Valve's "Half-Life: Alyx" is the first full-fledged game of a gaming mega brand, designed from the ground up for VR - available only for VR glasses. That splits the minds.
While many PC players are annoyed that they the first half-life after more than ten years Waiting time can only gamble with additional hardware, VR enthusiasts hope for a gaming masterpiece that shows the rest of the game world: This can only be the Virtual Reality.
Behind this hope hides more than righteousness: Half-Life: Alyx (all info) should be the PC VR game market to a leap forward help and sell VR glasses alone. It would be the much-vaunted killer app.
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Back to City 17 - this is only possible in VR. Many PC players annoy that. Let Half-Life: Alyx persuade you to buy VR glasses? BILD: Valve
The larger VR market, in turn, would make VR development more interesting for more game studios, potentially making PC-VR more than a small hardware niche - One day perhaps even a new game standard. So far the theory.
Half-Life: Alyx: 20 percent of PC players could switch to VR
Practically alone has the Announcement of Half-Life: Alyx made sure that Valve Index (tests) in the Steam Topseller charts could climb up, The game is the VR goggles for free.
An actual Survey in PC gaming redress outlines the VR purchase intentions of PC players more concrete. After all, around 6,850 PC players have participated in it so far.
The result: 20 percent The survey participants want to buy a pair of VR glasses for Half-Life: Alyx. After all, five percent equal to the release date in March 2020. 15 percent beat if it fits financially.
These willing to buy 32 percent Respondents who would like to play Half-Life: Alyx, but do not want to invest in VR glasses just for the Valve game.
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After all, 20 percent of PC players cherish after the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx a VR purchase intention. Picture: Screenshot Straw Poll
VR glasses cheaper sell - and the thing is scratched?
At this point is the survey distorted, because as a reason for the lack of interest in VR, the survey response "financial reasons" before. Another answer option with "medical reasons" as a default, probably Motion Sickness meant, is one percent.
The answer option "because I do not want to use VR" is missing. Therefore, the inference does not work that alone a lower eyewear price could make sure that the 32 percent VR-desinterested buyers. Especially in the PC gaming market, huge sums of money are usually invested in hardware - because the price should not be the all-important purchase criterion.
Another indication of a limited validity of the survey: 28 percent of survey respondents already have VR glasses. For comparison: you go according to current Steam hardware data, have only around one percent of Steam users a VR glasses.
This clear difference may be due to the Reddit niche, where especially very passionate players exchange views. Or it is an indication that the loud VR minority specifically participated in the survey.
Half-Life: Alyx and the VR market: Valve has to deliver
Either way, how Half-Life: Alyx will ultimately affect the VR market will be closely linked to the quality of the game. Maybe Valve will make a big hit like Nintendo with the first 3D Mario, After Mario 64 no one doubted the relevance of 3D games. And Nintendo is the big role model for Valve's VR strategy.
If Half-Life remains: Alyx, however, falls short of expectations, the game could even hurt the VR market. The greater the hype, the deeper the case - the VR industry already knows that.