14 DAY TRIAL // Sony top exec believes that VR will evolve just as great as 3D games managed to evolve since they were first introduced twenty or so years ago.
In an interview to Eurogamer, Shuhei Yoshida, president of worldwide studios at Sony Computer Entertainment, believes that VR is the equivalent of developing 3D games twenty years ago during the original PlayStation development.
If this turns out to be true or not, virtual reality isn't something really new at all and although VR headsets were sci-fi technology when it first arrived, it took virtual reality for gaming even more than 20 years to actually push for a truly widespread use.
If the first true 3D graphics arrived in the mid-'90s, the first VR headsets for gaming first arrived all the way back in the '80s with Sega's Master System 3D glasses and the more modern-looking experimental headsets from the early '90s. In short, VR is actually older than 3D graphics, it's barely making it to a much wider spread market now and is still crippling expensive, so why is Sony's Shuhei Yoshida so excited about it?
Sony doesn't care prices are sky-high, the industry will grow
"As far as VR, for the future, is concerned, I have no question that in a few years everyone will be using some VR tech as a part of their lives. Even outside entertainment systems. It's a new tech, it's a new media." said Yoshida, while also adding that "after 20 years, we are still making even bigger, better 3D games, so I see a long-term great future for VR entertainment for the coming 20 years.”
It's nice when developers-turned-executives get excited about great technologies accessible mostly to them, while forgetting that VR headsets are actually very specialized, quite personal devices. Buying such a thing for consoles at prices going up to $800 is a bit naive.
However, since the market is quite exclusivist with just three major players vowing for supremacy, Oculus VR/Facebook, Sony, Valve/HTC, the VR industry might grow, obviously prices might go down and virtual reality finds its niche market just fine. But saying that VR is like 3D graphics twenty years ago is nonsense.