Quest 3S Hands-on: Quest 2 Visuals with Quest 3 Power at an Unbeatable Price

Not sorry, but your comment is insane—literally insane.

They made a handful of games early on that are iconic, and started a file hosting service/Steam. It might be influencial, but certainly not innovative. We’ve had dozens, if not hundreds of games bigger than theirs; software digital distribution existed before – they created their walled garden as the only way to play their games; they did pioneer online gambling and casinos with CSGO, which Valve actively supports to addict children and make them spend even more money on colorful camos; handheld PCs were a thing before as well. What does Valve actually innovates on? It’s a boring company that has nothing to do for the past decade with what it was in the 90s/early 2000s. They struck gold with steam and that’s what they’ve been doing ever since.

Alyx is overhyped game, and it shown that good graphics aren’t everything – the level of interactivity with the world there is hilariously bad. You can’t kill a headcrab with a chair! But you can pick up a bottle and see it’s liquid being affected by gravity. Cool tech demo, nothing more.

You forgot to mention that infamous valve employee handbook, that would really help to paint Valve in awesome light.

I feel joy when I see "content unavailable" (as I do right above your post).

To think – every time he posts, he makes so many people happy because they DO NOT see his posts? I bet it gives him new meaning in life.

Anyway, the trick I'm trying to describe, is just go up to his post, find the ellipses (…) and click "block user" and you too can feel that same sweet, sweet sense of joy.

And at some point did I say anything bad about Meta? Then you call me a fanboy.

It's funny you talk so much about investment, I know other guys who, like me, are working alone on ambitious projects, and were refused by Meta's investment, just for her to invest more in fitness apps for middle-aged ladies, and "Amazing cartoon simulate work" games, man, don't tell me that this is not revolting either.

You don't understand Meta's vision, their wet dream is to replace cell phones with glasses, one time or another, they will admit that they feel ashamed of the games division, just look at the pathetic attention that our division received in Meta connect, and they keep talking more about that Horizon World crap than about the platform's own games, which are infinitely better.

I understand, in fact I may be being very positivist about Valve, because their work is a great reference for me, I will accept your criticism, it is worth rethinking sometimes what we think about companies.

Amen

As long as we can’t knock Alyx off the top of the VR best games list, we’ll still be behind, period.

Almost 400 game designers, developers, graphics and voice artists etc. worked on HL:A, 80 of them permanent Valve employees spending ~280 (wo)man years. If the other 320 invested only 10% as much, it adds to 392 years. In VR, only hybrid games like RE8 with 1500 credited had larger teams. AAA development is expensive.

Unless immortal, a single dev would die long before finishing even a small fraction of HL:A. Without huge budgets, only massive tool improvements will allow creating something similar in scope and quality. Maybe soon all that's needed is "Hey Siri/ChatGPT, make a VR game that's better than Half-Life: Alyx."

To ever knock Alyx off the top of the VR best games list requires finishing one first. For the sake of sanity I'd set the bar a bit lower, maybe "doesn't crash, fun to play, 4+ ratings on Quest, sells enough to survive", otherwise reality might adjust your expectations much more painfully. Undertale or Stardew Valley by single developers are probably more suitable role models than HL:A, and experiences gained will later help fixing whatever an AI hallucinated.

TL;DR: Occasionally the VR community acts like a spoiled child buried by a huge pile of presents, asking "is that everything?"

I ask why didn't Lord Gaben give just a little of his vast mercy (money) to the developers to solve the VR chicken and egg situation all these years and establish a PCVR platform so talented people can have some hope to earn some bread?

Because it's not his job to finance you private hobby? Valve did lots of the basic development all consumer HMDs are based on. Valve's Michael Abrash, who came up with the infamous Valve room covered in optical markers, the room scale VR demo that convinced Zuckerberg to even buy Oculus, has now been the chief scientist at Oculus/MRL for the last decade. No Valve, no Meta Quest.

Palmer Luckey deserves credit for lots of tinkering and finding a way to create a very cheap PCVR HMD from standard parts that triggered a lot of what we have today, but Valve lay many of the foundations and most likely never made their money back. And even if Valve had dropped VR in 2014 after feeling betrayed by Oculus for taking the results of their cooperation, running towards Facebook for the money, using it to hire away their chief scientist and then opening a competing software store, we'd still owe them.

It's been 10 years since Oculus was bought by Zuck, and he has been pumping billions to grow VR.

I'm regularly astonished by the level of entitlement in VR. Instead of recognizing that we are extremely lucky that the power interests of a couple of tech giants cause so much market distortion that VR got pushed with billions it didn't earn and won't make back, people just assume that this is normal and demand more. News flash: it is not at all normal that every VR user has access to very expensive to develop hardware for a small fraction of the price that it would cost if this was a healthy market with companies relying on at least small profits instead of a trillion dollar company gamble.

– All the AAA studios should release VR games, despite AAA budgets so high that they would never make any money. Because they are somehow obliged to jumpstart the VR market.

– All the VR HMD manufacturers should release HMDs that are competitive to Quest, but offer extra features for not much more money. Despite Meta reports of losing billions at MRL. Because losing money -> ??? -> Profit!!!

– All the mobile HMDs should use Horizon OS, so current users can run the games they already paid for. Despite app sales being the remaining option to make money in a market flooded with Meta HMDs sold at production price, and Meta forcing all Horizon OS users onto their app store, funneling all the money towards them. Because this is a revolution, only traitors do it for the money.

– All VR developers should support the Quest 3 with updated graphics for the benefit of those who upgraded their hardware. Despite games usually sell the most in the first few weeks after launch, making it very hard to recoup later additions through new sales. Because "I already paid for it".

– All VR games should come with PC level graphics and extended campaigns, because if Red Matter 2 can do that for a very specific game design or Asgard's Wrath with tons of Meta money can do it, it can't be that hard. Despite most VR teams being very small as low game sales still make VR development a high risk with mostly financial failures. Because "get good".

VR Community: I want …
VR Companies: Okay, but are you willing to pay for it?
VR Community: That's not my problem, and you should be grateful for this opportunity, because future VR users will make you rich. It's not my job to figure this out, or my fault that you are too incompetent to grow the market to where you wouldn't lose money. Just give me my stuff.

You are coming from the "spoilt child" and "level of entitlement in VR" angle.

The thing is I agree with everything you said about it. Meta pumping billions does worry me too about what will happen in future as monopoly is no good for anyone. Competition is needed for a healthy market. I am not saying because Meta has done it so should other companies come out with similar hardware or software offerings. Whether it's HTC and Viveport, Epic store, even Pico as well as game developers. I do not demand of them to be like MetaMeta's offerings

UntilUntil, until we are talking about Valve. Then I use Meta as an example against Valve but not coming from a spoilt child, high entitlement angle.

The issue with Valve is the vast amounts of money it takes out of the gaming industry from its 30% cut of other developer efforts just for hosting some files. If it reinvested some of it back into gaming, I'd be ok. But it doesn't. It's just taken out. Like a government taxing you but doesn't spend it to benefit tax payers but just pays itself a huge salary.
Then on top Valve gets praised unnecessarily. Even worse when VR gamers praise, prioritise and spend on Steam, who then not does not appreciate them by giving VR a chance to grow by spending some of the profits to fund VR software and hardware. It makes lots of 'money off others' games but doesn't want to return some to help VR. Then gets praised as if it's special.

Note: I had to cut reply short as it's becoming a pain as buggy software keeps messing up words and I have to keep re-editing. Was going to comment about the initial work Valve did etc as well as clarify further it's not about entitlement/spoilt and that I just wanted PCVR to grow and how Steam PC gaming monopoly almost killed PCVR.