When is AAA gaming coming to Meta Quest?
MIXED reader David Pichler wondered when Meta Quest will evolve into a true AAA gaming platform. Here's what we think.
Every Monday, we answer a question from our readers. Send your question to tomislav@mixed.de with "Question" in the subject line, and with any luck, we'll answer it the following Monday.
This week's question comes from our reader David Pichler:
When can we expect better graphics and wider availability of AAA titles on Meta Quest?
Hello David,
We are often asked this question. Why aren't there huge, incredibly detailed game worlds in virtual reality, like the ones we know from consoles and PCs, where we can spend hundreds of hours exploring and discovering new things?
There is an economic and a technical answer to this question.
Today, video games in this category quickly cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and since the potential VR consumer base is not yet as large as that of consoles and PCs, it would be impossible for VR studios to recoup these costs. For this reason, many VR studios are developing several small to medium sized projects rather than risking everything on a single large title, which would jeopardize the future of the VR studio in the event of a flop.
On average, AAA VR games need to sell five to ten million copies to be profitable. By comparison, VR games that sell one million copies are considered a huge success.
Meta has released two AAA-level game productions with first-party titles such as Asgard's Wrath 2 and Batman: Arkham Shadow. But Meta didn't do this because of financial incentives. These big-budget VR games exist because Meta wanted to bundle them with Quest headsets and drive hardware sales. Meta may have accepted losses to do so. Independent VR studios can't afford to do that.
But this does not mean that VR games are stagnating in terms of graphics and gameplay. We are seeing VR titles improve from generation to generation as the market grows, and VR studios are investing their revenue to take on bigger and more ambitious projects.
In addition to these economic considerations, there are technical limitations to AAA gaming, at least for standalone headsets like Meta Quest. The headset uses a smartphone chip that is powered by a built-in battery of limited capacity and, as a headworn device, must not get too hot. Console and PC games are not subject to such strict limitations, which is why standalone VR games will always lag behind in terms of sheer performance - unless, of course, cloud VR gaming becomes the standard, which I think is a long way off.
But there have also been technological leaps from generation to generation, and with Meta Quest 3 and 3S, game worlds of a size and level of detail that would have been considered unimaginable five years ago are now possible. Keep in mind that most VR studios are still developing and optimizing for the four-year-old Meta Quest 2, so the full potential of the new generation of headsets has yet to be fully realized.
My personal opinion is that AAA games are overrated anyway. I prefer small, lovingly crafted indie gems to time-consuming mammoth projects from big studios. I'm happy to trade graphic bombast for the more tactile and intimate interaction with game worlds that virtual reality offers me.
2024 has been a strong year for the medium, and I still have a lot to discover. As I work through my backlog of titles, virtual reality will continue to evolve technologically and economically, and continue to surprise me. I am grateful to be a part of this gradual evolution, and I hope you can be, too.
Kind regards,
Tomislav
Do you miss AAA gaming, or are you happy with the games on Meta Quest? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
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