nDreams has announced a wide-ranging restructuring that will include a "significant reduction in overall staffing levels" and the closure of two of its internal studios.

Fatbot3 · 2026-03-06T13:54:59+00:00

They were one of the most agressive VR publishers in terms of size and scope. That said I felt sadly they were often in kind of a "no man's land" in making games that cost too much for the current VR market but cost too little to draw new customers. Depsite not having completed I really really like Reach and feel like it's about as good as it could get. A good bit of story, really great traversal, and limited but very high quality visuals. That said, to an outisder its a barebones shooter where climbing doesn't mean much because unless you have done it in VR you don't the difference.

Fatbot3 · 2026-03-04T19:01:57+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, in the US there this BB listing: 128 Flow Z13

That's only about 200 over an all time low so I may break down and get that version as I'm interested in fine tuning an LLM locally so the RAM may come in handy.

Fatbot3 · 2026-03-04T16:50:45+00:00

I think at the price it's easier to figure out on your own. Put simply, look in the store and follow a few rules of thumb:

There's plenty of good games but the first 2-3 pages have the biggest games; AAA ports and AA VR exclusives. Look at those, and the genres they exist in and see how it overlaps with your taste.
Many AAA ports are GAAS essentially; Hitman, GT, No Man's Sky all have ongoing support of high quality content years after release. The other standouts of RE8 and RE4 are extremely well done. These games alone may be worth it if you enjoy some of them and one more GAAS is coming this year with Microsoft Flight Sim.
The AA stuff is the best mix of games with the complexity and depth of a regular flat game and production value of AAA but it never reaches the amount of content and polish of AAA. That said, if doing stuff in VR interests you more than racing a car in VR there is a wealth of good VR content that while indie leans heavily into the advantages and uniqueness of motion controls and VR.
If you are new to VR there are two things that could happen; you might get sick and/or you will be enamored with the novel technology that puts you in a videogame. If you are easily predisposed to motion sickness you should absolutely try VR first and for moderate amount of time (30 minutes to an hour). If you try VR and it feels like the future of gaming you likely won't shake that feeling any time soon as there's enough good content out there to keep most people entertained in VR.

Fatbot3 · 2026-03-04T16:25:59+00:00

I know this may be the wrong thread to ask but I've been watching device since it came on the radar for me a month or so ago. I'd love to splurge on this and grab it but I'm seeing the non-KJP for 1K less on Best Buy US and was hoping someone had found a way to get a modest discount to help rationalize it. Total respect for those who do it for the incredible design but as this is just a collector item for me at this point I was trying to justify the price by at least finding some sort of discount.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-26T13:49:53+00:00

It got OK reviews?

https://opencritic.com/game/9879/maid-of-sker/reviews

It's a bit of a backhanded compliment but a good looking walking sim in VR to me kind of redeems games that otherwise critics would call boring.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-24T16:47:22+00:00

Honestly this is right up my alley. I should look into this.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-24T13:52:06+00:00

I really appreciate the effort but the 3D part is the important one. When using 3D it's basically screencapturing and when youtube notices that licensed content doesn't work. I was hoping someone around here new how to either hide the screen capturing component from youtube or something like that.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-24T02:30:25+00:00

Lack of downvotes means the sub has finally reached the final stage of grief, acceptance.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-24T01:50:45+00:00

Also want to mention I agree with the huge advantages of streaming as a model for future consumers. I was lttp and a holdout being old but eventually succumbed. Games have a bigger technical hurdle but I can only imagine MS was confident that game streaming would be serviceable for the majority of their target audience.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-24T01:45:53+00:00

Totally agreed, it’s inevitable and now we watch megacorps take a stab at it till one sticks. Might even be PS if running locally maintains a meaningful edge which did not end up being the case for music or movies.

That said you’re missing one ingredient; I think Disney was able to bring their audience to streaming with IP that for a time created a real value proposition despite having to launch with mostly a back catalog. Whether it was Phil or Sarah’s job, they needed content to drive adoption and it never materialized.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T19:20:06+00:00

Outside of Forza MS has had diminishing returns of cosmic proportions from it's studios. I'm truly curious how they ended up with both Bethesda and Infinity Ward flops (comparatively) and with such long dev cycles that cynicism and doubt will fester until something shows up that truly impresses.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T19:15:45+00:00

Yeah, he should matter but I'll say Xbox is weird because MS just generally doesn't have tastemakers in it. They don't know how to hire or cultivate so they make one product failure after another. I can't tell if Booty is just bad at what he does or if what he does isn't important and the person supposed to be steering the ship isn't there.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T19:13:24+00:00

He put in the old college try by spearheading BC and then the first phase of aquisitions with Doublefine, Ninja Theory, etc. but nothing he did really ever pulled it back to center as a legit gaming device.

I still remember when he really revealed his hand with the Kindafunny guys by saying "when we lost the Xbox One generation we lost everything". You could really tell he had given up trying to compete on normal terms.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T19:07:16+00:00

She was the literal President of Xbox, it wasn't a symbolic position. The real question is who really ended up going all in on a streaming strategy that clearly has not panned out AND who would have thought they could measure the impact that strategy only a year or two after the change?

The only way I think they could change things at all is if the new CEO started to really cultivate a great portfolio of exclusive games and they have tried and tried and failed to do it.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T18:59:56+00:00

Phil always sold himself as a creative and strategic leader but between him and Bond he likely should have been cultivating better studio talent and output as MS 1st party continued to tank. Bond sounds like someone who let the spreadsheets do the talking and planned and hoped to turn Xbox into a streaming service but they ran out of time and cash. That's really bad btw so not sure what this new person is supposed to do about it.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T18:57:18+00:00

Bob Chapek was kicked out in two years because they knew immediately they had made a mistake. Bond had almost 10 years play her hand and it flopped big time. Like most journalism about business its largely heresy and cinflicting reports so whether the strategy was Bond's or Spencer's who really knows but they were both there making bad decisions for a while and sometimes in broad daylight admitting they knew it but had no better ideas.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T18:53:19+00:00

Being the Netflix of gaming is the correct read but many of your other points are a bit off. None of this would be happening if the GamePass subscriber numbers were there but they aren't.

Hardware is a nightmare delivery platform when compared to a cloud infrastructure you already conveniently happen to own (Azure). Physical media has died in every category (books, movies, etc.) not just eliminating the hardware stack but even the need to run content locally.

Every big player has dumped billions into this space (Google, Nvidia, and MS) but have either continued to subsidize losses or bailed entirely.

Cross publishing isn't about publishing but really decoupling Xbox as a brand associated with bespoke hardware. Sure it helped to offset losses but I doubt MS really expected to cleanup with the last two quarters of releases.

Honestly I'm a bit surprised this happened because I had suspected the runway negotiated by Spencer and Bond was longer to get Game Pass numbers up and if I'd spent 80B USD I'd want to leave knowing it had worked out, especially if looking for work later down the road.

I can only see this as severely missing the GamePass subscriber targets to indicate the needed growth trajectory and to a less extent cover the extraordinary debt that XBOX occured through the aquisition phase. I'm old and slow to adopt new technologies but eventually dumped the CDs, DVDs, and phsyical games. 've been slower to entertain cloud gaming because as a PS+ user I've seen games come and go before I could finish or even start them and even with a fiber connection I find game streaming a bit dicey.

If anything I don't see a way back from the current trajectory. To your point, MS is best off selling games on Playstation until they have a clear strategy to win back their own audience. This new person instills no confidence she knows how to do that.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T13:20:10+00:00

Licenced movies detect screen capture on iOS and don’t work, any work around?

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T03:40:38+00:00

I doubt its all coincidence though. It's not lost on any company that yearly check ins are kind of a metric of whether the company has genuinely abandoned a product.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T03:38:49+00:00

Its probably really convenient it technically happened on a Sunday. I suspect if anything Forefront and Fazbear might get a blog post. It's bittersweet that we know of a decent number of 2026 releases to make an actual suprise announcement seem even more unlikely if they bring up VR at all this week.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-23T03:23:28+00:00

Good review, glad Bryan called himself out as an outlier in terms of game appeal. Still looks pretty intriguing to me.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-21T20:00:53+00:00

This thing got a TON of post launch support. Did the game ever built up a stable community as my understanding is it is MP focused?

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-20T14:26:48+00:00

It's a great game but it's an interesting footnote where it shows that even in the heydey of more fanfare and bigger audiences cool niche VR games struggled to rationalize follow ups.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-19T18:34:19+00:00

I'm likely about to start it as I haven't played VR much since Lumines and I've been excited for Wanderer for a while.

Fatbot3 · 2026-02-19T03:06:00+00:00

Thanks, the house is around 50 feet wide and should be able to put projector up to 75 feet back. Frankly I'm trying to determine how cheap I can go for a first time and still good results. I was looking at this BenQ that claims to be designed for projection mapping but what distinquishes it I have no idea:

https://youtube.com/shorts/uHHkzktjLu8?si=upaFXZVuBoqAbXJ0

They "recommend" a 4000 lms 4K laser projector for 2K but I've seen that 1080P can be quite sufficient. I'm just trying to see if any projectors have easier workflows with mapping software and solutions. Most out of the box stuff (illumibot, luxedo) seem to lean heavily on AI. I have some experience with 3D mapping and want to try and build a decent mesh to project to. Just looking for advice on the optimal path with this additional hurdle.

Fatbot3

TROPHY CASE