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Apple and Sony Still Working to Bring VR Gaming Controller Support to Vision Pro
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…“Denigrate”? Just because manufacturers sell before you decided to make their marketing fo their product primarily for gamers or depended on them does not mean new manufacturers need to follow and can’t be different to broaden the appeal of the category.
High PPI and the things Apple prioritizes across ALL device categories is antagonistic to budget/competitive gamers willing to compromise such things for games that most won’t because ab overwhelming majority of other premium content are enhanced by such things in addition to general computing.
What makes a good spatial computing experience generally such as the high PPI needed to catch up to screens for traditional computing in sharpness is continually at odds with the preferences of budget gamers tied to things like cost.
Spatial computing is one of the hardest and most expensive computing platforms attempted to be mainstream ever that needs to be much more expensive than traditional computing devices to derive its core advantages over status quo.
Budget gamers is a very questionable audience to appease accordingly. Heck, budget gamers think 4K-oriented GPUs are too expensive; with conventional rendering you need GPUs as expensive and much more to render spatial computing hardware at ideal resolutions to be more on par with existing hardware and better needed for a quality spatial computing experience.
The Vision Pro resolution and HDR performance was merely attempting to meaningfully do that to move things forward.
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Gurman has about the same gaming awareness as Apple (none). Controllers would allow for more precision tracking, but what they really add is more inputs (buttons) and haptic feedback which are needed for truly immersive gaming. Eye tracking/hand tracking plus pinch is like gaming on a 1 button mouse with no keyboard. Sadly I agree with you on your last point.
Why reinvent the wheel? It's a pretty tall order to make a better gaming controller than Sony, who've spent decades, and billions, on controller R&D. And surely Apple has other engineering priorities right now. Just be like the Mac, which has fantastic out-of-the-box support for Playstation and xbox controllers.
Apple TV+ has been a tremendous success: As a product it had become competitive with the top players in just few years. One can argue about benchmarks, but with any of them it is a success. No-one outside Apple really knows if it is also financial success.
That said, I doubt Apple could replicate the same in games. Apple has the culture of being involved in content decisions. Well intended, but that might not play well in the market where some of the most successful games explore themes Apple likely would not be comfortable with. For the same reason, Disney could not succeed as a game studio.
Halo was never going to be Mac exclusive. It was originally announced for simultaneous release on Mac and Windows.
After Microsoft bought it, it was released exclusively on xbox in 2001, then for Mac and Windows in 2003.
We don't really know how many subscribers Apple TV+ has, but it's estimated to be a small fraction (10-20%) of the numbers that top players like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have.
Even so, I'd be surprised if it isn't profitable. Even at a relatively paltry estimate of 30 million subscribers, we're still talking monthly revenues in the hundreds of millions.
Expecting this to be priced on the higher side. Will be good for those who play games on Vision Pro. Not sure how many will be having a Vision Pro and using it for gaming purposes. Wonder why Apple is not releasing its own accessories.
further proof the product had severe development problems and no project manager. this would have been my first thought in preproduction of producing a handheld controller. i get they wanna use the hand and not have a "stylus". but meta has em. psvr has had em even sony's ps move had em years back.
but this wasnt even discussed? was this project canceled a few times and rushed out the door when it was remotely viable outside the womb?
but this wasnt even discussed? was this project canceled a few times and rushed out the door when it was remotely viable outside the womb?
I know not everyone likes this take, but I really think it was a huge mistake for Apple to not have a gaming story to tell and content ready out of the box.
Gaming is a major major use case and seller for this space, and has been for years.
Not having a presence for that usage, given the current realities of the tech and market situation, is just negligence honestly.
Yeah, it's wildly too expensive and has limitations in certain ways ... but at least if it had gaming on first class, if not best in class, hardware ... it would have a chance here
Gaming is a major major use case and seller for this space, and has been for years.
Not having a presence for that usage, given the current realities of the tech and market situation, is just negligence honestly.
Yeah, it's wildly too expensive and has limitations in certain ways ... but at least if it had gaming on first class, if not best in class, hardware ... it would have a chance here
How do you know it wasn't discussed? I suspect it was discussed, and probably even debated vigorously.
I hope they hurry this up w/ Sony
Get these controllers supported ... get dev kits in the hands of game devs .. and get this ball rolling already!
It's kinda ridiculous a multi TRILLION dollar company can't execute a little better and faster than this honestly
Get these controllers supported ... get dev kits in the hands of game devs .. and get this ball rolling already!
It's kinda ridiculous a multi TRILLION dollar company can't execute a little better and faster than this honestly
exactly bud. re4remake is on an ipad but i cant play it on vision pro? with controllers? its bizarre and disjointed as if no one thoiught of it which for apple is extremely bizarre
Hopefully this talk about supporting Sony VR controllers and/or straight up partnering with Sony on VR content is a peek into a realization on the Apple side that it was a gaffe to not have this OOB and they are working to rectify it
Get the price down (or release a "non Pro" Vision headset) and get gaming controllers & content and things will start to move a bit I think
It was not available at launch. for apple that is bizarre. it shows a severe lack of a project manager or any leadership on the team. it shipped with a few of those scenes (beach for mention), not available and still not. and the last year of updates has been haphazard. and i still cant play any of the aa game title like lies of p, resident evil 4, etc which run on any m chip according to apple
I suspect they discussed it and either:
1) Decided that while needed, it wasn't critical to the product's success to have at launch (which, to @turbineseaplane's point, I think is a very debatable point)
2) Didn't think it was needed, so launched without it.
3) Thought they were a nice-to-have for games, and didn't want to potentially imply the controllers were needed so they waited
I personally think it's probably #3, but obviously I don't have any inside insight. I just don't think it's a "a severe lack of project manager or leadership" that gaming isn't supported as well as it could be. I think you can argue it was a bad decision, but speaking as a project manager, I often am managing a team who have differing opinions on what the projects I run should do/look like and sometimes have to be made, so the idea that "it wasn't discussed" seems really off to me. I also don't think it's particularly bizarre it shipped without controller support, even if I tend to agree that it might have been a mistake. iPad didn't have a stylus for years, for example. And Apple has never prioritized gaming so it would be out of character to be looking at this device with a gaming focus. A blindspot, sure, and even one you could legitimately argue leadership should have noticed, but not one, in my opinion, that deserves as harsh of a reaction as you're implying.
I also am pretty set on the idea that Apple really does see AVP as a form of public beta/developer kit for early adopters and wasn't expecting to sell a lot of the devices. I know others here disagree about that, but it informs my thoughts on the product. To follow my thinking - if you're already operating under my assumption it's a slightly more polished beta product, you're not going to hold up release just so you can figure out controllers for a gaming market that you've never really prioritized in any of your products - you release it, and if it turns out you do need controllers, it's good that you got feedback on that now, when very few people have the device, rather than waiting until the device is a mass market one at $999 and getting panned in reviews for lack of gaming support to figure that out.