Retail will kill virtual reality
It’s late 2013. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, new consoles whose success or failure could have a massive impact on Sony, Microsoft, and the developers who depend on those platforms to earn a living, are for sale across the country. Consumers are being asked to plunk down a significant chunk of change on a new platform whose value may not be immediately apparent. The early adopters have already made their purchases; how can the remaining consumers decide which console to invest in, or whether to invest at all?
The truth is that there are an amazing number of solutions to this problem in the early 21st century. Content sharing via the web ensures that it’s not hard to find a like-minded individual or group online whose opinions you trust or, at least, you know are similar to your own. But retail offers only one solution: demo kiosks. In Best Buys and Wal-Marts and Targets around the nation, you can spend as much time playing the console of choice as your perception of social mores will allow. Typically these consoles are loaded with a selection of game demos and videos that should provide enough context for an informed purchasing decision.
But give it a few months. Or years. In fact, right now, make a trip to your local big box retail store. Check out the games on display, and the state of the kiosks themselves. Unless your store has been particularly diligent in the maintenance required of anything that hordes of customers are encouraged to tinker with, the most appropriate term for what you’ll find is “hot mess”. At my local Best Buy, it is completely impossible to play either the PS4 or Xbox One, and even if you could, they are both loaded with launch titles that rarely take full advantage of the hardware on display.
Fast forward to Christmas 2017. It’s likely that the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR have been on the shelves for some time. The early converts to VR have already purchased their headsets, but this small group won’t make or break a company who has bet big on VR. Indeed, Oculus exists solely to develop VR hardware while HTC wants to exit the smartphone industry and focus on VR. Sony’s PlayStation division has a less singular focus, but their HMD represents no less substantial an investment than that of their competitors.
These are hardly the only groups depending on VR. One could argue that whether VR succeeds or fails is irrelevant to Oculus (owned by Facebook) or Sony in the long run. However, judging by the attendance to Unity’s recent Vision Summit, there are thousands of hopeful independent developers hoping to make money developing for VR. This is analogous to the early days of Apple’s App Store on iOS; a whole new platform with massive potential, in addition to a new, exciting technology about which many developers feel truly passionate.
In this imagined 2017 though, customers are fed up with VR. Why? Because every time they’ve tried it at a retail location, they put on damaged, sweat-stained headsets, with tracking stations (either Oculus’ “constellation tracker” or Vive’s Lighthouse room-scale VR tech) that are not configured properly, if they’re even on. They don one headset and are greeted with a black screen, but employees at the store are clueless as to how the tech works, as is often the case now, let alone when dealing with complicated VR setups. When demo kiosks are functional, they are playing early or pre-release versions of software that is buggy at best. When the games inevitably crash, no one is on hand to restore the demo to a playable state.
This is all assuming that the hardware is up to par. A decent VR experience will require a PC in excess of $1000, with the “ideal” PC costing as much as $3000. This is no small expense for a retail store (in aggregate) and those PCs will need to be kept up to date with the latest drivers. Retail stores, who make only a small percentage of their revenue from selling hardware, will have little to no incentive to improve the situation, much as it is now. So when your average customer first tries VR, they’re getting a sub-par and mis-configured experience on dirty, uncomfortable, broken hardware. A bad first experience all but ensures they won’t be buying in.
This kills VR.
Virtual reality is uniquely experiential. My favorite example is a Vive demo which has been widely hailed and is most succinctly yet inaccurately described as “just a big whale”. You can’t sell the average customer who has never tried VR on the idea of a really, really cool really, really big whale. But I have seen that big whale, stood on the deck of a corroded ship at the bottom of the ocean and felt the presence of something massive and terrifying in a deep and primal way, reminding myself that it’s not real while slowly backing away. I’m sold. You can’t get that scale on a TV. You can’t express that feeling on a flat display. Individuals banking on the success of VR can’t put food on the table unless consumers get that first experience that is only possible now because dedicated staff are on hand at expo halls where this hardware is shown.
Developers can’t solve this problem. Independent, passionate game makers, the ultimate enthusiasts, can’t roam the country fixing retail’s problems. The onus is on manufacturers, on Oculus, HTC, and Sony, to ensure the best experience. I don’t take this suggestion lightly, but the only solution that occurs to me is dedicated, single-purpose stores for selling and demonstrating the very best in virtual reality. Apple pursued retail for the very same purpose, and there’s no indication that the investment was a mistake.
Who pays for this? Will there be Oculus stores, Vive stores, PSVR stores? Will the Immersive Technology Alliance coordinate and fund the effort? To be honest, I don’t have the answers. But I implore those with the funding and the reach to take action before it’s too late. Independent developers, the people who will happily fill your platform with content, depend on customers who have had the best possible introduction to the state of VR in 2016.
