Nintendo isn’t Keen to Get Into VR
So Nintendo have said that they’ll probably give VR a skip.
Why? They don’t think it’s really fun.
Oh Nintendo. You’ve been consistently surprising during this current generation of console gaming. Not in the way we’ve all come to know the company, but in a surprisingly unsurprising way. Confused?
You see, Nintendo has never been a company to play it safe. Usually perched atop a giant pile of money, they’ve never been one to shy away from taking a chance. Some of the wackiest designs and ideas in the gaming world have come from the Japanese company that got its start making playing cards in the 19th century.
This was the company that gave us the Nintendo Wii, handheld consoles with two screens that fold and infamously the Nintendo Virtual Boy. A headache-inducing attempt at a stereoscopic gaming console long before the technology was up to it.
Nintendo Finally Beaten?
Nintendo has had its share of colossal failures, most recently the Wii U, but it’s handheld 3DS console is still selling gangbusters and they’ve even released a new model without the 3D that most people don’t seem to care about.
Now, I love Nintendo as much as the next person. You’d have to pry my New 3DS XL from my cold dead fingers if you wanted it, but it’s clear that Nintendo wants to play it a little safer. At least by their standards. On the surface their latest console, the Switch, is innovative. The truth however is that Nintendo have fallen back into their handheld comfort zone, with two portable gaming consoles on the market at the same time. It just so happens one of them will plug into your TV.
The Old Doublespeak
Of course, I’m also going to buy a Switch because who thinks with their head anyway, right? But it is surprising that the gaming giant hasn’t already hopped on the VR train. The big N has been beaten to the punch by Sony and their PSVR product, which is doing very well I might add.
This isn’t the first time Sony have beaten Nintendo to the punch either, since a little console called the Playstation was actually going to be a SNES CD upgrade, until Nintendo tried to double-cross Sony. We all know how that turned out.
A Nintendo VR product isn’t just an idea pulled from thin air either. Nintendo is known for differentiating it’s platform in ways that don’t relate to pure specifications. After all, on a hardware level you can barely tell the PS4 or Xbone apart.
On top of that, they’ve shown consistent interest in 3D with their products in the past and they have a patent for a Switch HMD. References to VR has also been found in Switch code. To top it off, the company have basically admitted to looking at the prospect of Switch VR seriously.
Sadly it seems that it’s not to be, since Nintendo is having a hard time finding the fun in VR. Which is surprising since over on the PS4 people are having a blast with games like Superhot VR, Rez and Resident Evil 7.
