How poisonous is it really though? Not a rhetorical question.
The people who pay attention to this type of thing are VR enthusiasts, who are a minority compared to the larger pool Facebook is aiming for.
An interesting example would be Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare. Its trailer is one of the most downvoted videos on YouTube. As far as I understand, hardcore fans hated it and somehow managed to get downvoting the trailer to be some kind of viral thing (Otherwise, how did it get to those numbers? Nothing about the trailer per-se was that bad. There's even Jon Snow in it).
I thought that this would have no effect on the game's success, since I don't think average consumers are particularly interested in the opinions of hardcore gaming snobs.
However, the game has since been released and--as far as I know--bombed. Of course, that could also be due to the game being not that good.
There's no doubt that "influencers" are important in driving sales, but I'm skeptical whether they can play a similar role in preventing sales--especially if average consumers see value in the underlying product.
> The people who pay attention to this type of thing are VR enthusiasts, who are a minority compared to the larger pool Facebook is aiming for.
> [...]
> There's no doubt that "influencers" are important in driving sales, but I'm skeptical whether they can play a similar role in preventing sales--especially if average consumers see value in the underlying product.
The problem is: The necessary system requirements for an Oculus Rift (CPU, GPU (in particular), USB ports) are rather high. The average potential consumer you mention might see value in the Oculus Rift - but will probably not be enthusiastic enough to be willing to additionally buy a high-end PC etc. So the large pool that you believe Facebook is aiming for will contain many more hardcore enthusiasts and much less "average consumers" than you think.
I've had the same thoughts for the last decade or so, and have swayed between both sides. Anything from iPhone adoption, to which social networks will prevail, to which competing technology will win. I've probably been more wrong than not, so the question why is increasingly interesting.
One related theory I can't find any wikipedia information on stems from an old TED talk from 2010:
Even if we traditionally consider ourselves (I've always been a "nerd"/"core"/"early adopter"/whatever) on the sidelines, when our industry and interests have taken center stage I think we have had a greater influence than we care to admit, or even want.
Some people want to be first at something, but many people don't, either for lack of anyone else to use said thing with, or lack of support, or high cost of entry, or unproven quality, etc.
I hate to get political, but I think it's increasingly clear that movements can begin with something as simple as a few memes from someones computer.
But it's of course hard to tell if "our" audience is the right one at all times (eg Google Glass, Google+), when comparing to Facebook (select few colleges) and Snapchat spectacles ("celebrity" millenials).
Oculus was brand new, and as one of their first acts they pissed off most of the people who had supported them, and the VR community in general.
With a perfectly good alternative (that is in some ways better), why would any enthusiast choose Oculus at this point?
And non-enthusiasts aren't buying the systems because they're too expensive and there are too few games. They effectively handed their entire market to another company for the next few years.
>An interesting example would be Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare.
The differences between the market of people buying console-focused first-person shooters and the one for virtual reality headset systems make this comparison not really work.
Call of Duty was originally a much-beloved FPS series during a time when the genre was dominated by multiplayer games with high skill ceilings and "twitch" or reflex-based mechanics. They catered to the market available to them at the time, which was enthusiast gamers with the hardware required to run 3D video games (and to a lesser extend internet access that could play them online.) Consoles had existed for a while, but they weren't always in the position they are now. CoD 2 was released in late 2005, the Xbox 360 was released right around the same time, and the PS3 wouldn't come out until the next year. Internet multiplayer has been a reality on the PC since the 90's but Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network didn't even exist until the early 2000's. Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox famously didn't support internet multiplayer, but its PC version did.
By this point it's obvious that the numbers in gaming are shifting. The relatively low sticker price of a gaming console means you don't have to work with the segment of the population who have enthusiast-grade computers. Pretty much anyone can afford to buy an Xbox 360. Crucially, the expense of console gaming isn't frontloaded. The most expensive part of being in the PC gaming segment was (and still is) either buying a bunch of components and assembling yourself, or spending even more for a prebuilt. Assembling computer parts is actually not that hard, but not assembling computer parts is even easier, and you can walk out of any department store with a home console for a few hundred dollars. You'll spend more than that over time from subscriptions, peripherals, more expensive games, etc., but you won't have to spend a grand up front just to start playing.
Call of Duty's publisher, Activision, observed that this new pie is titanic compared to the old one and decided to focus on grabbing a slice of it. There's now a market available to them that's way bigger, will pay the same amount of money for the disk, and doesn't necessarily need things like a dedicated server with admin features. Their new approach of releasing titles on a more annual schedule for this market works because it's substantially larger.
On the VR side of things, an HTC Vive costs eight hundred dollars. The Oculus Rift, which is just the headset and has no hand controllers or "room scale" features like the Vive, will still run you $599. Its "Touch" hand controllers became available only recently and buying those will send you up to the same price point as the Vive. Keep your wallet out, because VR applications require high end GPUs with as much memory as possible, like the Nvidia GTX 1060, which is likely to run you $270 or more. Today's virtual reality options are restricted to dedicated enthusiasts with expendable income to a much greater extent than early Call of Duty games were. Aiming for a market other than "VR enthusiasts" is senseless, there is no other market.
There are VR products that aren't quite so ludicrously expensive, like the Gear VR that uses a phone, but my experience is that they have very little to offer and casual consumers aren't going to line up to buy games for them.
The people who pay attention to this type of thing are VR enthusiasts, who are a minority compared to the larger pool Facebook is aiming for.
An interesting example would be Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare. Its trailer is one of the most downvoted videos on YouTube. As far as I understand, hardcore fans hated it and somehow managed to get downvoting the trailer to be some kind of viral thing (Otherwise, how did it get to those numbers? Nothing about the trailer per-se was that bad. There's even Jon Snow in it).
I thought that this would have no effect on the game's success, since I don't think average consumers are particularly interested in the opinions of hardcore gaming snobs. However, the game has since been released and--as far as I know--bombed. Of course, that could also be due to the game being not that good.
There's no doubt that "influencers" are important in driving sales, but I'm skeptical whether they can play a similar role in preventing sales--especially if average consumers see value in the underlying product.