Virtual Reality War – Part 2 June 4, 2024

Welcome back to Virtual Reality War, where we look into the history of Virtual Reality, and share our insight behind the scenes. As we begin the second part of the series, two major Virtual Reality companies have entered the gaming space, Oculus with the Rift and Sony with their PlayStation VR (PSVR). Unlike previous console wars we’ve talked about, the VR war started out with the major players on great terms with each other. The Rift and the PSVR each had their own method for functioning (one required a gaming PC and the other requiring a PS4) and either headset had their own dedicated fanbases that did not seem to overlap or conflict. At this moment in time, we’ve considered the VR War to be at a wash, but a winner, as well as new competitors, may be soon to emerge.

At launch, the PSVR had dedicated exclusives but within no time, multiplatform VR games began getting released. While it was easy to acknowledge games played on the Rift had a graphical advantage, most PSVR owners knew it was due to the fact the Rift required a high-end PC to work, and the Rift users with those high-end PCs were happy to see their expensive computers push graphics to a new level. In short, players were happy. Even more, the future for both platforms looked bright, as it was clear more games and new features were on the horizon.

Oculus was getting ready to innovate, with innovations in motion controllers being nearly perfected since the days of the Nintendo Wii, there was a demand for wireless hand controllers on PC. The PSVR shipped with dedicated PS Move controllers that were already capable of motion control, but many PC gamers had not taken the motion-control plunge just yet. That changed when Oculus announced the first Oculus Rift Touch Controllers. At a price of $200 US at launch, these stand-alone Bluetooth-Compatible controllers allowed PC gamers to interact in the VR space. The cult-classic Twisted Pixel game Wilson’s Heart would be the one of the first major games to take advantage of the new Touch Controllers.

Outside of the gaming space, a new generation of enthusiasts were slowly discovering the possibilities VR offered. VR was also becoming a new form of general entertainment, and venues like theme parks were beginning to offer VR as a way to augment their existing rides. They were able to accomplish this by creating dedicated smartphone applications and attaching those phones into a relatively inexpensive pair of goggles. Parks like Six Flags offered a VR experience when riding their roller-coasters, hoping to entice former guests to make return trips. This was a popular promotion for a time, but due to regular technical issues, delays with making sure all guests had their headsets properly attached, and half of the guests choosing to opt out of the experience altogether, VR at theme parks would not last.

Now was the time for a new player to enter the game. Smartphones in the mid 2010s already had great screens, gyroscopes for motion tracking, microphones and speakers. It was perfect to be the heart of a VR headset. In 2015, SAMSUNG created the Gear VR headset to work with several of their selected Galaxy and Note line of smartphones. If you happened to have a compatible SAMSUNG smartphone, you could put it in a Gear VR headset and have a standalone VR experience. However, this method would not see a wide adoption. The wide range of smartphone sizes, shapes and performance capabilities made producing a consistent VR experience for players difficult. Meanwhile, other major smartphone players such as Apple would not natively adopt VR features, cutting out a huge portion of the smartphone owner market out of VR.

Over on the PC, the Oculus Touch Controllers were not an enormous seller. In 2016, most PC players were happy to use their traditional keyboard and mouse controls while in VR, and the price for the controllers were considered too high in comparison to the price of something like the PlayStation Move. Eventually, Oculus lowered the price of the controllers to $100 US. Not all games would take advantage of the new control layout, but once games from the PSVR started getting ported to Rift, motion controls eventually unified with the VR experience.

Once gamers realized that the high-end smartphones of the time were powerful enough to provide decent VR experiences when attached to a comically inexpensive pair of goggles, and be able to play a virtual reality game or watch a VR video on a headset that lacked all external video cables, a very vocal subset of gamers began demanding companies start to produce dedicated VR headsets that could operate independently from a PC or Console. For a brief time, smartphone solutions like the Gear VR were able to fill this niche, but that would not continue for long. What was needed was for a major player in the VR space to release a standalone VR headset. That, dear readers, will be coming in the next part.