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Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

reuters.com

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Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#141

Post by nawgz »

freeflight wrote: post #122
jnwatson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is $20 high? I'm continually amazed how much fun a $20 game can provide. For the price of a movie ticket and a coke, you can get a dozen hours of entertainment. That seems like a pretty good deal to me. And the $60 are AAA games where you'd easily get 30-40 hours worth. These have budgets of ~$70 million; they have to make their money back somehow. One of the secondary reasons I've avoided Oculus is that it is a…

> For the price of a movie ticket and a coke, you can get a dozen hours of entertainment. That seems like a pretty good deal to me. Or maybe the movie ticket with overpriced coke is just a bad deal? A lot of it is also pretty relative down to a personal level and preferences: Some people can entertain themselves with a deck of cards, not even worth $1, for a nearly unlimited amount of time.

> maybe the movie ticket ... is just a bad deal

Think about entertainment options and name one that is a better deal than $60 for 20 hours worth. It's just not common, perhaps outside of books. Life is expensive and publicly available entertainment is far from an exception.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#142

Post by NovaS1X »

oehpr wrote: post #116
recursive wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at least 10 hours in on beat saber, and I feel like I'm just getting started.

You are just getting started. I've only now felt like I've hit the wall, and I'm at about 300 hours.

What rank? I've felt a huge difference in competition at 2500+. 10k to 5k wasn't bad, but the moment 2500-3000 and consistent 300pp plays just to maintain it hit I felt the burn.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#143

Post by NovaS1X »

rychco wrote: post #43
nuclearcookie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you consider a fair price for a game? Are you talking about games in general or just games on Oculus?

I’m definitely a minority in this regard, but I completely support increasing the price of games across the board. Development is more expensive & involves more people now. The cost of games has been $60 for what, 15 years? One additional problem is that everybody wants to cash in on subscriptions and micro transactions for continuous money, even when you’ve already paid “full” price.

I don't know if I agree with this. Not that you're wrong but I don't think it's the full picture.

15 years ago games were still largely physical. That $60 included the physical games, cases, manuals, distribution, warehousing, etc. These days everything being digital companies don't have to pay that anymore. Sure there's a commission you have to pay on Steam/EGS but I highly doubt it's close to what having a physical distribution method cost.

So the way the $60 pie is split up today is totally different, and I imagine a much, much larger portion of that goes to the developers.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#144

Post by rijoja »

freeflight wrote: post #120
rijoja wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so what can we do to prevent this? I would say that the main risk here is that Facebook would be able to get control over the whole VR ecosystem. In worst case so that the top apps only would be usable if you had a Facebook account and with a Facebook device.

That’s pretty much already the case. By now Occulus only exists as a brand inside the Facebook ecosystem, only legacy Occulus accounts are allowed, everybody else uses their Facebook account to login and tie purchases too. The same Facebook account that FB can at any time arbitrarily block and demand the owner properly ID themselves. A situation that originally was deemed as “will never happen” when Occulus originall…

At heart Occulus is really an android system right? It would be such a shame if they where to grab control over this ecosystem. Unfortunately their set seems to be the most viable path to mainstream adoption.

Valve exists but Valve's alternative is way pricier and requires a computer right? Facebook would be able to mass-produce these devices at a low cost in a completely different way it seems.

So since it is an android system under the hood it would be very possible to make VR apps that would work on all android systems. This would be so much better for the ecosystem as a whole.

Surely there are WebXR standards that would basically be webapps so they would be totally platform independent however this will surely not cut it for all applications.

Seeing how social media companies can manipulate politics and steer behaviour through ads imagine what happens in a VR only reality. This is a total nightmare scenario.

Would it be possible to try to create some sort of campaign to make people more aware about the bad effects of this lock in. Perhaps by finding a suitable chinese device that remains open and try to favour that over facebooks versions. Sort of how Huawei managed to more or less copy devices at a lower costs and get into the market that way?

Microsofts Mixed Reality standard deserves some attention as well obviously. Again this requires a PC and they seem to be a bit more pricier as well. These wouldn't require base stations as well.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#145

Post by pacifika »

nawgz wrote: post #141
freeflight wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the price of a movie ticket and a coke, you can get a dozen hours of entertainment. That seems like a pretty good deal to me. Or maybe the movie ticket with overpriced coke is just a bad deal? A lot of it is also pretty relative down to a personal level and preferences: Some people can entertain themselves with a deck of cards, not even worth $1, for a nearly unlimited amount of time.

> maybe the movie ticket ... is just a bad deal Think about entertainment options and name one that is a better deal than $60 for 20 hours worth. It's just not common, perhaps outside of books. Life is expensive and publicly available entertainment is far from an exception.

Is 20 hours 2 times more fun than 10 hours? If you look at negative steam reviews for gamers having played 100+ hours they would disagree

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#146

Post by rijoja »

miej wrote: post #121
rychco wrote: post #36

I despise ads in all forms, and the absolute worst offenders are ads built into a platform just like this. Windows 10 shouldn’t be advertising on my desktop, PlayStation/Xbox shouldn’t be advertising on my dashboard, cars shouldn’t be advertising on the controls/display, and Facebook shouldn’t be advertising in my virtual reality headset.

I agree of course, but I dont think that merely stating ones dislike on an internet forum will be an effective way to effect change. So I pose the question: What actions may we take in order to help ensure a future of non-implementation of "the user is the product" systems, with a specific focus on those actions that are most likely to be the most efficacious at accomplishing the stated goal in an expedient and lasti…

So how efficient are for instance the EFF on conveying messages like this to a broader public. I bet that the gaming community for instance would have the technological understanding needed to understand how this is bad for them as consumers.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#147

Post by rijoja »

Otek wrote: post #81
silicon2401 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the dislike of ads, but not so much the complaint. Companies are free to insert ads if they want to, and we're free to choose what media we consume. I hate ads and would be glad to see them outlawed like billboards in Vermont, but I don't stress about it. I accept it as a tradeoff for playing certain games, or I do ad-free things like reading old books or exercising.

You see, problem with this is that we don't have a choice. With Oculus Quest, I bought this headset and it didn't had any ads back then. I have to keep it connected to the internet to download and update games but we shouldn't accept state where they can just put ads on my hardware anytime they want.

So it becomes unusable if you don't keep it connected to the internet?

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#148

Post by rijoja »

silicon2401 wrote: post #68
rychco wrote: post #36

I despise ads in all forms, and the absolute worst offenders are ads built into a platform just like this. Windows 10 shouldn’t be advertising on my desktop, PlayStation/Xbox shouldn’t be advertising on my dashboard, cars shouldn’t be advertising on the controls/display, and Facebook shouldn’t be advertising in my virtual reality headset.

I understand the dislike of ads, but not so much the complaint. Companies are free to insert ads if they want to, and we're free to choose what media we consume. I hate ads and would be glad to see them outlawed like billboards in Vermont, but I don't stress about it. I accept it as a tradeoff for playing certain games, or I do ad-free things like reading old books or exercising.

Yeah but you also have to factor in the ecosystem lock in and monopoly factor here.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#149

Post by rijoja »

shafyy wrote: post #40
driverdan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of other VR headsets. Buy a different one.

There is no real alternative to the Quest, unfortunately.

Hopefully some Chinese company will manufacture a similar system somewhat compatible with android. WebXR exists however that is probably not as performant however.

Re: Virtual reality ads make their way to Facebook's Oculus headsets

#150

Post by rijoja »

missedthecue wrote: post #136
pazimzadeh wrote: post #91

One of the best features of AR is going to be the ability to detect real world ads and cover them up with a black box, or some nice wallpaper.

i find advertisements much more interesting than wallpaper. Not sure why that's going to be a good feature.

I prefer wallpapper over advertisement every day so this would be a great feature.
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