I think apex legends is still one of the highest concurrent player games on Steam. I think top is like csgo, apex legends, rust, maybe deadlock? I haven’t been online in a while but this is probably how it is based the last time I checked.
Huh. I had no idea you could play it in VR. Doesn’t really seem like a game which would be at all enjoyable in VR tbh, too much movement - especially vertical and sudden. I do not enjoy the idea of facing a creeper in person lol
I didn’t even know Bedrock had a VR mode. I’ve tried the Vivecraft mod for Java and it worked very well, albeit required some settings changed to make the controls more natural
I knew and even tried it before, but I completely forgot it existed because it sucked so much. Nobody can see you moving your hands and tilting your head, which kills all the fun of a VR multi-player game IMO. It’s just a glorified controller binding for VR headsets. Considering all the other wacky things they added, I don’t see why they didn’t add actual VR support.
Probably because VR gaming is basically dead. It never really took off and it’s a waste of time and money for them to devote resources to it. Probably like 0.1% of users are in VR.
That being said, part of why it’s dead is because no developers want to take chances on it, so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Valve was the last one to gamble on it.
If VR gaming is dead, then what does it say about Linux with about 5 times less users? Like, a low poly game about monkeys has a daily playerbase of a million people there. Mind you, Mincraft has 1 to 1.5 million. Not bad for a “dead” platform. Also, Valve isn’t even the last one to enter the market.
I think what you’re actually trying to say is that it’s too niche, which it absolutely is.
Lemmy is niche. VR is niche. Gaming is mainstream.
You can’t call a niche dead just because there aren’t that many people into it. It’s a niche for a reason.
Linux is booming, even though it’s “dead.” Lemmy has never been this active in its entire existence. Why do investments from large companies matter?
What truly matters is growth. Negative growth is what kills a platform/industry/company/whatever else. VR is growing, Linux is growing, Lemmy is growing. It may not be fast, but they all have active userbases that support their development.
You cannot call a child “failure” just because it never achieved anything in life, can you? They are growing. They can get sick, they can recover. They can also regress due to that illness and die. Only then they’re truly dead.
It’s math. The amount of money they’re spending on supporting the VR platforms is less than the amount of money they make for the people on those platforms. They probably have to dedicate several multi-person teams to manage the clients.
Linux has some pretty good hedging going on with steam deck.
Well, I’ve decided to check the financials of a couple of VR companies since your counterpoint sounded reasonable. The only one working at a loss is Meta. I could argue their business model is in Death Valley right now. After all, they have major capital expenses, which aren’t easily covered unless you have a big userbase.
But that’s their VR sector. Overall, Meta’s profitable and can easily cover all the expenses several times over.
Also, what do you mean by “they have to dedicate several multi-person teams to manage the clients?” Firstly, who’s “they,” secondly, if I understood you right, that sounds prepostrous, unless you’re talking B2B.
I’m not talking about VR companies I’m talking about Mojang.
The teams that Mojang keeps to work on the platforms cost more than the income from the people using those clients.
If you make a game, and you decide to support Mac, and Mac only brings in $500 a month but you have to pay somebody $3,000 a month to maintain the client, You’re losing $2,500 a month for that particular market segment.
Nothing says you have to get rid of those people or that client, But it’s a fiscally sound decision.
I been playing bedrock with my brother for a week now and it is good, mobs actually feel like a threat now and there are very small details to game. Like swords doing more damage to mobs than axes but when the mob is wet or is raining the axe does more damage.
TBH it was pretty barebones, but I did enjoy seeing some of my worlds in stereoscopic 3D. It also scares me for the future of VR (minecraft is a REALLY popular game. If it is dropping VR does that mean adoption isn’t going that well?).
Also, this is specifically regarding Bedrock minecraft. Java has never officially supported it, but there are mods that add the functionality.
There is a game called cyubeVR on steam and PS2VR, built from the ground up for vr. It is a great fun game with a solo dev. Highly suggest checking it out, there are quite a few videos on it and it is highly modable. It is sad that the big cos are dropping support
Damn I wish they would sell in Europe directly. Ordering anything from Analogue would have ridiculous shipping costs and customs duty so I never got around to ordering the Pocket either. I know there are cheaper options especially for game boy hardware but Analogues is just so sexy.
I have a love hate with analogue. They undoubtedly make really excellent products, and I absolutely adore my pocket. However they really lean into the fomo of their stuff. They make very few units, and you have to be ready to go when they drop more product most of the time. I will say though the price of this is a lot lower than I expected. And while you shouldn’t count on it, every analogue system has gotten some form of ability to play roms from other systems (whether it’s built into the OS (not happening for the 3D) or a “jailbreak” is released by basically an employee of analogue).
Analogue stuff is good if you have cartridges you want to play, but at this point, with the recent release of Taki Udon’s cheap Mister Pi (retroremake.co/pages/store), I think Mister is the way to go. It’s an open source project as opposed to analogue’s implementation. The issue with Mister was you needed a pretty expensive DE10 Nano board to utilize it. Now you can get one of these new boards for only $100 (if you can get your hands on them. Only 2 batches have been sold so far and they sell out quick). Plus Taki is planning on using this new board to make a handheld Mister which I’m super stoked for.
I can’t fault them for not making such a niche product at a large enough scale to make them readily available and cheap. I know we’ve become accustomed to that from other larger companies, but for a small company, that’s either very risky or just not an option. So they just design cool stuff, make just enough so that they know they can safely sell them all and thus make a predictable ROI, and move onto the next cool thing. No pressure for growth or satisfying every potential customer. Sounds like the dream.
That’s super fair and I agree for the most part. Though it’s hard to be super enthusiastic about it when they focus on a plethora of super limited edition color ways for the pocket instead of keeping the base one in stock and completely abandoning DAC support which they promised a while ago (and recently scrubbed all mention of on their site)
as long as analogue didnt use the devices actual hardware design and code, its completely legal. theyre not selling you games, theyre selling you a piece of hardware capable of playing said games with their own hardware design.
i dont want to say emulation in a soft sense because its not software emulation, its hardware to hardware emulatoion.
This is actually advertised as having no emulation, all FPGA. Idk if those are compatible but they also say the n64 was the first multiplayer console in the header so they’re clearly a little sketchy on the details lol
FPGAs would be considered “hardware emulation” but a lot of people don’t like that term, and think emulation should be a term limited to software.
Like, there aren’t real N64 chips in there. The hardware IS emulating an N64 - it’s just not doing so in a way that’s comparable with software emulation at all.
Analogue likely doesn’t emulate the hardware at the transistor level, as it’s far more difficult than doing what most software emulators do.
From an interesting (altough non-conclusive) HN-thread:
Without seeing the code, it’s impossible to know where Analog’s implementation falls on the spectrum of software emulation vs hardware simulation. There is nothing magical about FPGAs that automatically makes anything developed with them a 1:1 representation of real hardware. In fact, there are plenty of instances where the FPGA version of a particular console is literally just a representation of a popular emulator only in verilog/vhdl. In many instances, even the best FPGA implementations of some systems are still only simulating system level behavior. Off the top of my head, one famously difficult case is audio, where many chips have analog circuitry that cannot be fully simulated. [1]
Same reason emulators are allowed. As long as the emulator doesn’t use Nintendo’s literal software/hardware or schematics, and as long as the emulator doesn’t traffic in illegal file-sharing, it is allowed. Or at least, it exists in a legal grey area. And Analogue’s pitch is original hardware, essentially rebuilt from scratch using FPGA technology. You still need actual Nintendo 64 carts to use this device. Or at least, that is how it is marketed.
I think the recent emulator shutdowns by Nintendo were more about software piracy. The devs knew that their emulators were being used to play unreleased Nintendo games. The emulators themselves may have been safe and legal, but the devs are mostly just volunteers, or small time operations running on a patreon. As soon as Nintendo applied even the smallest amount of pressure, the devs caved, because they don’t want to spend their entire life savings and then some trying to defend software piracy on principle. Me thinks that Analogue would actually put up a fight if Nintendo tried anything, and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t try anything.
Agreed. I also want to add that this is not a mass market product, plus its not current gen either. So Nintendo does probably not care at all, in addition to what you already said.
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? The company does not violate any copyright, trademark or patent. Otherwise Nintendo would have sued them for their similar project, but for Game Boy, the Analogue Pocket.
The lesson here is to download every single working nintendo emulator as a backup and share it with your friends. Emulation is legal after all even if the Nintendo mafia try to shut it down.
Sounds like this was more of a bribe than any legal case against the emulator. In which case nothing is stopping anyone from putting a fork back up, and gdkchan gets to laugh all the way to the bank.
I’m thinking less bribe and “laughing away to the bank” and more of a “Nintendo threatened to ruin their life with legal fees if it wasn’t taken down”. The frivolity of said case is irrelevant when they just bully normal people legally like that.
I immediately sought out working backups of both Yuzu and Ryujinx. The “bright side” of this situation is that it pissed me off enough to go acquire both the new Zelda game that potentially caused this whole situation by being leaked early, and the game that was at the absolute top of my to-play list: Unicorn Overlord. So far it is looking like a fantastic game.
I like it more, but I’m a fan of the more classic Zeldas. It’s good, but it’s marred by the same technical issues that plagued the LA remake, and the lack of some basic QoL features like a Quick Select or Favorites wheel is bringing it from ‘great’ to ‘good.’
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