enjoy a fine but not incredible game on a flat screen than it is in VR. A really good VR game makes you forget about everything else and gives you an experience unachievable outside of VR. If you're immersed in a story, a song, or intense gameplay, you forget about any discomfort coming from the headset being on your face. But if you're not enjoying it then you're going to get annoyed a lot faster than you would sitting on the couch looking at a TV.

That said, the PSVR 2 is looking to have the best library of VR games yet. Previously, you'd have incredible one-off titles such as Half-Life: Alyx release on Steam but then nothing for months or years, but Sony seems really committed to providing a large number of high-quality AAA experiences on the headset. It also has a ton of great games from smaller studios (most of which were already on Steam or the Quest, but with such big libraries on both of those platforms, they were kind of tough to find throughout all the mediocre titles: this isn't an argument in favor of stronger curation, just an observation.)

Nonetheless, I don't expect it to make up the majority of time someone would play video games anytime soon, and there are two reasons:

1. Most people don't have VR headsets yet, so even if I personally prefer Pavlov to other FPSs, only two of my friends have VR headsets, so it's not replacing those flat screen games. Maybe one day, but currently the most popular games run on nearly everything: Fortnite, Minecraft, Apex, Overwatch, CS:GO, LoL, DOTA2, Valorant, Rocket League, etc. I doubt those games' popularity stems entirely from the fact they're on tons of platforms OR have very low PC requirements (or are free to play, minus Minecraft), but it likely helps.

2. Nearly all VR gamers play flat screen games, but the majority of flat screen gamers do not have VR headsets. The Quest 2 may have sold around 20 million units, but nearly all of those owners likely have a Switch, PlayStation, Xbox or gaming PC. Medium-sized studios certainly are incentivized to create VR games due to less competition (getting a game released for PSVR2 nearly guarantees at least some sales, unlike releasing on flat screen), but large studios with huge marketing budgets looking to make a ton of money can make more by selling flat screen games. Maybe they'd get some additional sales by releasing it for VR, but it's not guaranteed (hopefully it becomes more profitable to port to VR as the number of users increases though.)