The Oculus Quest Is This Generation’s Wii With One Major Exception

Daniel Nations
8 min readOct 4, 2019
Image Courtesy of Facebook Technologies, LLC.

It’s amazing what getting rid of a cord can do.

In 2006, the Nintendo Wii introduced a brand new way to play games and blew people — even non-gamers — away with the ease of jumping into the game using the innovative controllers and the pure joy of interacting with a game using natural motions rather than just pressing a joystick and pushing buttons.

In 2019, the Oculus Quest is making its bid for the Nintendo Wii’s crown.

It’s not that virtual reality gaming is new. In fact, the quest for the ultimate virtual reality headset stretches back to the early 90s when gaming companies Sega and Sony began working on headsets, but the technology at the time wasn’t quite up to the task. In 2016, the world saw a trio VR headsets become commercially viable when Oculus released the Rift, Valve and HTC released the Vive, and Sony released PlayStation VR. But each of these systems are tethered to the CPU.

They can also be quite expensive. A computer capable of handling VR for the Rift or Vive can start at $800 with just minimum specs. And this is added to the cost of the headset itself, which starts at $399 for the Rift and can rise to $699 or more for the Vive. In 2018, the Vive cut the cord with a wireless adapter for those willing to pay $299 on top of the price of the PC and the headset.

The Oculus Quest starts at $399 for the entire system, and for those with a little too much money in their pockets, they can splurge on a $499 version that ups the storage from 64 GB to 128 GB.

But what makes the Quest this generation’s Wii are the games running on the Oculus Quest. And when I say running on the Oculus Quest, I mean that literally. The Quest doesn’t plug into a PC or console. Everything is stored in the headset, making it a true wireless experience. And the games have very good quality. They may not compete with the upper end games available for the Rift, Vive or PSVR, but they are light years ahead of the Samsung Gear or Oculus Go.

And most important, the Oculus Quest is fun. Nintendo Wii level fun.

There’s nothing quite like stepping into another world without anything holding you back. Experiences like the PlayStaton VR can give you a hint…

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Daniel Nations

I am a writer, game developer, husband, father, dog owner, independent, gamer and wannabe herpetologist. http://www.nations-software.info/