After all of the talk about how this was to be the year of virtual reality, the actual reality does not seem to be bearing that out. Why is that? There are lots of reasons, but RocketWerkz CEO and DayZ designer Dean Hall took to Reddit to post about some of the realities that aren’t evident from the other side of the screen. In short: Making VR games isn’t profitable. Not in the “no one gets a new summer home” sense, but in the “well, this game actually lost us money to make” sense.
Several factors contribute to this, although the incredibly low installed base is a major reason for this; there just aren’t enough people buying VR games to make good sales enough for a game to recover its money. Instead, developers have to rely on incentives from specific platforms, which means exclusivity… which is something that most gamers aren’t willing to accept. The full post is well worth a read if you’ve got any interest in the future of VR and the realities of game development.
