Virtual reality in the home is taking off slower than expected, as evidenced by CCP Games’ decision to shut down VR game development. But there’s a good chance that VR will find a way to thrive in arcades, whether in Asia’s Internet cafes or America’s shopping malls.
Should VR game makers pivot to the arcades? Greenlight Insights recently staged a whole conference about this opportunity, where 450 people talked about the prospects for location-based VR entertainment and other opportunities. In some ways, it makes sense as high-quality PC-based VR is still expensive to buy, and arcades can write off the equipment over many users.Yeah... Let's just say that I still have my doubts.
First, videogame arcades are not a thing outside of Japan; even in South Korea, PC bangs may not be similar enough to support a VRcade culture. That means that VRcades must rebuild videogame arcade culture worldwide, starting from zero... while also selling people on the VR experience.
Which brings us to thing #2: Even in Japan, there's no evidence of sufficient appetite existing to support a large number of VRcades. VR is failing to thrive everywhere; it's not only in NA or the EU that consumers are not biting.
Even if enough VRcades can be built/started up in the face of zero evidence that consumers are actually interested in VR, there's the problem of consumers being especially uninterested in partaking of VR in public places. VR's unique combination of isolation, loneliness, and a horrible sense of vulnerability are probably all contributing factors here, but regardless of the cause, the result is consumers who refused to strap on VR headsets in public for free, and who are not suddenly going to discover a powerful desire to pay for that same privilege.
There is simply no evidence that VRcades are viable, or perceived as desirable by consumers, generally. With VR also being rejected by consumers for home use, and repeatedly demonstrated to be counter-productive and even harmful in workplace deployments... what does that leave? What, exactly, is the market for VR? Why would anyone believe the people who were still predicting, roughly five minutes ago, that home and workplace use were VR's target market, when they say that VRcades are now the VR future?
Predicting the future is hard, and I could be wrong, but I don't see a single indicator that points at VRcades being viable, or anything like a rationale for them being able to drive VR development. There's just no gold in them thar virtual hills. Don't believe the hype of those who say otherwise.