#Reality falls steam plus
#Reality falls steam free

What’s the difference? With AR, you don’t need to wear anything on your face.ĥ. The same can’t be said for its sister tech, augmented reality, which, in the form of Pokémon Go, has already found its megahit killer app.

But the mass audience seems markedly resistant to it. VR is now a mature technology supporting a durable, if niche, hobbyist gaming scene.

Nor did the new wave of VR prove to be just a flash in the pan, however. VR didn’t fulfill that level of hype (even if Zuckerberg, for one, is still chasing the dream). Graphic: Polygon | Source image: Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation VR2 launches in February with a high price tag but few games - a sign that Sony wants to stay in the VR business, but doesn’t want to over-invest.

It didn’t take a genius to guess what the only thing anyone would be talking about at the following year’s Game Developers Conference would be. It was tremendously exciting the industry’s next “next big thing” was here. Ten years ago at E3, I took a surprise meeting with legendary coder John Carmack, who was trumpeting the reemergence of virtual reality, along with a homebrew headset made by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. VR is finally more than a fad, but much less than the future

#Reality falls steam free

This poses another, different set of challenges for an industry that is used to catering to - not to say exploiting - an audience with an abundance of free time.Ĥ. Perhaps just as significant is the steadily increasing age of the average gamer - millennials seem much more reluctant to let go of the hobby than earlier generations of gamers. Gen Z and younger players are much more diverse, particularly along gender lines, as they race ahead of the industry’s sluggish attempt to diversify itself. That bias still exists, but it’s falling away with increasing speed, even if you choose to ignore the vast influx of older women gamers introduced by the smartphone revolution. Gaming is traditionally understood as the pastime of children and (very) young men. This one seems like an obvious demographic fact of life, but you might be surprised how few people truly grasp it. The audience is massively more diverse - and more adult - than it used to be There’s no evidence yet that metaverses are a mass-market proposition outside games - or that they need to be.ģ.

#Reality falls steam plus

Fortnite and Roblox are fully fleshed-out metaverses that have vast communities and booming internal marketing and content industries, plus avatars that have legs. None of the use cases have been proven yet - except in games, which arguably birthed the concept and began developing it with the advent of the massively multiplayer game over 20 years ago. In the past couple of years the tech industry, particularly Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has fallen over itself to will a persistent internet reality called the metaverse into being as the supposed successor to the smartphone. Video games are the only successful metaverses Mobile-only games have struggled with quality-control and business models, but the barriers between mobile and “traditional” gaming are gradually falling - Fortnite is as much a mobile hit as anything else, while subscription services like Apple Arcade and Netflix curate brilliant collections, completely free of bullshit monetization.Ģ. What actually happened was a half-prophecy, and a kind of best of both worlds mobile enormously expanded the total market for video games without significantly shrinking core gaming. Many predicted the death of consoles of course, that didn’t happen (although in some Asian markets, like Japan, they were dealt a terrible blow). Image: Apple via Polygonġ0 years ago, smartphones were still relatively new and the industry was in the grip of an almighty gold rush, split between a grab for new casual players and an attempt to move core gaming onto these ubiquitous new devices. Apple Arcade is a new way to think about what mobile games can be, and how they can be sold.