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Another year oVR. A new one just begun
Image credit:Vertigo Games
Image credit:Vertigo Games
Like a circus strongman’s barbells, 2023’s year in VR has been heavily weighted toward either end. The last twelve months were bookended with the launch of two excellent VR headsets (although only one is truly relevant to us PC gamers) and a whole bunch of great VR titles. The summer, however, was the quietest I’ve known for a long time, to the point where I ended up playing twoVR minigolf gamesin the absence of anything better to do. Fortunately, the last few months have made up for it, providing enough fantastic VR games to feed us well into next year. So it’s an unevenly weighted set of barbells, the kind that would give our moustachioed muscleman a slipped disk.
It’s also been a year of interesting shifts. What was proclaimed the inevitable future of VR eighteen months ago – the Metaverse – is now dead in the water. Or at least, it’s crawling weakly toward the ocean while our hero follows slightly behind, almost pitying the poor wretch, but still intent on drowning the malignant charlatan in the shallows. Meanwhile, the headsets that have dominated this year point to the growing platform-based nature of VR. Where a few years ago you only needed a headset and a PC to access the full suite of VR games, now you need the right headsets (and a PC). It’s a trend that could have significant ramifications for PCVR in the future, although we’re not there quite yet.
L: Another Fisherman’s Tale; R: The Light Brigade |Image credit:Vertigo Games
Yet while Meta’s vision for the Metaverse remains more watery than American tea, the company’s still right at the forefront of VR headset design. In October, Meta launched the Meta Quest 3, which offers a substantial hardware upgrade from the Quest, alongside improved passthrough and mixed reality capabilities. The higher price and the lack of decent launch titles put me on the fence about whether it was worth the upgrade, but now it has a slew of games likeAssassin’s Creed Nexus, Samba Di Amigo: Party Central,Lego Bricktales, and Asgard’s Wrath 2, it’s a much more viable proposition.
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Indeed, VR gaming has saved all the good stuff for the last three months. Alongside the Quest 3’s slightly-after-launch titles, we’ve seen PCVR releases forArizona Sunshine2,Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 (which, like it or not, is a massive VR game), and the wonderful remake of ye-olde spooky puzzler the 7th Guest. If you own a Quest 2 or 3, you’ll have access to nearly all of this because of Quest Link, making it one hell of a Christmas list for VR fans.
In short, 2023 has gone from being a pretty dry affair in VR land, to a bit of a bumper year right at the death. But the quality of your harvest depends heavily on which headset you’ve got, and the big question going forward is how much further the existing VR platforms are likely to drift apart. Right now, if you own a Quest headset, then you can access both the Quest exclusive library, and anything PCVR via Quest Link and Air Link. But will that remain the case? Meta has been pushing to make the Quest its own platform for years now. At what point does the Quest sever its connection with the PC entirely?
Image credit:Draw & Code
And while Valve has its own headset it wants to sell, it also seems to understand the importance of Meta’s continuing presence in the PCVR scene. Earlier this month, Valvepartneredwith Meta to update its Steam Link application to stream to Quest 2 and 3, a sort of reverse system to Quest Link and Air Link. As well as providing further PCVR functionality for Quest, it points to a continuing overlap between Meta headsets and PCVR.
