People whine about lack of back compatibility. Developers do proper upgrades of PSVR titles, most of times for free. People whine about PSVR 2 having the same titles of PSVR 1.
People whine about PSVR 2 being into the closed console environment and being not open to the vast catalogue of (mostly mediocre) titles on PC. Developers do PSVR 2 versions of PC titles, often with significant improvements. People whine that many PSVR 2 titles are already avaliable on PC.
People whine that there's no GT7 VR mode, and that they would order it if announched. GT7 VR mode is announced, and now they will order it when Alyx will be announced (which they have never played, but people say it's the best VR game, so they repeat it like retards). After Alyx will be announched, I'm curious to see what will be the next whining.
VR is a niche market which is not able to be significantly profitable (or even at a loss), and yet there are several developers who are trying to be the pioneers building the market, instead of some who are simply able to buy the work done by others. To call "underwelming" a launch which has more titles that many console launches, big and small, is very disrespectful towards all those are betting much, and some everything, on the titles coming out. That's acting like a spoiled brat.
We have never known in advance which titles would come out during a generation of a console. It's no different here. But at least it's clear that there have been lots of study, refinements and investments on PSVR 2 hardware, to make possible to have a "future proof" VR on console that matches high end PC VR, and for a MUCH lower price. Do you ever realize how impressive this is compared to what usually is needed to have the same quality elsewhere? People don't realize that the reason foveated rendering only works on PSVR 2 at the moment is because it requires a pipeline of input and rendering with VERY strict time windows (to be able to use foveated rendering with a frame rate of 120 fps, AT LEAST 240 eye samples per second are needed, in order to send the position of the eye ALWAYS before the GPU starts to render the frame - the latency is very small), and PS5 was engineered to be able to do so with PSVR 2 from the start. Who else did something like that? Nobody. It seems like a serious commitment, to me. Let's hope Jimbo doesn't ruin everything (the project was not his own).
I'm also looking forward to know if the story of "hybrid games" will turn out to be true and to be applied to at least the majority of the games. To me, that would make the difference from a huge success to a moderate success. One day, VR will have its own big games developed around it, but for now, VR to shine the most needs hybrid games like RE8, GT7 or others, capable to offer unparalleled immersion and interaction in high quality games. So I'm also worried in waiting.
But please, enough with this "underwelming" story: from hardware to software, nobody else in the market showed as much commitment and real investment than Sony, on high end VR. What's the point to have a 5000 dollars headset, if there's no proper software to take advantage from it? Or to need thousands of dollars of GPU to be able to run a game with high detail on it? Making the number of geared gamers so small that basically no single developer would spoend time and money to develop something at that level?
What's the point of hoping that VR games will evolve with standalone VR units, if they push the market towards casual gaming and low end engines?
PSVR 2 is not a safe bet: it's a serious attempt for high end VR gaming to rise again, after the diffusion of standalone Quest 2 pushed the market towards low specs casual motion gaming (the VR Wii counterpart, in short).
So, is it possible to stop the useless whining and just wait and see? If money is a problem, just don't buy it and wait. To me, there are already several games in the first year that could last years for me, and I suspect that Behemoth will be my kind of game, after seeing the work of Skydance on The Saint and Sinners series. Even if the dream of big hybrid games will not come to reality, I'm more than sure that there will be plenty of wonder. So, why the fuck should we look to what could not be, instead to what we already know will be? Could we just enjoy the wonders we have, instead of whining on what we don't even know we will not have?