VR is so popular, why doesn’t Nintendo touch it?

Recently, Nintendo's president, Mr. Satoru Iwata, passed away due to illness. People in the industry are very concerned about Nintendo's future moves. Will Nintendo undergo a major reform?

As we all know, at the E3 Expo in the United States some time ago, major game manufacturers have focused their attention on the virtual reality technology industry, such as Sony, Microsoft, etc. However, Nintendo, which is out of tune with it, although announced that it will have a new NX system, it will not have much to do with VR.

In the early days of virtual reality, Nintendo had no intention of getting involved in VR, which is incredible. Will the NX system really be more popular than VR technology?

My first experience with VR left me exhausted

In fact, as early as 1995, Nintendo had already begun researching VR technology. Nintendo Virtual Boy was a 32-bit console that Nintendo intended to replace the Super Nintendo before the N64 was launched. It was a proposal by Gunpei Yokoi, who designed the Crosshairs, Game&Watch, Famicom and GameBoy.

Released on July 21, 1995, the price was 15,000 yen. The principle of VB is to use the parallax of the left and right eyes to display images from different angles on the left and right screens to create a three-dimensional effect, and then use red and black to highlight the three-dimensional feeling. In addition, it does not need to be connected to a TV, and can be played outdoors or indoors at any time. It was a very innovative technology at the time. Even famous directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have publicly stated that they are enthusiastic fans of VB.

The good times didn't last long. VB's life span was less than half a year. Since its launch in July 1995, it has sold 630,000 units in Japan and 630,000 units overseas, for a total of only 1.26 million units. In the five months since, only 19 games have been released, with the last game being SD Gundam Dimension War, which was released on December 22.

Since Nintendo was already under threat from Playstation (PSone) and Saturn, and even GameBoy had entered a period of stagnation and decline (Pocket Monster had not yet been released), the disastrous failure of VB was undoubtedly adding insult to injury, and Nintendo's stock price plummeted and was suspended. Gunpei Yokoi also resigned in 2007 due to this incident. He later set up his own company and served as a consultant for BANDAI's WonderWan handheld console, and also supervised the block game "GunPey" for the console.

Even the experienced Nintendo could make such a serious mistake, but the failure of VB is worth our in-depth study. Many people believe that the red and black monochrome screen is the main reason for the failure of VB, because long-term gaming will cause eye fatigue and even "damage the eyes". In fact, the red and black monochrome are highly recognizable, and even long-term "burn-in" will not cause problems. The so-called "damage to the eyes" is far less than that of the GameBoy at the time, which had a dark and fine screen.

However, to some extent, the red and black screen can also be regarded as half of the reason for the failure, because the red and black game screen of VB is difficult to show its appeal in magazine media. Not only is it difficult to see the content of the screen, but more importantly, readers will not see the three-dimensional effect of VB games.

In fact, the reason why VB failed was that the technology was not strong enough to compete with the next-generation consoles. The 3D images of VB could not compete with those of 3D games. The appearance was not beautiful enough, and there was not enough game content to support it.

VR is not in line with the company's philosophy and positioning

Shigeru Miyamoto, one of Nintendo's leaders, said of VR: "There have been many demonstrations of virtual reality equipment on display at recent trade shows. At this year's E3, I found many fantastic demonstrations, but the timetable and version for official sales are unknown. Currently, the software for virtual reality equipment does not support multiplayer online, and it usually takes two to three years to develop an application software for a high-performance device, so now there are only many virtual reality demonstrations rather than finished products."

When asked about this during an interview at E3, Nintendo of America President Reggie answered: "We know the potential of this technology, and we have been trying to do it for a long, long time. So we believe that if you really want to promote this technology in the gaming industry, you need to make it more interesting and more social. From what I've seen so far, this thing is not interesting at all, not social enough, it's just a technology."

There are still many unresolved issues in virtual reality technology today. Of course, it is not ruled out that Nintendo is cautious because of its past painful experiences.

Shigeru Miyamoto believes that premature promotion of virtual reality equipment will lead to an embarrassing situation of "equipment without games", because hardware needs the support of software ecosystem, and it takes years to build an ecosystem. He cannot understand how Sony can sell those games when there are no games. As for Nintendo, they are still focusing on those games that "will be available next year".

In fact, Sony and Ubisoft are both gearing up for the future, and both claim to have developed multiple games for VR, with Sony even developing 30 games! If VR becomes popular around the world, game manufacturers will not give up on this small gold brick. Game content support is not a problem.

In addition, the concept of virtual reality games does not match Nintendo's concept of family fun. Shigeru Miyamoto believes that once family members put on glasses, they can't see each other, which is not Nintendo's style.

Current virtual reality products are mainly closed head-mounted devices that can use computer simulation technology to generate simulated three-dimensional scenes. This virtual world experience is called immersive, and it is difficult for users to interact with the actual environment in real time. Based on this, if virtual reality technology is to be applied to open interactive games for living rooms, this is indeed an issue that must be considered.

Nintendo has a lot of concerns about VR, and of course, these are the same concerns faced by other companies. But it may be that the initial failure is that Nintendo has to be cautious when it comes to VR.

At the same time, we have to note that among Nintendo's game attributes, familiar game characters such as Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Pokémon, etc. usually have a strong cartoon style and are deeply loved by teenagers and children.

It can be said that Nintendo's main user group is teenagers.

However, VR devices seem to be doubtful for teenagers. Not to mention children, even adults will face the problem of distinguishing the difference between reality and virtual reality. For teenagers, this problem will seriously affect their psychological development and other issues.

This may be the reason why Nintendo has been reluctant to take action on VR devices. Although Nintendo has a unique advantage in somatosensory technology and seems to be most convenient for entering VR, Nintendo's positioning is destined to make it difficult for Nintendo to enter VR devices unless VR devices are fully mature and have a perfect solution for the separation of virtual and reality.

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.