Why Sony should be the most vigilant when Steam expands its game categories

In less than two months, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, two of the three major head-mounted displays, have started pre-sales one after another. 2016, known as the first year of VR, is indeed very lively. Today, according to a foreign VR vertical media report, Valve has added a category of virtual reality games on the Steam page, and supports both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Valve has always been known for its technology and sentiment. It started researching VR four years ago and has close ties with Oculus. Later, it cooperated with HTC to develop the Vive project. It can be regarded as the "instigator" of this VR storm. On the other hand, Steam is the world's largest PC game distribution platform. It is not surprising that Valve has integrated the resources of the two parties in such a low-key manner.

But for PS VR, which has already fallen behind Rift and Vive in pace, this is a signal that must be taken seriously.

There were rumors that PS VR would not be officially released to the public until the second half of the year. Fortunately, Sony has sent out invitations today, announcing that it will release PS VR during the GDC Game Developers Conference on March 16th, Beijing time, finally letting Sony fans breathe a sigh of relief. Sony claims that the huge potential user base is a major advantage of PS VR, and the number of PS4 users has reached 36 million. According to Valve Steam's previous hardware survey report, only 5 million users' graphics cards support VR. It seems that PS VR does have an advantage in terms of the number of users, but is it really the case?

Last May, Oculus officially announced a set of hardware requirements for running Rift. The parameters show that in order to ensure the smooth operation of VR, the player's PC must be equipped with at least NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 graphics cards. According to this standard, NVIDIA estimates that in 2016, only 13 million PCs in the world can provide the graphics processing power required for virtual reality devices. Well, it's still not as good as the 36 million PS4s.

But just today, there is news that Valve will announce an optimization technology at the GDC conference, which can reduce the hardware platform requirements of VR from GTX 980 directly to GTX 680 - the Kepler architecture graphics card released in 2014! In this way, the threshold at the hardware level will be cut in half. A few days ago, a PC performance test software Steam VR Performance Test was launched on the Steam platform, which can be used to evaluate the overall performance of the PC. I believe that according to the new standards, the test results show that the proportion of PCs with VR performance will increase significantly. According to the latest data, Steam has 125 million registered users. As hardcore genuine users of PC games, the quality of this part of players is comparable to that of PS4 players. Valve's black technology has invisibly opened plug-ins for Rift and Vive, which can be said to be "silently moisturizing things."

Currently, the number of virtual reality games provided on the official Steam page is 226, of which 25 support HTC Vive and 45 support Oculus Rift. Previously, SIE executive Yoshida Shuhei revealed that PS VR will have 6 built-in mini-games when it is launched. This is also the part that Sony should pay the most attention to.

Steam is the most important distribution platform in the field of PC games in Europe and the United States, and it has gathered a large number of excellent independent developers. Continuing this idea, Valve still hopes to make Vive VR an open platform. Judging from the newly added game categories of Steam, the platform can not only support HTC Vive, but also Oculus Rift and other virtual reality headsets can be supported through the company's OpenVR API. Of course, compatible VR games are not excluded, which is undoubtedly an attractive condition for developers. Last year, Oculus announced that it would spend $10 million to support independent producers of Oculus VR games. These games may benefit both Rift and Vive with the help of the Steam platform. In other words, the choice faced by players will be PS VR or (Oculus Rift or HTC Vive). By the way, Oculus and Microsoft have also established a cooperative relationship in the virtual reality business.

In addition to helmets, the category options added this time also involve input devices and activity areas. Input devices include three options: keyboard, handle and motion controller, and activity areas are divided into three modes: standing, sitting, and room size. The settings of certain conditions can basically match Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

In the VR war that is about to break out, the existence of Valve has cleverly softened the hostile relationship between Rift and Vive. At least from the early stage, the position of PS VR seems to be much more isolated. However, veteran players may have discovered that this is actually just a continuation of the battle between PC games and console games in VR. For a long time, the open nature of the PC side has enabled it to attract more developers, but it cannot shake the position of the console in the minds of players. The most fundamental reason lies in the experience, which will also be the key to the VR war. The future will belong to the warriors who conquer this high ground.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.