One of the biggest challenges facing VR is getting the public a hands-on demonstration, and it looks like HTC will be addressing that problem directly.
At the 2016 VR Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, HTC has announced that its Viveport Arcades will be coming to the US, China, and Europe, giving the general public a chance to experience VR.
HTC will be licensing software to movie theaters, cafes, and full VR arcades. This will allow retailers to set up their own public VR spaces and use games like The Brookhaven Experiment and Everest VR to entertain customers. It will all be done through the Viveport app, meaning setup should be easy for proprietors. HTC has also fully committed to the VR arcade idea by opening Viveland in Taiwan last week.
Developers are also welcome to jump in on the arcade action by listing their games on the Viveport app store. Profits from the Viveport app will be split between HTC and developers. Currently, 120 experiences are available, but pricing is not yet final. Costs range from $5 for a small experience to $13 for a full-room experience where players can walk around in VR within a private booth.
HTC plans on turning VR into a $100 million industry over the next two years. The only way to do that is to get VR headsets into the hands of consumers. But that will be difficult considering the high price tag, and the fact that most have never had the opportunity to try any VR headset outside of a cardboard solution with a smartphone. The Vive currently sells for $800 and requires a pretty hefty gaming PC.
Even if HTC is able to get consumers interested in VR via arcades, it’s still uncertain if people outside the hardcore audience will be willing to drop over $1,000 for a true at-home VR rig.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.