More video games should float inside my living room like this
Plus: Indiana Jones goes first-person, 2023's best-selling game and...Shigeru Miyamoto's cotton swab?
It is easy to describe the worst part of virtual reality video gaming. Just recall any time you have ever felt car sick, but imagine you got that queasy feeling by playing a video game for a few minutes.
It is far harder to convey the moments of VR gaming that make the potential barfing worth it.
I can show you a screenshot of me looking down at my virtual body in last November’s acclaimed Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR (“Outstanding,” “brilliant,” “a full fledged Assassin’s Creed game in VR”).
Look! I appear to be wearing the robes of Ezio Auditore, an all-time great video game character who I previously only puppeteered on my TV screen.
But I imagine the screenshot I exported from the game last night—the flat, square image with graphics seemingly circa the PlayStation 3—hardly looks like a magic moment.
Two dimensional videos also can’t convey what’s cool about, say climbing up the side of a docked boat in ancient Greece, grabbing a soldier’s ankle and yanking him into the water.
That’s fine, because none of that is the best part of Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR.
This is—the moment when a computer interface appears to open up inside the real room in my house where I’m playing the game:
It gets even cooler when the hacker interface I’m in turns into a three-dimensional puzzle that also floats in my room.
(Apologies for any unsteadiness; you don’t notice how much your head bobs while you’re playing. Also, you may notice I switched rooms.)
What you’re seeing in the clips above was captured from a Meta Quest 3, a $500 (and up) VR headset. It’s showing video game graphics overlaid onto a feed of the real world that is displayed via a “pass-through view” captured by the headset’s external cameras.
The Quest 3 isn’t the only headset with pass-through, and I doubt AC Nexus is the only game to use it like this.
Actually, I know it isn’t, because, yesterday, on the same day I was finally playing some Assassin’s Creed Nexus, Apple very coincidentally posted the first images of of what so-called “spatial gaming” looks like in its upcoming $3500 Vision Pro headset.
That's the classic mobile game Fruit Ninja, already offered in VR, running on a Vision Pro and appearing to….float in the user’s living room.
I think all these gaming and tech folks are on to something, whether it’s called spatial gaming, virtual reality or, most aptly, augmented reality.
In fact, they’ve been on to it, slowly but surely, for quite some time. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Sony was releasing AR games that put video game graphics into the real world. In 2011, Nintendo’s 3DS was shipping with special cards also made for AR gaming. In 2016, Pokémon Go used AR to make it look like Pokémon were appearing in the real world.
I don’t know if VR gaming, the kind of experience that blocks the real world out in order to deposit you in a virtual one, will ever become a truly mainstream way to play.
But every time I experience an advance in AR—every time someone figures out an even better way to bring the virtual and the fantastical into the physical world—I feel like we’re on our way to something we’re all going to enjoy someday.
It’ll probably help when it doesn’t require a headset that costs a fortune.
Note: I’ve now played Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR for a few hours. It’s good, if not my favorite way to play AC. My biggest disappointment is that the AR moments I’ve described here are rare, just a few minutes, so far, in a multi-hour experience. I wish they did more with it.
Item 2: Xbox previews 2024
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle will be one of the marquee game releases from Microsoft later this year, according to yesterday’s Developer Direct 2024 online showcase. It’s slated for Xbox Series consoles and PC.
The mostly first-person game is deep in development at Bethesda's MachineGames studio (best known for some great Wolfenstein adventures) and is based on a pitch by Bethesda’s senior game developer Todd Howard. The “great circle” appears to be a reference to historical sites that Indy will travel to throughout the game and that form a ring around Earth.
The adventure is set after Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indy will be voiced by Troy Baker.
Also shown during the event:
Ninja Theory’s psychological action-adventure Senua’s Sacrifice: Hellblade II (Xbox Series, PC), out May 21
Obsidian role-playing game Avowed (Xbox Series, PC), out fall 2024
Oxide’s strategy game Ara: History Untold (PC), out fall 2024
Farewell, last gen: Microsoft game studio chief Matt Booty told me last June that no internal studios were still working on projects for the old-gen Xbox One. That was certainly evident in the showcase, where all console titles require the Series S or X. (In 2023, Microsoft had already largely moved on, but did release Minecraft Legends on the X1)
Hello, Square Enix: Microsoft gave Square’s Visions of Mana a surprise spot in its showcase, another sign of improved relations between the companies as Microsoft tries to grab some bigger third-party Japanese games and Square Enix looks to put its eggs in more baskets.
Item 3: In brief
😲 Hogwarts Legacy was the top-selling console or PC game in the U.S. last year, in dollar sales, according to sales-tracking firm Circana.
Warner Bros. and Avalanche’s Harry Potter game was the first non-Call of Duty and non-Rockstar game to top the charts since Rock Band in 2008, the firm said.
U.S. spending on games, hardware and accessories in 2023 reached $57 billion, up 1% from 2022. PlayStation was the top console, while second place Switch and Xbox Series both declined in sales.
🚨 Layoffs: CI Games (Lords of the Fallen) is cutting 10% of its workforce. Behaviour Interactive (Dead by Daylight) is cutting 3%.
🤔 Remedy and Rockstar publisher Take Two are in fact not beefing over Remedy’s new-ish logo. "There is nothing to see here – this was a discussion between our teams that was resolved entirely and amicably late last year," a Remedy rep told me yesterday, downplaying the report of a trademark complaint filed by Take Two last summer.
The rep added: "The legal filing was simply an initial formality, and Remedy and Take-Two continue to work together in partnership."
💰 Palworld, the so-called Pokémon-with-guns game has sold more than a million copies in its first eight hours of early access launch today, developer and publisher Pocketpair has announced.
👨🏻⚖️ Bungie’s legal actions against gaming cheat-makers have largely resulted in deferred judgments as their targets no-show or quickly fold. Not so with Aim Junkies, as the parties are still heading toward a jury trial that was just re-scheduled for May 20.
🔥 The Halo TV show’s romance (and sex scene) between Master Chief and Covenant agent Makee was a “huge mistake,” Chief’s actor, Pablo Schreiber, said in an interview with SFX magazine (via Games Radar), as the start of the series’ second season looms.
👀 Tekken 8’s developers will adjust accessibility features in the game and its demo, after concerns were raised that a colorblindness mode could induce migraines, Eurogamer reports.
Item 4: The week ahead
Friday, Jan. 19
The Last Of Us Part II: Remastered (PS5) and Another Code: Recollection (Switch) are released.
Palworld (PC, Xbox) begins early access.
Tuesday, Jan. 23
Immortality (PlayStation, already out on PC, mobile and Xbox) is released.
Popular free-to-play multiplayer game Stumble Guys (Xbox, already out on mobile and PC) makes its Xbox debut in what’s still the relatively rare transition of a mobile hit coming to console. (Released in 2021, Stumble Guys takes obvious inspiration from 2020’s Fall Guys–some would call it a clone–but beat the original to mobile.)
Thursday, Jan. 25
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy (PC, console) is released.
Friday, Jan. 26
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) and Tekken 8 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) are released.
Item 5: Miyamoto’s picks
Time for another flashback: While exploring my old microcassettes to write about my 2004 E3 interview with former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, I found an accompanying tape recording of a 2004 Nintendo E3 press conference about the newly-unveiled touchscreen-enabled Nintendo DS.
One reporter asks Nintendo’s senior game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, about the risk of the DS screen getting scratched by stylus-driven gameplay.
Miyamoto largely defers to Nintendo’s product-testing teams, but notes, as an aside, that he’s been playing the show’s WarioWare DS demo in an unusual way (via a translator): “ I found that when I play WarioWare I actually have a really good time playing it with a cotton swab, like for cleaning your ear. It feels really smooth and really good. It’s kind of funny.”
He’s also asked about current games that he finds interesting.
“I’m very interested in games that change the way people play games or change the image of people playing games,” he says, with a comment that in retrospect telegraphs Nintendo’s enthusiasm for its then unannounced motion-driven 2006 Wii console.
He mentions Sega’s Samba De Amigo which is controlled by maraca-shaped controllers, Sony’s Eyetoy, which lets players control games with a camera, and Nintendo’s, Donkey Konga, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, both controlled with electronic bongos plugged into a Nintendo Game Cube.
“Those are games that are not only fun to play but really look fun to play when you’re watching,” he adds. “Those kinds of games that kind of change that image of gamers I think are very interesting.”
Bonus: I was interviewed about my internet habits for the delightful Embedded newsletter. Perhaps I revealed too much?
The top selling games list of 2023 is just WILD to me. Two call of dutys? Madden? Minecraft is still up there?! The list honestly makes me uneasy about the future of the industry....