A roller-coaster ride, in the truest sense of the word. With each new version of Virtual Reality (VR) gaming hardware, we hurtle through dimensions that were, at one point in our lives, pure fantasy. Here, the evolution of hardware – from Meta Quest 2 to the Meta Quest 3 – is the saga of VR leapfrogging itself in sophistication and appeal, of how hardware and an evolving content ecosystem drive innovation and shape the future of gaming. It is not just about iterative hardware evolution.
The Meta Quest 2 remains somewhat unbeatable, but hopefully there are superlative specs and a wider view of virtual realities coming in its fully standalone successor, the Meta Quest 3. We didn’t get there in isolation. The PlayStation VR2 has been keeping up, and the Valve Index is still there, with its extensive library, still offering that unique, unbeatable hardware combo to share prominent space with the Meta Quest 2 on the top of most VR fans’ wishlists. Each platform has something unique to offer, and their existence helps create larger and larger crop of VR worlds.
As far as I’m concerned, the Meta Quest 3 reveal was the event that tipped the scales. It wasn’t just the impressive tech upgrade. It was that Meta had also bought all the top VR studios and was beginning to use its massive budgets to create content-driven experiences that made upgrade simply inevitable. Look at those exclusive titles, many of which are likely to follow the epic storytelling and deep gameplay that has become popular with PC and console games in recent years, only trickling down to phones and TVs.
But starting your journey at the Meta Store allows you to revisit and discover new games spanning all genres. You can return to games that you’ve always loved, or walk into avant garde works that you’ve never encountered before. It’s a marketplace that showcases every facet of the ecosystem, both old and new.
Asgard’s Wrath 2 is another outstanding achievement for VR: it is a sprawling open-world RPG with a far more narrative depth than most games, let alone those in VR. It will be considered the benchmark for the medium going forward.
But it extends far beyond those hugely ambitious RPGs. The VR playground itself is filled with rich and varied content: you can jump between the bump-and-grind of Ragnarock, the action parkour of Arizona Sunshine 2 and many more titles that encompass everything in between.
If you have ever wanted to relive the magic of ‘80s films while incorporating them with modern-day VR capabilities, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord will satiate your cravings. The social and community aspects of holographic gaming are captured to an extent in this game. One can either play with friends or alone while ghost-busting.
What is at the core of this leap in technology and creativity? The ghost of VR’s potential, unseen but ever-present. It drives every innovation, every landscape, and every heart-stopping moment in our virtual voyages. The ghost in the machine is the promise of the future. The virtual potentiality of possibilities that could yet come.
But the next time you put on your Oculus Quest controller strap and launch a game, reach down and touch the ribs of the VR ghosts you walked past in a museum last summer. Celebrate them as well – the invisible designers who walk alongside you. This story is a part of Tic Toc Tomorrow, an ongoing series about emerging technologies and how they will affect us five, 10, 20 years from now.
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