It's good to see that more consumers will come onboard with this insanely good price. I don't know if it is needed to propel VR forward, but at least more people can experience it.
I had that pain with base station 1.0 with the Vive Pro. Why?
1. As I've already mentioned, not everyone wants to drill into their walls. Some people who live in certain types of apartments can't even if they wanted to. Now you need to figure out how to best setup camera tripods
2. The base stations need line of site to each other. You can't just focus on getting the perfect view of the play area.
3. If you can't get line of site depending on your room configuration and furniture, then you need to buy a 100 ft or longer cord to connect them, or you have to deal with your headset or controllers not being tracked. ie. not working
Base Station 2.0?
1. If two base stations isn't enough for your play area due to room configuration or furniture layout, then you may need to buy more base stations which cost $200 (each?).
Sure, set up could be as easy as you remember it, but it could easily get complicated, and it's a hassle. I don't enjoy hanging picture frames.
1. Sure, nothing beats it for visual quality and performance, but it is expensive. Minimum $999 AND you need a beefy PC with an equally beefy Nvidia GPU so the real minimum is really around $2499 with PC vs $299 for a Quest 2. That's a $2200 difference.
2. It is a pain to setup. You either have to deal wires and wire control on the ceiling, or if you have a Vive Pro, then you can spend another $299 to install a wireless option bringing the total cost to $2798. Let's not forget the base stations. While nothing beats them for tracking accuracy and the fact that they're the only option for full body tracking, it's yet another pain to set up. You might either drill holes in your walls, or you might buy camera tripods as a pricier alternative $25-$79 each on sale. Of course, once you set it up it's a dream, but the initial hill to climb is high.
What Oculus and PSVR are doing is expanding the market for VR and democratizing it so that it's no longer a niche hobby for a select few techies. Also, it is 'Apple'ing' VR. You just plug and play. You don't have to go through a convoluted setup that even some techies will balk at. i.e. I can buy this for my mom as a fitness machine.
Facebook and crossplay will also fix the problem of empty multiplayer games.
On a side note, I believe Onward devs are working to revert the PC VR Steam graphics. It's also good to note that it's just one game.
I will definitely be buying an Oculus Quest 2.