I own a Vive and I love it. I think it's going to become the dominant way people play video games in the next 5ish years. That said, it does have some issues:
- It's heavy and not very comfortable. Strapping a heavy thing to your face gets pretty old pretty quick.
- It's still tethered. The cord isn't THAT big of a deal, but it can still be frustrating or immersion breaking when you pull at it or step on it
- The screens aren't perfect yet. They're high enough quality that it's possible to feel immersed, but every now and then I start to see pixels and it's annoying
- Minimal content. Most of the things released so far are small demos or little things that are fun, but tend to be short. Which is fine, but in the context of something to take over part of what "traditional gaming" currently claims, there needs to be longer content.
That said, it does nail one thing perfectly: sense of presence. You really feel like you're in these virtual spaces, and until you try a full room scale Vive experience, you won't grasp it. No, Oculus doesn't cut it. No, GearVR or anything like that with a phone doesn't cut it. Full room scale Vive with its perfect tracking of your hands and head. It doesn't take a big leap of imagination to realize that this very early version of this machine is offering the beginnings of an
incredible experience, and the next steps are gonna come really quickly.
That said, they're fundamentally different than the kind of games we play now, so whether not it's a natural evolution... I dunno. iOS games kinda carved themselves a slice of people that don't really fit into the traditional continuum of gamers... maybe VR will do the same. Maybe it'll be total replacement. Most likely it'll take a chunk somewhere between.
