The former president of Epic Games, Mike Capps, comments that virtual reality must work perfectly from day one or it will be doomed, and asks manufacturers to take as much time as they need for it.
Mike Capps, who considers himself semi-retired from the video game industry after definitively leaving Epic Games a year ago, has had a very interesting talk with GamesIndustry.biz during the GDC. In addition to commenting on how difficult it is to succeed today in the video game world despite having lived in first person glory days with the Gears of War saga, he has had some words for virtual reality, in which Epic Games is betting very strongly.
Regardless of how attractive this technology is, something that he does not doubt, Mike thinks that it will be complicated for the bulk of consumers to want to put on their faces a device that transports them to other worlds, just like most people do not put on 3D glasses at home to watch a movie. If we add to this the cost of a high-end PC, the situation becomes even more complicated.
There is very little tolerance at the consumer level for making such an investment. And it is one of the things that arouses my curiosity the most. Look at the 3D TVs and how easy they are to use. They’re just a pair of polarized glasses, and people don’t wear them because the hassle isn’t worth it. And the difference in the contents is there. Avatar in 3D is much better than Avatar in 2D… If putting on a pair of glasses is a hassle, then the idea of ‘OK, I’m going to put on my HMD and I’m going to turn on my liquid-cooled PC to make it work’ [es complicado que llegue a despegar]. I hope it happens, but I think it will be a long time before I see my mother do that.
On the other hand, he comments on the situation that happened with Oculus, when they presented themselves to the developers 2 years ago asking them to develop games for their platform. A platform of which they did not know when it would reach the consumer market, nor how many people would adopt it. A situation, he recognizes, very similar to the first Xbox, which nevertheless managed to succeed as a platform, especially in its second version.
For Mike, if the virtual reality industry wants to have the slightest chance of succeeding, the technology must work perfectly from the very beginning. Any problems related to nausea and vomiting will mean the end in a heartbeat. “As Carmack commented in his talk, ‘We sent a handful of Gear VRs, we have an 80% return rate, everyone abandons it and that’s it. No one would buy the next version.’ So, please guys, don’t screw up. Take all the time you need.”
Mike finds the idea of CastAR, HoloLens and augmented reality more attractive. “Just for the fact that I can use it in the room with my children, that they are playing with their toys and I can take a look at them while I play, just like I do when I’m with the Xbox, or the same as I do when I’m with the iPhone… but if I put a HMD on my face, I’m not a dad anymore. That’s not allowed, is it? There will be a lot of cases where people can’t afford to turn off the real world, even if it’s a wonderful way to maximize our entertainment experience.”
