In the past few years, virtual reality has been a huge window into the future of gaming centred around a promise of a new way to play. The three major platforms–HTC’s Vive, Oculus’ Rift, and Sony’s upcoming PlayStation VR–have all been showing off tons of new content, but it has proven near impossible to showcase virtual reality games without an actual headset.
When PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect were launched at the beginning of this decade, it seemed that there was a ton of hype for these new ways to play games. It was easy to understand that motion controls would be intuitive with PlayStation Move as Nintendo had proven the concept years earlier with the Wii. Kinect was quite promising and sold like gangbusters, despite now being one of the biggest memes in the gaming industry.
Typically, alongside new platforms and hardware is a hype train that can be difficult to contain. Even the “unannounced” Nintendo NX is gaining a ton of traction, despite no one really knowing what the heck it is.
Even the hype around online casinos and gambling was a major boon for the industry as internet standards finally caught up enough to make games like online roulette a viable and, perhaps most importantly, fun experience.
So why does it seem like the hype around PlayStation VR is slowing even though the hardware is due out in less than two weeks? There have been a ton of unboxing videos from entertainment and gaming sites, not to mention from Sony itself on its PlayStation.Blog, but little else has really been seen.
Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 Pro also seems to be suffering a similar fate pre-launch, as the hype before the console’s announcement was higher than it has been since it was made public. It doesn’t make sense given how strong the PlayStation community is when rallying around their gaming brand of choice.
Is this all to say that the VR hype train is coming to an end before arguably the biggest VR platform hits the shelves on October 13th? Time will tell, but we’re hoping that this is just the calm before an incredibly loud storm of virtual reality gaming.
Because we really like the damn thing.