If I was targeting the PSVR hardware platform, ... I'd be very interested in knowing {long list}.
...
I personally think that VR is right around the corner and we're slowly turning it. The state of the VR industry is really interesting to be a part of and to see how it's developing. My assessment right now is that a good chunk of early adopters have jumped in and purchased a VR headset. Everyone who gets a VR headset has difficulty going back to traditional games on a 2D flat screen. But, the number of VR consumers is very small right now, relative to the size of the larger gaming industry. That will change gradually and over time. The high end hardware is available to consumers and VR is available for anyone with a high end PC and $800 to throw at an HMD.
Right, so the hardware is out. Now, it's up to the VR content creators to catch up and start building for this new medium. The thing to understand here is that VR is kind of a paradigm shift in thinking about interactive entertainment. If you take the rules from the film industry or the traditional game industry and try to apply them to VR, you're going to "do it wrong". VR development is kind of a design reset which forces the designer to think in new terms of interaction and end user response / input, but it also offers new, very compelling story telling devices that no other form of media can offer, and creates an unparalleled sense of immersion. It may very well be the final evolution of media, which could only be replaced by something extreme like invasive neural implants. But... the creation of VR content is hard. It's new territory with lots of open fields to be explored. We're inventing new things and stumbling into problems no other form of media has faced. This means the VR industry is short on content.
Will the AAA game studios get into VR? Absolutely, but my prediction is that it isn't going to happen any time soon. Why? Because the cost to produce a large, AAA sized game is in the range of $50m to $100m and it takes a team of ~50-75 people about 3-5 years to produce the high end content early adopters are asking for. An executive producer at a AAA studio will look at the VR market and say, "Hey, there are only 200,000 VR headsets out in the wild. If we produce a VR exclusive game right now and sell it for $60, would we be able to make back our $50-100m outlay? No way. We need at least 5 million headsets to be floating around in the wild." At the same time, the big AAA studios also can't afford to miss the boat to the party. If and when VR becomes huge, they'll want to be at the forefront. So, what's the strategic play for them at this point? They need skilled talent which knows how to build VR content when the time comes to start producing VR media. If it takes 3-5 years to produce a AAA VR title, then they'll want to time the production cycle to coincide with the market saturation point for VR hardware: When their game releases, they'll want 5 million headsets in the wild, so they'll want to look at the adoption rate and schedule a project accordingly. That entry point might be 1-2 years from now, who knows. Their current strategic play is to start dipping their toes into the pond and growing in-house VR talent. Expect to see/hear about small, focused teams of 3-7 people working on a side VR project. The goal would be to grow the team skill set and make that VR knowledge a part of the tribal knowledge in the company. Still, the AAA companies will have a shortage of talent, so expect them to start sniffing around to buy out indie VR companies for millions. The larger companies are less interested in the indie IP, they'll be paying a premium for their experienced staff which can then be redirected to produce their AAA title. Again, we're looking at a much more distant horizon for a AAA VR game in the size and scope of Skyrim. For now, AAA companies could be content to sit back, let a bunch of indies go out, crash and burn, and buy out the survivors.
There's a bit of a catch 22 in the VR industry at the moment as well: VR content needs high volume hardware sales, and the VR hardware needs high quality VR content. A lot of consumers are also sitting back and just waiting for someone to produce the AAA killer app for VR before they decide to buy a VR headset. This means that either the VR hardware companies have to invest in the content creators, or the industry needs to boot strap itself into success, which will be slow. This ecosystem is a fantastic place for indie VR developers (like myself) to thrive in. We can be small, nimble and scrappy and have a high tolerance for risk. There is a small window of opportunity for a couple of different indie teams to grow into the next AAA titans of this new industry. All you gotta do is work hard, work fast, work smart, innovate, and never compromise on the quality of your product.
Augmented reality on the other hand... my gut tells me that's at least another 5 years away. Yeah, there's the hololens and the magic leap, and whatever google or apple are working on, but a telling sign is the number of AR developer kits out in the wild right now. The only AR dev kit available is the hololens, and that runs for $3,000. With that price point, that means that almost no indie is going to buy one to start developing content for it. And if you do, you're taking an EXTREME risk by banking on the hopes that the release of the hardware is right around the corner. What if the consumer version isn't going to be ready for another 5 years? Do you have enough funds to survive that long? And on the AR hardware end, they absolutely NEED developers to start producing content for their hardware platforms. Without content, the hardware is just an expensive dust collector. And if the content ecosystem is a failed launch, so is the hardware. There's a co-dependent survival relationship here. So, I'm sure the hardware producers are aware of this and because we're not seeing hardware out in the hands of developers yet, we can safely say that the AR hardware isn't even close to ready for consumer launch, for whatever reason. This subtle fact is obviously not told to any investors, particularly the ones looking for a short term exit with 10X ROI.
So, it'll be first VR (which is now) and then 5 years later, it'll maybe be AR. I think it's also important to realize that there's a fundamental difference between VR and AR as well, which has a big influence on the design and types of applications built for the different platforms. AR is pretty much an overlay on top of reality, and there are some really hard problems to solve in this space which only AR faces, particularly real world spatialization, dynamic object occlusion with camera depth buffers, human computer interfaces, and end user relevance.
