VR won't be a "meaningful" part of interactive entertainment for YEARS, according to SONY

Among all the languishing and failed VR products, Sony's PlayStation VR stands out as the closest thing VR has to a success story. Sure, Google's Cardboard VR or Samsung's Gear VR may have moved more units, but PSVR has handily outsold all integrated-display VR headsets, combined. The problem is that even those industry-leading sales numbers are far below VR's early projections; worse yet, they were entirely front-loaded, with basically nobody buying in after that first wave of early adopters.

PSVR fans kept showing up for E3, year after year, hoping for a big VR announcement from Sony, only to leave disappointed. The next-gen PS5, which will land in stores only days from today equipped with more than enough grunt for VR, does have a camera module available for sale, but it isn't PSVR-compatible; if you want to use your last-gen PSVR with the next-gen PS5, you'll need an adapter. The only thing that could speak more loudly to VR being low on the priority list for Sony would be some sort of official statement to that effect, from Sony themselves.

And now, as reported by The Washington Post, we have exactly that:

Though immersion appears to be the focal point of Sony’s PS5 push, Ryan says there won’t be any immediate leaps forward from Sony in the most immersive gaming experience, virtual reality (VR). PlayStation was at the forefront of the virtual reality market for consoles, having launched a PSVR headset in 2016. While 5 million headsets were sold by January this year, sales were slowing in 2020. There are currently no public plans for a PS5-specific headset. Instead, Sony is offering adapters to use the PS4′s PSVR headset with the new console.

“I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” Ryan said. “PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that. And we’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future.”

And that, as they say, is that. The most successful player in the VR game has no plans for a next play, anytime in the near-to-foreseeable future. Stick a fork in VR, folks; it's done.

VR apologists will likely look to Ryan's "at some stage"/"in the future" remarks as signs of life, but don't be fooled; that's just the corpse, twitching. Sony has to say something to assure buzzword-sensitive investors that they haven't given up on one of tech's juicier buzzwords, because admitting that VR's years-long campaign is ending in defeat could cause the share price of whoever admits it first to drop sharply, something which Sony would rather avoid. 

But their reluctance to flee the VR field first should not be mistaken for a desire to keep fighting the VR fight; Sony is done with VR, unless and until somebody else succeeds in convincing consumers to adopt the technology en masse. With the second-biggest player being Facebook VR née Oculus, who have nailed their VR fortunes to the larger platform's declining user count, that's looking less and less likely to happen.

Of all the companies doing VR business, the only one that might have been making money from VR was Sony. What we've now learned is that even Sony are not making enough money from VR for the tech to be worth any more investment. 

Oh, sure, Facebook and Valve have deep enough pockets that they can probably continue to lose money on VR for a while yet, but don't expect that to propel VR into the forefront of the public consciousness; it won't, and neither will the upcoming Ready Player Two (the sequel to VR-advert/movie Ready Player One, which also didn't more the needle on VR).

It's all over save the shouting; how long the likes of Facebook and Valve will keep shouting into the VR void remains to be seen.

E3's winners and losers

So, it's that time again... when everybody looks back, and tries to decide who "won" E3 2018. I thought Microsoft had the best press conference, but that Sony would probably be declared the winner by most commentators, but how do those predictions stack up to reality?

ScreenRant named XBox, Sony, Bethesda, and Ubisoft as their winners, while declaring Nintendo, Square Enix, and EA to be the letdowns of E3 2018. [Oh, shit, Ubisoft! I forgot all about Ubisoft!]

USGamer declared Microsoft to be the winner, and Square Enix to be the loser, with a few other "witty" additions:

• Losers: The crowd during Bethesda's Rage 2 Andrew W.K. performance; Walmart Canada; People who aren't emotionally invested in Super Smash Bros.; [their] health.
• Winners: Todd Howard; The people who have been yelling for a Metal Wolf Chaos release in the west their entire lives; Masahiro Sakurai basically saying fuck it and making Smash Bros. game people can't complain about; being hella gay.

[Dammit, why does everyone have to be a fucking comedian all the fucking time?]

Tom's Guide ranked their list:

1. XBox (grade: A)
2. PlayStation (grade: A-)
3. Bethesda (grade: B+)
4. Nintendo (grade: B)
5. Ubisoft (grade: B)
6. EA (grade: C)
7. Square Enix (grade: C-)

[Looks like someone's grading on a curve, but whatevs.]

It's early days yet, but so far, it looks like my take on things was pretty darn good. I do feel a bit bad for overlooking Ubisoft, though, so let's address that injustice.

Oh, yeah, and the other one: Sony's E3 presser

Well, if I'm going to cover them, I may as well cover them all.

Sony comes into this year's E3 as the clear industry leader. They may have spent last year more or less coasting, but the strong work they put it to build a stable of solid first-party studios has paid off in spades, and this years God of War continued the streak. Really, all they had to do was not fuck it up. So, did they manage to not fuck it up?

A joke that never gets old, by Alanah Pearce

Sony's E3 press conference did some... creative, shall we say? things with its format, which were more bewildering than impressive. Much like last year, actually, when Sony used creative lighting and a full symphony orchestra to propel the proceedings, which also left some scratching their heads. Breaking the momentum of their show while they moved people from one room to another was clearly not a good idea, though; and talented as he was, the banjo player was also clearly not as effective as last year's full symphony orchestra. Yes, it's good to see a company of Sony's size take some creative risks, but the poor logistics should have been obvious, here.

Once they finally stopped walking attendees from room to room, though, and started showing them actual games, things started to pick up.

More wrong than right: Nintendo @ E3 2018

Polygon has a pretty decent breakdown of what Nintendo did right, and wrong, during their E3 Nintendo Direct, so let's use that to frame our discussion, shall we?

Right: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveal

OK, but seriously, you get every character! This Super Smash Bros. release comes with a wealth of content, which makes sense considering it’s basically an expanded re-release of the Wii U Super Smash Bros. It’s unlikely that fans are going to care, however. This feels like a feast. [...] All these characters, all these stages, all this content. The demos and announcements went on and on for this game, and it was all good news about the title. This is going to sell the Nintendo Switch, no questions.

Agree. Not to my taste, but that's fine. The Nintendo Switch has been all about recycling older (but still very good) content, so the fact that they're upgrading a Wii U game is not a surprise.

Right: Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is already a social system, so having party games that take advantage of players who have access to multiple system is a smart move. This is another example of how the inventive design of the Nintendo Switch helps Nintendo offer experiences that aren’t possible on any other console.

Disagree. The Nintendo Switch has sold very well, yes, but releasing a game whose major feature requires other people that you know to also have bought the same expensive game system feels like hubris to me. It's not all that inventive, either; Nintendo ported this functionality to the Switch from their DS line of handhelds, which means that it's really just more recycling.

Right: The voice chat and online features of Fortnite

There’s a lot to be happy about when it comes to Nintendo’s “surprise” launch of Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch today, but one of the more interesting details is the fact that you can use any standard 3.5 mm headset for online voice chat, which is a feature that no other game offers on the system, as far as we can tell. This makes chatting with your team much easier — remember, Nintendo’s official solution is a phone app that leaves much to be desired — and is something that should be offered in more games.

Disagree. Yes, it's nice that Fortnite gets this functionality, but why doesn't anyone else? Nintendo's hardware clearly supports it. This just throws a white hot spotlight on one of the Switch's glaring shortcomings.

So, if that's what Nintendo did right, and most of it's not necessarily all that right, what did they get wrong?

Let's get this nonsense started: Devolver Digital's E3 2018 jiminythinger

Well, if I'm going to do this motherf*cking thing, then I may as well do it.

Devolver Digital's 2017 "press conference" was a thing of genius. A savage send-up of the entire E3 hype-fest, and a brutal critique of the worst of the videogame industry's anti-consumer practices, it also managed to announce a couple of the company's games along the way, and had me literally laughing out loud for most of its run time. As I sat down to watch their 2018 "presser," I wondered how they could possibly top that.

How else? They made a sequel. Literally.

Upping the ante on everything, including the profanity and gore, Devolver continued their savage satire of the entire E3 experience, with "Nina Struthers" returning to show all the world just how soul-less and mercenary the videogame industry could be.

Hype and hypocricy: Reactions to Bethesda at E3

So, apparently I'm covering E3 this year. I'm as surprised as you are.

Bethesda's E3 conference followed Microsoft's on Sunday, and just as I predicted, Microsoft's blow-out of a show proved to be a tough act to follow. Apparently Bethesda's presentation this year was an improvement over last year's, but they are only one studio; Microsoft, by comparison, as the platform holder, owns multiple first-party studios of their own, and multiple third-party developers whose games they could also add to their hype event. Realistically, Microsoft should be able to put on a more impressive press conference; it wouldn't be reasonable to demand that Bethesda equal Microsoft's presentation.

That said, though, it's equally unreasonable to assert that Bethesda somehow surpassed Microsoft to put on the "best conference of E3 so far," just because they teased something that you were hoping they teased, on their way to talking about the ten or so projects that they felt like showing off this year. Of those, only Elder Scrolls Legends, Elder Scrolls Blades, Fallout 76, and Prey: Mooncrash will be releasing this year. Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Young Blood, and DOOM: Eternal are due sometime next year, while Starfield and Elder Scrolls IV are essentially nothing but logos at this point.

Oh, and VR. Bethesda are still all-in on VR, with Prey being added to their VR lineup, and a Wolfenstein VR hacking/puzzle game coming... sometime.

Your mileage may vary...

I suppose I should have begun my review of Microsoft's E3 XBox presser with the disclaimer: I am a PC gamer. I do not own an XBox; I have never owned any gaming console. My Steam Link is as close to console ownership as I've ever come, and that does not look likely to change in the foreseeable future.

XBox's Play Anywhere initiative means that everything released for XBox is also released for Windows. And since nobody buys games from the wasteland of shit that is the Windows Microsoft Store, that means that they'll be coming to Steam, too. Which means that I'll have all of those games to look forward to, once I've played through some of my list of shame. The fact that almost none of them will be out this year is not an issue for me.

Some actual XBox One owners, however, appear to feel differently. Apparently, there was some expectation that Microsoft would have first-party exclusive 2018 releases to announce, in spite of the fact that Microsoft had said last year that nothing of the sort would be happening. This year's XBox E3 was always going to be about XBox's future; it was always going to be about waiting for next year, having missed the playoffs this year.

Will Microsoft attract new gamers to the XBox ecosystem? Will this conference turn around the XBox's fortunes, or reverse their momentum relative to the Nintendo Switch? No. No, it won't.

This is how you do it: Microsoft does E3 right

This is how you do the E3 hype thing:

• Start by announcing a new Halo game.
• Move on to showing actual gameplay footage in the next game you announce, a sequel to the much-loved Ori and the Blind Forest.
• Announce a totally new IP, Sekiro, again with a trailer that includes actual gameplay footage.
• Pause as rarely as possible for speech-making. It is a press conference, after all, and there's corporate messaging to get through, but nobody cares about your corporate bullshit, so don't dwell on it.
• Lather, rinse, and repeat, until you've announced 50 different games.

This is what people watch E3 to see, and wow! did Microsoft ever deliver. The range and sheer variety of games announced was staggering:

Hype machine breakdown: Square Enix edition

Let's get one thing straight: I hate the hype cycle. I'm offended by all of the manipulative things which large corporations do to convince consumers to disregard rationality, common sense, and their own interests to buy absolute shit that they don't need, and probably wouldn't even want if they just thought about it for a second. It's like they're insulting our intelligence, insisting that we forget everything we know, and every shitty thing they've done to us, all so that we can mindlessly dump more money into their coffers for even less product, this time around.

Never believe the hype.

So, yes, I hate hype. This week, though, I'm learning new things about myself. I'm learning that, even more than the hype cycle itself, I hate poorly-executed hype. It's as if, not satisfied with the insult to our intelligence, these companies now can't even be bothered to make it look like they're trying. "Hype yourselves, suckers, and fuck you all," is the message they're sending, whether they intend to or not.

EA's E3 presser was shockingly incompetent, to such an extent that I don't even know what they were trying to achieve. Not to be out-done, though, Square Enix appear to have looked at that hype-less, lethargic mess, and decided to up the ante, as reported by Kotaku:

It’s 1:30am Eastern on a Sunday morning and Square Enix just announced Kingdom Hearts III’s release date, because why not? The long-awaited action-roleplaying game will be out on January 29, 2019, the publisher says.

[...]

Technically this is a delay—Square had previously said Kingdom Hearts III would be out in 2018—but at least there’s a firm date now? And at least they announced the news in the middle of the night on the weekend of E3, two days before THEIR OWN PRESS CONFERENCE. Never change, Square Enix.

Wow. I mean... really... damn. Just... damn.

OK, I guess I can see the logic? Turning up at E3 to announce that the long-awaited game that you're supposed to be releasing this year won't actually be ready until next year would have been awkward, and bigfooting their own presser like this does obviate the need to show gameplay footage at the event itself. Since nobody's expecting anything of Square Enix anymore, I suppose that this counts as one way to effectively manage expectations.

Still, though... damn.

Having magnificently achieved the opposite of pre-show hype, Square Enix are now going to be playing to a tough room; they need to stage a show that blows everybody's minds, and based on the level of PR-fu they're showing so far, I have doubts about that happening. Last year's E3 was pretty lacklustre; this year's E3 is, if anything, off to an even worse start.

Hype machine breakdown: EA flops at E3

E3 is the single biggest event on the video games industry calendar. This is video gaming's Super Bowl. This is the one time of the year when everybody who gives a shit about video games is paying attention, willingly suspending their disbelief, literally begging to be hyped. If you've got a public relations A game, this is the time to bring it.

EA... did not bring it.

• Yes, Sea of Solitude looks pretty cool, although it would have been better to be shown the game, rather than have an indie studio head with no PR-fu just stand there talking about it. 
• Long-time fans of Command and Conquer were not hyped to see the storied franchise turned into a mediocre mobile game. 
• Presentations for the oligatory FIFA and Madden offerings ran way too long, and showed nothing that fans of those games haven't seen before.
• Speaking of obligatory, the latest Battlefield game will have a Battle Royale mode. Because of course it will. Because EA's execs have no imagination whatsoever. Never mind that BFV's devs were saying just a month ago that their game wasn't going to add a BR mode just to add it, but whatevs.
• People who were hoping for more information about the upcoming Anthem were disappointed. It still looks like Destiny, though.

Worst of all, though, at least to me, was EA's ongoing failure with the Star Wars franchise.

Change.org petition garners 5000 supporters in one week

From Softpedia:

A petition that went viral earlier this week raised nearly 5,000 signatures in just a few days, as more users consider that the Electronic Frontier Foundation should investigate Microsoft for its practices regarding the very aggressive Windows 10 push.

Specifically, the petition claims that Microsoft is violating users’ right to choose and privacy by installing Windows 10 on their computers without them first giving their consent. Furthermore, it points to cases when the Windows 10 installer was launched all of a sudden, without users being prompted about it first.

[...]

Neither Microsoft nor the EFF has offered statements on this new petition so far, but the number of those who are supporting the idea of an investigation against the software giant is growing. And comments posted on the petition page pretty much speak for themselves.

“I own my computer. I say what software is installed. When ANYBODY willfully manipulates me into installing ANYTHING I do not want then they are acting against me; Microsoft, at this point and through their actions in this case are WORSE than the **** that writes malware with the goal of profiting from me. Microsoft are WORSE because I am their customer - not their product. They don't own my computer, they don't own me,” Simon Dainty from Bradford, United Kingdom, posted.

While the EFF may not have offered an official statement, I'm not so sure that Redmond's PR team is keeping silent; I'd guess that they're just being very selective who they talk to, and making sure that they have a few apologists out pleading their case, like WinBeta:

While the majority of user who make up the 300 million active Windows install base are content with Windows 10, some believe Microsoft’s upgrade is a nefarious undertaking executed by a barbarous company scrambling for relevance in an irrelevant industry. Others are a bit more forgiving, chalking up the mishaps to a woefully inept plan poorly enacted by a forever-bumbling enterprise.

However, there is a third, much smaller and soft-spoken group of people who see Microsoft’s supposed Windows 10 upgrade fiasco as an entirely different affair. At best, the Windows 10 upgrade is a calculated measure to bring an aging user base into a foundationally superior computing experience and at worst, a poorly timed enforcement of socially engineered practices that have coalesced as 30 years of misunderstandings.

That "third, much smaller and soft-spoken group" apparently include WinBeta themselves, who then go on to dismiss pro-consumer advocates and angry Window 7 users as "would-be social justice warriors," and compare Microsoft to "the fabled imp-like creature Rumpelstiltskin who is coming to collect its promised first born child," with Microsoft's customers cast in the role of "the daughter of the lying miller in the story" (did you know that Rumpelstiltskin was the hero of that story? 'cause I sure didn't), faced with an unexpected necessity to honour the terms of Windows' EULA, which we all signed in full knowledge that it gave Microsoft the right to do whatever the fuck they want, apparently.

Microsoft's Windows 10 Panic Explained

One of the bigger problems with Microsoft's overly-pushy GWX push, for Microsoft themselves, is that it makes them look desperate. If Windows 10 really is as good as Microsoft is claiming, then why are they going to such dishonest, underhanded lengths to push it on users who aren't interested? Why can't they just sell it to those users on its merits?

It doesn't help that Windows 10's merits mostly aren't that impressive. Yes, it has a slightly smaller footprint, and runs a little faster, than earlier versions of Windows, but if your system already runs just fine on Windows 7, then Win10 just isn't a big performance upgrade. And, given that Windows comes laden with a lot of "telemetry" (i.e. spyware), and its hybrid Start Menu/Metro interface, complete with "sponsored" tiles (i.e. adware), the upside of switching just isn't enough to offset all the downside.

The result: people simply aren't switching at anywhere near the rate that Microsoft had projected, or needs them to. And that's a big problem for their efforts to revive or grow the XBox Live ecosystem, or establish a foothold in PC Gaming that's comparable to Steam.

From GamingBolt:

We already do know that the Xbox One is performing below expectations- the fact that Microsoft won’t even share numbers for the console, which is widely estimated to be trailing its competition by as much as 20 million units, should be evidence enough. But on the other hand, we’ve generally expected the company to be doing well on other fronts- after all, Windows 10 is supposed to be the fastest adopted OS of all time, Minecraft is the most successful game in the world, and games like Halo 5 have all sold at least a million copies, right?

It turns out, though, that relative to Microsoft’s projections, everything might be underperforming. In a long and extensive feature on Kotaku about Lionhead and their closure, and the demise of Fable Legends, a former, unnamed employee discusses the fundamental problem that Microsoft is facing- that of volumes, which they are no longer meeting, thanks to all their products underperforming relative to projections.

“Let’s be honest – we make our projections based on a series of assumptions,” said a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft. “There are supposed to be 2x as many Xboxes out there as there are right now. There are supposed to be 2x as many Windows 10 installs as there currently are. So now, when we look at how much money Legends could make in the free-to-play universe, you have to halve it. Because we can only reach half the audience that was projected.”

This halving of the potential audience, or market, for Microsoft's products isn't limited to Microsoft-produced games. The situation looks even more bleak when you consider how poorly Windows Phone is performing, and what that means for Microsoft's future in the critically-important smartphone market, which spent recent years growing in exactly the way that the PC market wasn't.