One downside to VR, currently, is that the community is simply not that big compared to other gaming communities. Due to its speciality, many individuals who play with VR will often experience it through one of two devices (HTC Vive and The Oculus), which are often the same price as a console. Due to the massive price for entry, there’s not a lot of players in the market for big-name companies to be delving their hands into the headsets. However, this may not be the case for very much longer.
Raw Data reaches First Million in the Industry
Several attractive numbers have landed around this new AAA title on the VR system. The first is that nearly 30,000 players own the game and at least 90% of the players actually play the game. Those two numbers alone are astonishing as the usual play amount for a game is around 50%. This game also has a very positive rating and sells at a much higher price point that many games in the same industry, which is why it can claim that it made the first million dollars for VR games.
What does this mean?
As previously mentioned, the community is small and that small community is mostly filled with tinkerers and individuals who have a lot of time/money on their hands. When companies see value within an industry, they tend to dump more money in that industry to reap the rewards. When you have a small community, there isn’t a lot of incentive to put that much money in the game because one has a lower chance of meeting the overhead and making a profit.
With the claim of the first million, this could mean the jumpstart of the industry in what would have taken at least a decade to get to. The numbers were slowly increasing over time but having a jumpstart would attract bigger companies faster. As of now, most of the games out are created by small teams and even singular individuals. When you have bigger companies join the quality and length of a game increases due to the amount of people working on it.
What does this mean for fitness?
Small teams focus on niches, which are areas that they know will turn a profit if they produce a good game for it. Bigger companies can go after riskier markets, which is where fitness is in. Small teams incorporate fitness as a side component, such as turning rapidly or constantly moving, and it isn’t the main focus such as where it would be in Wii Fitness. With the attraction of bigger companies, one can expect the number of fitness games to rise because this is a relatively medium market, even for the HTC Vive.
At this point in the VR industry, fitness games are similar to the “as seen on TV” advertisements of the 1990’s. There’s not a lot of spotlight on it and it’s rare to find a true gem among the synthetic ones. With the attraction of bigger companies, one could find that sports games like the ones produced by EA become a household commodity. Reaching the first million is an industry mark that proves to bigger companies that there is value in this industry.
