Oculus VR Brings a New Reality to the Gaming Industry

After walking the floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, many gaming industry participants saw the virtual reality (VR) writing on the wall for the first time — and in a very realistic way. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gaming has arrived, or gotten extremely close, with the official ship date for the Oculus Rift VR viewer set for March 28 and current pre-order acceptance now taking place.

Some issues remain in the technology and user experience, not to mention the price point. However, barring a major misstep by the Oculus unit of Facebook, none of these remain permanent obstacles to prevent a long-term VR trend from taking effect in 2016 (according to a January 2016 report from SUPERDATA forecasting an install base of about 38 million VR gaming consumers by the end of the year and a July 2015 Business Insider estimate of VR headset shipments growing at a 99 percent CAGR between 2015 and 2020, reaching $30 billion by that end date).

Game console makers feel the heat from PC VR

While the Oculus Rift VR viewer existed in the purview of developers alone since June 2015, with this January’s announcement, the mainstream gaming public will now have an opportunity to experience VR firsthand. However, most of these potential gamers could remain on the sidelines unless they upgrade from Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles to a fully decked-out PC. That’s unless the console makers get in the PC VR game.

“Nintendo either needs to adapt or be left behind,” Tim Lynch, CEO of Psychsoftpc, tells me. “Microsoft already has its own VR/AR HoloLens in beta now for developers. And since Xbox is essentially a PC-based system, it is better equipped to meet this.”

Actually, Nintendo is playing a wait-and-see game, according to Joanan Hernandez, CEO and founder of Mollejuo, an augmented reality (AR) company with a mobile app called Terra Icons.

“Microsoft is betting heavily on AR with HoloLens,” he says. “Thus, the only direct competition for Oculus is PlayStation VR and HTC Steam VR. There’s space for the three of them — Oculus, HTC, PlayStation — at least initially.”

In fact, HTC does a great job with physical-digital interactions, according to J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, a global research and advisory firm. “And it might have some advantages over Oculus in the features department,” he tells me. “For example, by tracking your movement throughout a room using base stations.”

Demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms.

Expectations for VR exist at a high level. And with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets scheduled to hit retail in Q1 2016 and Sony PlayStation VR in Q2, demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms. “This is positive for both our video game and tech brand businesses,” Eric Bright, senior director of merchandising at GameStop, tells me. “During our GameStop EXPO September 2015, we saw customers wait in long lines to experience the virtual reality demos Sony and HTC had with positive feedback.”

Price point and immersion

Some industry observers have questioned the $599 price point that Oculus chose for the formal introduction of the Rift, such as Mike Goodman, director of digital media strategies at Strategy Analytics, a consumer-focused business consulting firm.

“Oculus views the Rift as a ‘premium’ product and has priced it accordingly; however, there is ‘premium pricing’ and then there is pricing yourself out of the market,” Goodman tells me. “While there is a small segment of PC gamers who think nothing of dropping $2,300 on a high-end PC, $600 for the Oculus Rift plus an additional $1,500 for a PC capable of running Oculus VR games and entertainment is just too much for most of us. Considering Facebook spent roughly $2 billion to acquire Oculus VR, they might want to rethink their premium price point.”

Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.

— Olli Sinerma

However, others have seen that earlier breakthrough consumer electronics with elevated acquisition costs have gone on to perform well in the marketplace. It comes down to the value proposition of immersion VR versus price point.

“The future of VR will not be determined by its current cost,” Olli Sinerma, co-founder and project lead at Mindfield Games, developer of the forthcoming VR gameP.O.L.L.L.E.N, tells me. “What Oculus can ship, it will sell, and others will develop cheaper alternatives like the already available Google Cardboard. Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.”

Install base barrier

But immersion alone may not ensure that Oculus will surmount its seemingly lofty sales tag. Other barriers beside the console makers represent plausible pitfalls for Facebook’s VR gear maker. The install base of VR-capable PCs presents the largest hedgerow for Oculus to jump over.

“Oculus’s $599 price point was higher than many expected, but that’s not the core inhibitor for adoption — it’s having a PC that’s Oculus-ready,” says Gownder. “Aside from PC gamers — and not even all of them — very few people have PCs with the needed specifications. Most people would have to buy the Rift and a $1,000-plus PC to use the device.”

Concurring with that perspective, Goodman opines that the vast majority don’t have PCs that meet Oculus Rift’s minimum PC requirements to run VR games and entertainment. Overall, Gownder estimates that only 13 million PCs globally are currently compatible with the Oculus Rift.

Which comes first, VR hardware or software?

Seeing that the install base for VR-capable PCs remains at a low level, the market might not yet exist. The classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario pops into view. Without a critical mass of hardware to run VR software, who will write the games? And with a lack of first-person shooters, etc., who will build PCs and consoles with VR compatibility?

“When it comes to consumer entertainment, the content dilemma poses a significant hurdle for adoption,” Maurice Patel, industry strategist, media and entertainment at Autodesk, developer of 3D design software, tells me. “Many VR headset manufacturers try to kick-start content creation by funding their own productions through initiatives like Oculus Studio. However, it will take several iterations of hardware and successful production projects before the technology is mature enough to warrant generalized, large-scale production of VR content.”

Today, VR is an exciting, bleeding-edge technology for exploring new ways of telling stories, driving gameplay and communicating ideas. Where it will go from here is yours to dream.

Future Processors will only Support Windows 10

Microsoft is seemingly going to a new limit to define Windows 10 as the ultimate platform for the people of its ecosystem. In short, older OSes will no longer be supported by newer processors, making Windows 10  the absolute minimum starting point for people who are still holding out to their outdated hardware and software configurations.

As it turns out, the AMD, Intel and Qualcomm processors of the future will only support Windows 10 to get enterprise support. This news will allow Microsoft to further add reluctant business users who have stuck faithfully to older OS iterations.

What about Windows 7, 8 and 8.1?

The company is making it mandatory for Skylake processors to upgrade in the near future. It has made a list of these 6th-gen chips that will get support for Windows 7 and 8.1, but that too will end barely a year-and-a-half later on 17th of July, 2017.

After the expiry of the 2017 deadline, it is almost certain that an upgrade is needed and only those updates will be rolled out that don’t risk the “reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices”.

Users with older versions of Intel and other options will get the support till Jan. 14, 2020 and Jan. 10, 2023 for versions 7 and 8.1 respectively.

Here’s Tyler Myerson in his own words regarding the change:

“Windows 7 was designed nearly 10 years ago before any x86/x64 SoCs existed. For Windows 7 to run on any modern silicon, device drivers and firmware need to emulate Windows 7’s expectations for interrupt processing, bus support, and power states – which is challenging for Wi-Fi, graphics, security, and more. As partners make customizations to legacy device drivers, services, and firmware settings, customers are likely to see regressions with Windows 7 ongoing servicing.”

It is not immediately clear what hardware developments are making Windows 7 a nuisance at this point, but as Skylake has shown, a better power management between the chip and the OS it runs on is possible. With Koby Lake coming soon, this and much more can be taken to an all new level.

5 Things That Will Disappear In 5 Years

Just five years ago the world was a very different place. In 2010, the iPad had just made its debut, Kickstarter was introducing a new form of venture capitalism that would change the face of fundraising and Square was letting vendors of any size accept payment with a swipe of a card on a mobile device. And we haven’t looked back.

The next five years will no doubt unleash products and services that we have yet to imagine. But as we progress, what will we leave behind? Here are a handful of things we use today that likely will either be gone completely or on their last breath, disrupted by new innovations, technology and methods.

Cash, checkbooks, credit cards and ATMs: What’s in your digital wallet?

Today, Square lets any business accept debit or credit cards. Venmo lets you split your dinner bill with a friend through a money transfer via text message. Soon, you will have all your banking done through any mobile device — even your vehicle. Across the U.S., check use fell 57 percent from 2000 to 2012, according to the Federal Reserve.

Ninety-four percent of consumers under 35-years-old bank online, and more than one-fifth of them have never written a physical check to pay a bill, according to First Data’s report, The Unbanked Generation. In Europe, if you try to write a check, they look at you as if you are crazy. Rent may be the last great bastion of using checks, but even that is well on the decline as property managers switch to electronic payments, and mobile payments become so easy.

One more thing: In the more distant future, there will be no cash. No cash means no cash machines — bye, bye ATMs.

USB sticks: How much longer for physical media?

By 2020, 70 percent of the world will be using a smartphone, according to Ericsson’s mobility report. Mobile data networks will cover 90 percent of the population. With cloud services like Apple, Box, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft offering near-unlimited storage at near-free prices, there’ll be little need for storage devices taking up room in your pocket. Not to mention the increase in standard storage for mobile devices in the next five years.

Event organizers around the world will need to come up with new swag to reward attendees at their conferences as USBs will be a token of the analog past.

Easier, more secure access: Passwords, keys be gone

This is a hard one because passwords are used so broadly today. The average person is said to have 19 passwords — and nearly half admit to using unsafe, weak passwords. But even if you’re adamant about using only strong passwords — guess what — those can be cracked too.

Consider getting a head start on cleaning out the old-tech clutter you have in your life.

Biometrics are already becoming mainstream, especially on mobile devices, which are now the main access point for many of our online activities. Fingerprints, voice and facial recognition will replace your first dog’s name and your wedding anniversary as the way you access your secure accounts. These will have their own security risks, but the character password will be no more.

Similarly, soon you will not have physical keys to lose. Your key will be any of the smart devices you carry, which will be linked to you biometrically so that only you can operate them.

No one will miss this: The remote control

No more scrambling around your house tossing the cushions of your couch in the air looking for the elusive remote control (or 10 of them, depending on the complexity of your in-home audio and video setup).

The research firm Strategy Analytics forecasts that emerging categories in the Internet of Things (IoT), smart home and wearables will connect an additional 17.6 billion devices by 2020. Even today, devices such as the Amazon Echo are taking voice search and commands to a new level. With so many new devices connected to the Internet by 2020, building separate hardware for a remote control will just no longer make any sense.

Static documents and paper agreements

Paper-based signatures and paper-based processing — physically needing to print, fax, scan or overnight documents for reviews, approvals, decisions and/or signatures to complete a transaction — are fast-becoming archaic in today’s digital world. In the future, we will rely on “cloud agreements” to actively manage any transaction.

Cloud agreements will be: actively connected to the identities of the involved parties (forever), able to mete out payments as contract objectives are met and actively contact actors in the transaction when the time is right.

Real estate, financial services, insurance, high-tech and healthcare companies — even budget-strapped governments — are adopting cloud-computing models to increase efficiency, reduce costs and drive a better end-user experience. Soon, contract management will never be the same.

When you’re making a list of resolutions for the New Year, consider getting a head start on cleaning out the old-tech clutter you have in your life to make way for a digital New Year. Sure, you have some time. But with all of the exciting technology disruptions taking place right now, why wait?