Schell Games CEO Jesse Schell thinks that, if Facebook’s Oculus Quest can’t succeed, the VR industry might have to “hang it up.”
Schell said as much in an interview with The Gamer published earlier this month. He reasoned that, in 2020, it was up to Quest to determine if VR could really become a viable market.
“The main thing that we’re all staring at is how is the Quest going to do,” Schell said. “I’ll just be blunt: if the Quest can’t succeed, we should just all hang it up.”
Schell Games remains one of VR’s biggest advocates, having released several titles since the launch of PC VR headsets in 2016. Its VR escape room game, I Expect You To Die, is one of the most popular puzzlers in the medium and came to Oculus Quest last year. Currently the team is working on a PC VR title, Until You Fall, which is due to come to Quest later down the line. It’s fair to say that Schell knows what he’s talking about, then.
“You’re talking about a price point competitive with consoles, excellent tracking, wireless, if this isn’t enough to take VR mainstream VR will never go mainstream, and we should probably all just move on and do something else,” the developer continued. “That said, we’re big believers that this is the time this is going to happen. 2020 is going to be the real proving year.”
In fact, this time last year Schell gave UploadVR a “wild” guess that Quest might sell one million units in 2019. Facebook doesn’t release headset sales figures, so there’s no way of telling if that really happened. That said, the company continues to state that the device is performing well, and it’s been backordered online for some time now.
Do you agree with Schell’s comments, or do you think VR has more chances in it beyond Quest? Let us know in the comments below!
