In this week’s newsletter: Though costly, the PSVR2 is the most usable virtual gaming device yet – even for sceptics like me
In 2016, when the first wave of virtual reality headsets hit the market after years of hype, I was sceptical. I was totally sold on VR, having had my mind blown playing a space dogfighting sim the previous year at internet-spaceship convention Eve Fanfest. But the original Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were just so unwieldy. They needed too many cables and so much space to operate that you had to dedicate a small room to them (which some of my more techy friends happily did). They were expensive, as were the PCs that you needed to run them. And having already played with VR several times at trade shows, the novelty was wearing off fast. Cool, sure, but the future of gaming? Nah.
The original PlayStation VR headset was the least technically powerful of that first wave of home VR tech, and also the least annoying to use. I was obsessed with Tetris Effect, which is a transcendental experience in VR, and its music-game cousin Rez. I played Moss, a charming storybook-style adventure about a mouse. But then PSVR went back in my Bottomless Drawer of Video Game Peripherals, and I never felt the urge to get it out again.
Crazy Taxi fans will be charmed by this solo developer’s quest to create his dream tribute to the game, entirely on his own.
Some of the American games sites interviewed the world’s most famous game designer Shigeru Miyamoto at the opening of Universal Studios’ Super Nintendo World theme park in LA. I’m not jealous at all. IGN’s interview has lots of lovely details about the park and Miyamoto’s influence on it.
Microsoft has signed a “binding” 10-year contract with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to its consoles, which strikes me as a very odd thing to do with a series of games that you do not yet actually own. (Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft’s merger is still pending, and presumably the company will be hoping that this helps sweeten the regulators who’ve put the brakes on the deal.)
Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund keeps on upping its stake in Nintendo. It now owns over 8% of the company. It also owns close to 6% of EA, and nearly 7% of Take-Two.
