Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Zhu Siqi

At first glance, it looks exciting, but its relationship with gamers is unknown.

In the early morning of June 6, Beijing time, Apple held its annual global developer conference.

Before the conference, many media had already reported that Apple was about to release a new VR device. On the day of the launch, Apple did come up with an AppleVisionPro. According to the introduction, it is "a revolutionary spatial computing device that seamlessly integrates digital content into the real world, keeping users present and connected to others". It runs Apple's own visionOS operating system, with dual chips, dual screens and 2300 megapixels. No matter the appearance or configuration, it has attracted a lot of attention.

However, for the average user, it may be difficult to define what it is-- it is a bit underestimated to say that it is a head-mounted display. After all, it is equipped with dual chips, including the M2 chip. It looks like an advanced computer. Call it VR glasses, which projects the real environment around it onto the screen in real time. All virtual content seems to co-exist with real space. Officially, it is a "space computing device" and should be more AR / MR (augmented reality / mixed reality). If you look at the price, $3499 (about 25000 yuan), it looks like it's not for individual consumers.

At least the glasses look good in appearance, and from the point of view of players looking forward to "more powerful gaming devices," the VisionPro is also a bit subtle. In the promotional video, the game screen in VisionPro is still a tiled display, but the screen is virtual and can be placed anywhere, not affected by desktops, TV cabinets and other equipment, and the area seems to be as big as you want. Although the effect seems to be good, it is still different from the VR game that people expect and seem to participate in in person.

In addition, the way of operating the game still seems to be the traditional handle. Although the device itself supports gesture and eye movements, these two functions are not original and have previously been used only in simplified mobile games and a few independent games. Whether it can support more complex game operations and play larger works still need to be "in order to see the aftereffect".

In other words, the problems that VisionPro may encounter with games are actually very similar to those encountered by similar devices before-apart from pricing, the key is whether there are really good games. For a long time, fans of VR games have been faced with the embarrassment that there are not enough good games. Although good VR games are not lower in sales and revenue than traditional games-such as rhythmic lightsaber and half-life: Alex-overall, the number of high-quality VR games is still not enough. At the same time, the problems of dizziness and even intuitive smooth walking in the game have not really been solved, which in turn affect the promotion of hardware devices. When it comes to AR / MR, the only real commercial success of such games may be "Ingress" and "Pokemon GO" launched by Niantic on mobile.

If you compare several devices that are currently used to play games, HTCVIVE has been launched for a long time, and because it adapts to Steam, it has become a high degree of generality of VR glasses, and many people use it to play "half a Life: Alex" such an immersive masterpiece. PICOVR is relatively light, but there are few games to play, mainly relying on audio-visual content such as self-made VR concerts. On the mainframe side, PSVR has launched a second generation, free of wire, easy to wear, and developed for games that can play exclusive games such as Horizon: the call of the Mountain. On the whole, from the two aspects of experience and game quality, VR devices and games still have many limitations at present, with some tasteless food and a pity to abandon.

However, with Apple on its back, VisionPro does have the potential to bring some changes to VR and AR games. Previously, most VR hardware manufacturers are not game developers themselves, and their support for game development as a platform is limited, so it is difficult to make excellent VR games. Although Apple does not have a "first-party game", but as a platform, its coverage and promotion efforts are quite strong. VisionPro's operating system is dedicated to visionOS. Toule has participated in some events organized by Apple, and Apple has previously given a lot of support to game developers, especially mobile game developers. Including Metal such as reduce power consumption, improve image quality of graphics processing API, and ProMotion adaptive refresh rate technology and so on. By the same logic, if Apple pays enough attention to visionOS, it is possible to attract a new group of developers to make more new games.

Players in the promotional video look at the virtual screen in their glasses and still play games with traditional handles, but at the same time, it is also true that Apple does not pay enough attention to games, especially non-mobile games. There are not enough games in the computer-side AppStore, and the operation is not good enough, so it is difficult for players to enjoy the same experiences and services as Steam, PSStore or Microsoft Store here. In 2019, Apple launched AppleArcade, a subscription service, with the slogan "redefine with games". But in practice, although it launched some good games, the overall effect was not ideal. As a platform covering iOS, iPadOS, MacOS and tvOS "family bucket" devices, Apple did not pay much attention to the promotion of AppleArcade games. It can only be regarded as a "smooth operation" after more than 4 years of launch. There is still a lot of room for improvement.

Because of this, when Apple announced the launch of the Mac version of "death stranded: director's clip" at this developer conference, it was a bit of a surprise. After all, Apple has not promoted a Mac version of 3A game for a long time. (in fact, players can play games such as "biochemical crisis: village", "Civilization 6", "Tomb Raider: rise", "Wild Racing 8" and so on on Mac. It's just that most people don't consider using Mac to play games. It is not clear whether the Mac version of "death stranded: director's edited version" is Apple's (once again) emphasis on non-mobile games or the star effect of Island Brother.

"death stranded" landing on another platform is not a bad thing. Anyway, while Apple's launch of the VisionPro is exciting at first glance, its relationship with gamers is still unknown. On the one hand, there may not be games to play, on the other hand, the experience may not be qualitatively improved. Judging from the official demonstration, it may be more suitable for people with remote virtual office needs. Of course, the VisionPro is only the first generation of products, and maybe after that there will be more accessories such as somatosensory peripherals to make it more in line with the expectations and needs of players.

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