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Valve Announces Half-Life: Alyx, Its First Flagship VR Game (theverge.com) 111

Posted by BeauHD from the wake-me-up-I-must-be-dreaming dept.
Yesterday, Valve announced Half-Life: Alyx, the first new game in the acclaimed Half-Life series in well over a decade. And unlike the previous Half-Life installments, this game will be playable exclusively in virtual reality. The Verge reports: We don't currently have any details beyond the tweet from Valve above, which appears to be the first tweet from a new, Twitter-verified Valve Software account established in June. But clearly, we'll be learning more on Thursday, presumably from this social media account, at 10am PT. Despite being some of the most influential and critically acclaimed PC games ever made, Valve has famously never finished either of its Half-Life supposed trilogies of games. After Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the company created Half-Life: Episode 1 and Half-Life: Episode 2, but no third game in the series. The closest we've come to knowing anything about where Half-Life was headed was this thinly veiled fanfic from former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw.
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Valve Announces Half-Life: Alyx, Its First Flagship VR Game More

Valve Announces Half-Life: Alyx, Its First Flagship VR Game

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  • Uh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @08:58PM (#59433590) Homepage Journal

    And unlike the previous Half-Life installments, this game will be playable exclusively in virtual reality.

    I've got news for you, the original games were also only playable in virtual reality. Though if you know where I can get a gravity gun in real life, by all means, let me know.

    Unlike the previous Half-Life installments, this one will fucking tank. VR headset penetration is in the low single digits... and speaking of penetration, most of them are probably used most for porn. It takes a fairly ballsy PC to play a VR game at a good level of quality. I'm not opposed to it and I don't think it's a gimmick, but it's going to be another decade before there's broad ownership.

    • Re:Uh (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki@gmail.cBALDWINom minus author> on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:24PM (#59433654) Homepage

      Steam's HW survey says VR headset penetration is around 0.805% of all surveyed machines. It's far worse then low single digits.

      • I think it's higher among machines capable of playing a current AAA game to begin with. But it's still under 3% or so no matter how you count.

        I predict that they will open it up to all systems before launch... or that it will fail miserably. Or both :D

        • Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)

          by Highdude702 ( 4456913 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @07:48AM (#59434700)

          *looks around*
          Half Life 3 Confirmed!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Those machines in the survey(RTX 105x+ and 4core cpu's) would have no problems with any VR headset on the market. The problem is that most people rightly see like the last two times that VR isn't ready for prime time among gaming and it's more expensive as an investment that will depreciate faster then a PC. On top of that with all the claims that "issues of headaches, motion sickness, etc, etc, etc" are fixed they continue to persist.

          • It is more like buying a monitor. They last through many many PCs. Sure, it is still early and there is room for improvement, but the first Vive works just fine and there is no need to upgrade it when I upgrade my PC.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

            "Don't waste your money on an HDTV, there isn't even any content." - 2002

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mashiki ( 184564 )

              "Don't waste your money on an HDTV, there isn't even any content." - 2002

              "VR is the future!" - 1998

              If you bought a HDTV in 2002 you were an idiot, since it didn't catch on for another decade. We're only at the 4th iteration of it, and it never broken 1% market penetration. Despite the calls that it's going to be the next great thing, even in the porn industry where they thought it would take off...well it really hasn't. What amuses me is the number of people who defend this with their dying breath, which generally makes me believe they're early adopters really hoping it woul

          • Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)

            by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:15PM (#59436440)

            The problem is that most people rightly see like the last two times that VR isn't ready for prime time among gaming and it's more expensive as an investment that will depreciate faster then a PC.

            You use the words rightly like you have some experience with the current VR headsets that makes you predict they are going to flop. So what is that experience? I mean given that we have hyper realistic graphics, inputs that react pretty much instantly, refresh rates and latencies that resolve VR sickness, and a set of AAA studios providing content all for a $400 price tag (nothing compared to the cost of my first 3D Graphics Accelerator), what basis do you have to consider something a flop?

            Also what makes them depreciate? I mean so far the only major problem we've had with early entrants like the Rift CV1 is that cable accessories are not being sold. Currently that has actually resulted in Rift CV1s with functioning cables selling for quite a lot of money making them depreciate slower than a computer monitor.

        • Those numbers are also likely skewed by the insane number of people out there with machines barely able to run F2P games like DotA 2. The funny thing about people saying this game will tank is that great VR games have the potential to garner sales from a massive segment of that audience. A lot of people who own a VR headset are just waiting from the last decent game to the next one, ready to throw money at anything remotely good on those platforms.

      • Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by diems ( 6396892 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:13AM (#59434268)

        You guys are looking at this the wrong way. You're looking at this as the low marketshare of the vive will hold back the sales of the game, when Valve is banking on this game to sell more VR headsets. They dont care if the game tanks. It's a bet to sell more headsets and fill gaps where 3rd party game developers havent filled.

        • Re: Uh (Score:3, Insightful)

          by DigitalisAkujin ( 846133 )

          The thing is VR is a fundamentally different experience. With a normal PC game I can come home from work and grab a beer, relax, and chill out with possibly some weed while talking to my wife and catching up on things while casually gaming.

          VR wouldn't let me do any of that.

          Also the controls are hand held motion sensitivity joysticks. That's not what I signed up for when I got a PC.

          I wish Valve well on the R&D side but I'm over here feeling burned. I've been waiting 15 years for a sequel but instead I go

          • You're only disappointed because you have a very closed view of "what you signed up for". Me I signed up to gaming for new experiences. Frankly I couldn't think of anything worse than sitting and talking to my wife while I'm trying to game, so that is out of the question. Beyond that there are several VR titles I own which are better played seated, and more than anything I have no problem not sitting on my arse (I do enough of that at work) when gaming.

            I signed up for unique experiences, and until VR they w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            True it's a different experience. But if you want to sit in the cockpit of a fully simulated jet in DCS [digitalcom...ulator.com] it is one hell of an immersive experience. Elite Dangerous is good too. People say Star Citizen but I haven't played it. Eventually it will come out of Alpha, like in 2030.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          when Valve is banking on this game to sell more VR headsets.

          Thing is they've been hyping the piss out of VR for what? 8-9 years now? And nothing has pushed the desire for people to buy-in on a headset what-so-ever. The entire thing seems more like a tech demo that someone was screwing around with, and people said "hey shit, that looks neat! Let's make a game out of it." Unless there's something far beyond this game as a gimmick selling point, it's going to fail harder then the nintendo power glove.

          • If they announced an ACTUAL HL3, not whatever-the-fuck Half Life: Alyx is, people would be lining up to buy VR headsets today.

          • Thing is they've been hyping the piss out of VR for what? 8-9 years now?

            Well technically Oculus hasn't had a general purpose product until 3 years ago when it actually started taking off.

            And nothing has pushed the desire for people to buy-in on a headset what-so-ever.

            Until this year there's been no AAA content, so that is no great surprise.

            The entire thing seems more like a tech demo that someone was screwing around with, and people said "hey shit, that looks neat! Let's make a game out of it." Unless there's something far beyond this game as a gimmick selling point, it's going to fail harder then the nintendo power glove.

            Based on what? Feelings alone doesn't answer why this is here. But let me help you: The VR world has expanded a lot this year. Bethesda, and Gearbox are among AAA companies porting to VR. Major funding is going into creating VR specific games many with an absolutely epic experience with good graphics and story, others mor

        • You're looking at this as the low marketshare of the vive will hold back the sales of the game, when Valve is banking on this game to sell more VR headsets.

          There is a huge price-point difference going from $60 for a game to $500 at the low end for a VR headset. Because VR headsets are so pricey with very little return I'd suspect that people will wait until reviews are out to see how good/bad this new half-life VR game turns out.

        • You're looking at this as the low marketshare of the vive will hold back the sales of the game, when Valve is banking on this game to sell more VR headsets.

          If it were Half-Life 3, it might do that. But the game that isn't the one people really want won't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        that is about the same number as linux users on steam.

      • Steam has 90 million monthly users participating in the hardware survey. 0.805% isn't too bad when you consider that this doesn't cover all of VR. PSVR has a sizable chunk, as does Oculus, though with the latter there will be significant double counting with steam. There's quite a lot of headsets out there.

      • I remember playing VR sims back in the mid 1990's. Install base back then was also far below 1%.

        • Install base of what? I ask you legitimately questioning where you got global hardware surveys done in the 90s?

          • Home computer sales have been tracked since the 1980's. That's not hard to look up, and indeed people base all sorts of interesting observations on that data. [bls.gov]

            The number of arcade units was probably less than 1000. Plus a few home units like VFX1 Headgear [youtube.com] and others maybe pushed that up to let's say 2000. Divide that by the number of home computers in any year of the 1990's and it's less than 1% of the market. Why? Well I don't have time to explain how arithmetic works. It's a small number, a very small numb

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

              Even with a massive bankroll there is no clear path to market growth and profit.

              People need a compelling reason to part with their hard earned cash and buy a VR headset. Making games VR only is one way to do this, provided you make excellent games. Enthusiasts have no trouble finding $400-$1000 for higher end video cards, I'm sure they can shell out for a VR headset too. But there is no reason for it at the moment, the offer consists of Fallout 4 VR, Skyrim VR, Elite Dangerous, DCS (all available in regular versions) and a handful of others, plus an ocean of absolute shit that people s

    • and in those single digits, many are stand-alone "consoles."
    • It's too much money.
      My Index ($1000)
      PC with GPU capable of pushing 90+fps at Index resolutions (~$2500)
      It's a lot of dough to play games. That being said... Good VR is fucking incredible.
      • Don't forget the empty room dedicated to the VR setup. It's not common to have so much space to spare.
        • I'm in a rather small condo in Seattle, and I do fine.
          Admittedly- I can't do "room-scale" games, but with it set up for standing scale, you still have as much mobility as you physically have. for me, probably 3 foot radius around me.

      • Maybe some people will need to decide between updating to iPhone XII or buying a PC good enough for playing Half-Life: Alyx (and maybe not at the highest resolution in Ultra mode).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cito ( 1725214 )

        I agree about too much money.

        I've got a couple older pcs setup as a home NAS and one for spinning up virtual machines as needed, but my gaming pc I built, I spent just about an even 2000 dollars on. While i could be irresponsible and throw a vr headset on a credit card, it would be stupid. For now the price of vr headsets are just too much for a single use device. Their prices slowly come down and I'm not the intended demographic anyhow although I'd love to have one I can't justify it in my current econom

    • Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by diems ( 6396892 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:06AM (#59434254)

      Maybe it will tank. But that would be planned and accounted for.

      You have to ask youself, if Valve made a game, why would they do so? They make bucketloads every hr from steam while making a game entails risk, diverts theirs resources and doesnt really get them anything. Money? They got plenty of that. Push source 2? It's not finish yet. Platform seller? they already got TF2, l4d2 and dota2 for that.

      However..... does the Vive have a platform seller? No. So thats what this new game is for. If it tanks so what? It's money behind the couch gabe has lost but if it succeeds this could be the push VR needs to boost its marketshare.

      If you don't think that people will buy an expensive piece of hardware just for one game then consoles prove that people will drop hundreds of $$$ on a single piece of hardware with 0% marketshare for just one good game in the hope there will be more good games to come.

      • That, or regular reality and games with male protagonists are sooo second millennium.

      • I think Gabe Newell and the rest of the execs at Valve put all their eggs in one basket for this venture in hopes that peoples need for a new Half-Life game will entice them to spend extra money for a VR headset.

        This will fail for 2 reasons:

        1.) Those that want a game typically don't want it as VR. A multitude of game companies have learned that lesson the hard way no matter what game it was.

        2.) Price. VR headsets are expensive to the degree that most consumers can't justify the cost for such for a select

      • If you don't think that people will buy an expensive piece of hardware just for one game

        Not for this game. Maybe for Half-Life 3.

        then consoles prove that people will drop hundreds of $$$ on a single piece of hardware with 0% marketshare for just one good game in the hope there will be more good games to come.

        That's usually a pretty good bet. There's never been a game console that cost hundreds of dollars and only had one good game.

        • and only had one good game.

          So to be clear you've played the 5377 VR titles available on Steam and declared 5376 of them to not be any good? I've heard of hard to please but man you take the cake!

          • So to be clear you've played the 5377 VR titles available on Steam and declared 5376 of them to not be any good?

            To people who don't have a VR headset yet, clearly they were not compelling. But go ahead, invent bullshit arguments so that you can condemn me for them.

            • To people who don't have a VR headset yet, clearly they were not compelling.

              I bet you didn't know there were 5377 titles out there, so I guess that number factored into your decision not to buy a headset? Of course not. Titles are only compelling if people know about them. Pop quiz: How many AAA titles have been released on VR with official support? Subquestion: How many specifically funded "tech demo" games to entice users to buy gear other than Half-Life: Alyx have been released or announced (hint: It's not zero)

              If you don't know the answer to this question then the games on the

      • In a way, Half Life has always been a tech demo. It was more a way to show what the new engine was capable of. Them making it for VR kinda makes sense when you think about it that way.

      • However..... does the Vive have a platform seller?

        What's a Vive*? Is it anything like the Valve Index? [valvesoftware.com]

        You're on point though. The Index was released recently and Valve were completely beaten up on not having a killer application for it, while the Oculus Rift S has several Oculus home funded exclusives to help build their ecosystem.

        *I know what a Vive is.

    • ballsy /*snicker*/ - I see what you did there.

    • VR headset penetration is in the low single digits...

      Indeed. VR penetration is in the single digits, ... as a percentage of the 90 million steam users out there.
      It's not as niche as you think, especially since Steam doesn't count PSVR as well which also has quite a sizable market.

      Also define "tank". This game does not exist to propel Valve into a higher echelon of profitability. It is not intended to match any of the previous Half-Life releases in popularity. This game exists to sell Index headsets, just like Lone Echo existed purely to sell Rift headsets.

      and speaking of penetration, most of them are probably used most for porn.

      I'd

      • I'd wager a larger percentage of personal computers are used for porn than the percentage of VR headsets. And secondly... so?

        So, a system which can display porn can't necessarily handle an AAA VR game. There's around a thousand dollars' difference in the cost of that PC, and a substantial difference in headset cost as well.

        • There is zero difference in the cost of any normal gaming PC and a gaming PC that also runs VR other than the VR headset itself, and those are the same price as an mediocre gaming monitor. If you have a graphics card from the past few years that is anything other than the cheapest one you found on the market you will be able to play VR games. If you have been at all interested in AAA games in the past few years and have a monitor that can display a refresh rate higher than 60 fps, there's a damn good chanc

    • Well, if it was played in actual reality most of the worlds geeks would be dead by now. Mind you, this might not be a bad thing...

  • Valve still can't count to three. (Score:3)

    by The_mad_linguist ( 1019680 ) on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:06PM (#59433604)

    Valve still can't count to three.

    • I mean Chinese Democracy and Duke Nukem Forever came out. Why can't they finish HL3?
      • I dont know the fine details around Chinese Democracy but Duke Nukem Forever only came out because 3drealms finally ran out of money and they had to sell the ip and what they had to gearbox. At this point in time the HL3 ip is probably worth more sold to another developer than the money valve could make making the game themselves minus the risk. Assuming thats accurate it would be worth more to Valve to just hold onto HL3 in the event they get into $$$ worries. And if they do finally finish the source 2 sdk

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sd4f ( 1891894 )
        Some anonymous ex-employees speak very poorly of the work environment at valve; they're rolling around in so much money and the bar is so high, that it can't possibly be exceeded with developing new video games in the style of Half-Life. Being a middle man pays so much more than bothering to release a game and making money from it that they just don't bother attempting HL3 because they all know; they can't live up to the hype, and there's far more money in free games with integrated gambling (loot boxes, lo

      • Duke Nukem Forever never came out. Just like they never made a sequel to the Matrix.

    • Yeah but we'll still get 2 of these before it's abandoned.

  • I thought this hype had already died (again)....

    • Pistol Whip... imagine the matrix mixed with John Wick.

      VR is not dead... just out of reach of most people.

    • Have you tried it?

      I bought an Oculus Quest (I don't have a Facebook account) a few weeks age and it is incredible.

      I demo it for people with a roller coaster game. And completely untethered, shoot, we used it at a State Park while the kids were on the playground.

      I'm working on a jump-scare thing (perfect for the platform) with the kids and have other ideas.

    • I thought this hype had already died (again)....

      You thought wrong. There is more VR hype now than there has ever been and multiple AAA studios offering VR variants along with many studios working on VR only games.
      But I told you that you were wrong last time you commented on a VR story on Slashdot as now you're just trolling. ... well no "now" about it. You've always been our most beloved troll.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You think I remember anything you claim? Why would I store junk-data in my brain?

        • You think I remember anything you claim? Why would I store junk-data in my brain?

          I question that every time you post garbage while ignoring the world around you.

  • Gamers: "Is this an April Fools joke?" (Score:3)

    by Snufu ( 1049644 ) on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:31PM (#59433678)

    GabeN: "Do you guys not have virtual reality headsets?"

    • GabeN: "Do you guys not have virtual reality headsets?"

      GabeN: If you don't, can I interest you in the Valve Index?

  • Games can drive hardware purchases (Score:5, Informative)

    by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert,merkel&benambra,org> on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:31PM (#59433836) Homepage
    I'm old enough to remember how the release of hit games drove a lot of people to buy computers capable of playing them in their full glory.

    If Alyx is a sufficiently compelling game, and given that Half-Life is a franchise with a lot of resonance with older gamers with the resources to buy a grunty gaming PC if they want, couldn't it drive the sales of a lot of VR gear?

    • It's fair to say. Having seen this news, I'm now considering it myself.
      • I transitioned from a Vive to an Index.
        It truly is fucking awesome.
        I don't know if it's $1000 of awesome, as I tend to not use it for a while, and then binge for a few days... but the experience is truly fucking awesome.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by diems ( 6396892 )

      Exactly.

      And people still do do this today and buy the hardware for the game. There will be 2 such piece of hardware coming out next year. With prices very likely to be about the same price as a vive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sad_ ( 7868 )

      you don't say, most of my upgrades back in the day were because of gaming;

      sound cards - getting rid of beeps in games and have decent sound like all the other computers (anything was better!)
      more memory - mostly needed by a certain game
      better cpu - no longer wanted ot play doom in a poststamp size window
      cdroms - games got to big for floppies and came only on cd or were better on cd (full talky, fmv, cd quality music)
      gpu's - who didn't buy his first voodoo card for games (smooth and hi-res quake/tomb raider/

      • Spot on. Pretty much the reasons for all my early PC upgrades as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        you don't say, most of my upgrades back in the day were because of gaming;

        sound cards - getting rid of beeps in games and have decent sound like all the other computers (anything was better!)
        more memory - mostly needed by a certain game
        better cpu - no longer wanted ot play doom in a poststamp size window
        cdroms - games got to big for floppies and came only on cd or were better on cd (full talky, fmv, cd quality music)
        gpu's - who didn't buy his first voodoo card for games (smooth and hi-res quake/tomb raider/

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sad_ ( 7868 )

          correct, but vr isn't that expensive anymore, unless you want the best of the best.

        • A Rift S is cheaper than a 3Dfx Voodoo was back in the day. It's certainly one of the cheaper components in my gaming rig.

    • If Alyx is a sufficiently compelling game

      Somehow, I doubt it will little more than a themed tech demo. Like lost coast but for VR

    • I upgraded from paperwhite VGA to a color VGA monitor (640x480) because of seeing Sim Earth on a friend's machine. Before then I was too cheap to pay for color.

    • If Alyx is a sufficiently compelling game, and given that Half-Life is a franchise with a lot of resonance with older gamers with the resources to buy a grunty gaming PC if they want, couldn't it drive the sales of a lot of VR gear?

      That was the point. Unfortunately for Valve the Index comes in at over $1000, so it will very likely drive sales of the competitor's gear.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      HL3, P3, & TF3 4 VR would make people buy new hardwares if they are good.

    • If Alyx is a sufficiently compelling game, and given that Half-Life is a franchise with a lot of resonance with older gamers with the resources to buy a grunty gaming PC if they want, couldn't it drive the sales of a lot of VR gear?

      The Half-Life franchise launched as a mass market game based on the Quake engine,, with relatively modest hardware requirements. Not entry level perhaps for 1998, but not a budget-buster, either. You can spend a lot of money on tech demos or you can deliver a game that almost anyone can play.

  • Sure 1% VR penetration, but of that 1% I could almost guarantee you most people will be buying this game. That's a HUGE amount of gamers. I couldn't go back to "Pancake" (flat screen) gaming any more. It seems.... almost childish now. I also remember buying a half-decent videocard to play the first half-life game (and having to install this annoying "Steam" thing for software distribution... ). So half-life already pushed hardware sales in my case.

    • Re:This will do AMAZINGLY. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:52AM (#59434346) Homepage

      When I bought my first PC, I had to upgrade the RAM to run Doom. It cost almost as much as the machine had cost in the first place.

      When Quake came out, we had to spend almost as much again to get a processor and a video card that would run it.

      Since then... though I have bought many graphics cards, computers and upgrades, I haven't once done it for a particular game. Half-life "just worked" for me. My PC was already more than capable when I upgraded my WON account to a Steam account to download Half Life 2.

      The days of spending quite literally thousands to play a game are over, mainly because... look around... we have thousands upon thousands of games available to us.

      My gaming laptop is 8 years old. Yes, a laptop. The days of some hulking great beast of a machine consuming the spare room with cards far too large to fit it in comfortably and fans out the wazoo have gone. It laughed at GTA V, the only thing I needed do was change for an SSD but that was long overdue anyway. It's starting to show its age slightly now but that's hardly surprising and even if I upgraded, it would literally have to be an absolute top-of-the-line machine to play a brand-new and taxing VR game in any decent quality. I'm not spending GBP3k on a laptop for a game.

      There is a generational thing here - we were the first generation to see computer games add the third dimension. It took years to gain traction purely because the hardware couldn't keep up (I remember Driller / Total Eclipse on ZX Spectrum, for instance). We bought the hardware because it got used to full effect and wasn't possible to do without it... FPUs and GPUs.

      Now... everyone has a GPU. Everyone has an FPU.

      Not everyone has VR but... it's all there. Anyone could buy it at any time, and could have done for years. They're not buying it. When I bought a GPU, I'd never *heard* of a GPU just a few months before - you bought one because Quake or whatever said you had to have one and your mate bought one and it was amazing and thus you grabbed one to join in. When I bought an FPU, we were the only people I knew who had an FPU in their machine.

      VR isn't selling. There are VR kits for PC, Playstation, etc. and their sales are minimal. Mainly because, for all the YEARS that they've been out, nobody decided on a standard so it was a Betamax situation where half the people will have wasted huge amounts of money if it had swung the other way.

      I'm not going to drop nearly £4k on a decent machine, and a VR setup, just to play one Half-life-esque game unless it quite literally turns out to be as revolutionary as games of old were. So, not just a physics shooter in 3D, for instance. And other people are gonna guinea-pig it for me first.

      If it's an absolutely 100% revolutionary, new VR game, you might sell some units. And it might become "the" VR game. But you're still not going to see very many people drop that kind of money to play it nowadays.

      If there are bad or even mediocre reviews, forget it. Let the first-dayers waste their money finding out, but otherwise it'll just tank anyway.

      And I'm the person who thought that the Wii successors should have been the VR console. It would have blown their competition out of the water at the time, little old grannies would have a whale of a time with it, and you'd only need Wii Sports for VR and it would have sold like hot cakes to casual gamers.

      Unless it's quite literally Half Life 3, and I'm feeling immensely flush or I already have something to run it on, the chances of I'll just let it sit. If, a few years from now, VR has taken off (which I've been hoping for since the Wii days!) I might buy it as a budget title. Most likely, however, is that I'll never even play it.

      As someone who once witnessed two months wages drop into a tiny board into a machine just to play a game, and have it revolutionise my leisure time, that's a sad state of affairs.

      Now, I've even said that Half Life 3 should be VR and should show everyone how

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sd4f ( 1891894 )

        I really think you have a point. I remember going through the period where games were a pixelated mess, and as 3D graphics started to come in, you had boxxy polygons, and has time went on and hardware could do more, the polygons became more realistic, until around crysis, where I don't think graphical fidelity has really moved much beyond, and that was 12 years ago. I certainly got used to the idea of paying for hardware to run the cutting edge stuff.

        I look at younger kids like my nephew, and they don't car

      • we have thousands upon thousands of games available to us.

        I agree with the sentiment but not the generality. We have thousands of games available to us. We don't have thousands of experiences. Back in the days of Doom we also had games a plenty, but none like Doom. Back in the days of Quake we also had games a plenty, but none like Quake.

        I say this as someone who drank the koolaid. I got bored waiting for a flight and went to a VR studio. Played around for 2 hours. During my stop over on the way home I spent hours researching. When I landed I was typing my credit

    • Uhm. Half Life came on optical media. I got the game-of-the-year edition with a t-shirt. I still have (and wear, the dismay of my wife) that t-shirt.

      Even Portal came on physical media... in an ... Orange Box, if I dare to say so. It was around that time that Steam came out: I remember entering product codes to get a handful of games in my library.

      • I remember when the first Half-Life game came out in 1998 before days of Steam. Then there was Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Decay. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        • Yes. Also you forgot HL: Opposing Forces, which was bundled (I believe) with my Game Of The Year edition. I doubt many people have heard of HL:Decay because it was a PS2 exclusive. I have it, but I never played it because it was co-op. I only played HL: Blue Force later when it could be had for peanuts on Steam.
  • Not trying to nitpick but it is Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 not Half-Life: Episode 1 and Half-Life: Episode 2. So they were edging closer to Half Life 3 and never got there, not going the other way.
  • If they bundle this with good VR gear in the price range of about two steam controllers, it has a chance of success. If you already have to have VR gear, then it will most likely not get much sales. I for one won't be buying it because I simply have no VR gear and the good stuff is simply financially out of my reach.

    • I keep expecting them to release the VR equivalent of the "Orange Box". A package that was such a great value at the time and had so many must-have games everyone bought it. That could really kickstart VR adoption.

    • The problem is one of expectation. Sure $1000 for an Index is steep, but $400 for a Rift S is quite reasonable, and definitely within the realm of history of what people spend to play games.

      You think people are buying 1080Ti, 980 Tis, 880s, or even the original Voodoo (which cost more than $500 in today's dollars) because they have a business need?

      Games have always driven expensive sales.

      • Perhaps.... I do have the feeling this is quite a bit different.

        • Perhaps.... I do have the feeling this is quite a bit different.

          Mostly in the chances people get to experience it. Seeing 3D graphics on a TV advertisement is one thing. But people need to put effort into demo VR. I did, I went to a VR lab in Greece while waiting on a flight. Before I arrived home I had already placed an order for a headset, and not regretted it for a second.

          My personal opinion: for many games it's a game changer, but for specific games only.

  • Good news (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @04:36AM (#59434408)
    This is good news for people fed up with the predominantly male centric POV VR that you find out on the web.

    • If you bought a PCVR headset and all you do is beat off the porn, you're not going to be any more impressed with this release than any of the other hot titles in the market right now.

  • You could run Half-Life 2 in VR on Oculus DK2 as a beta. It made me feel ill thanks to Windows 8 forcing the refresh rate of the HMD down to the laptop LCD. But the moment you see Alex in front of you for the first time, with all the facial animation, carefully sculpted model and excellent voice acting.. You just walk forward and try to feel if she's real. It really was that convincing. It was the moment that made me realize how revolutionary VR could be. I am not even a particularly big fan of Alex or HL2

    • If anyone could make the case for VR, it is Valve.

      I think you've ignored a lot of the stuff Oculus has done. One of the problems of the past is that VR demos have very much been either a kludge (like HL2 in VR) or a vomit inducing exercise, typically some stupid roller-coaster simulator.

      I like what valve is doing now, but they are very much playing catchup after releasing their Index headset and getting massively criticised for not having a decent killer title for it. Unfortunately all the killer games are exclusives to Oculus, because this funding of awes

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