What a time to be alive.
The real question is: How is this ever going to make money for Walmart? The second a developer tries to put this in a game they’re gonna be laughed off the internet.
They likely won’t. More likely, the devs will put these products in the most funny places (say, billboards on the side of the road in American Truck Simulator). They’ll keep this thing running for ~5 years and they’ll axe it.
There’s no polite way to say this, so I’ll say it like this:
This is fucking pathetic.
I could be wrong, but isn’t the title a bit misleading? As far as I can tell, Walmart made an SDK thing and pushed it to the Unity asset store. I don’t think Unity specifically went out of their way to make or promote it.
It appears their “Verified Solutions” program is meant to help make and promote it: https://docs.unity3d.com/2023.1/Documentation/Manual/verifiedsolutions.html
Godot meanwhile…
I’ve been thinking for a while about once vr gets adopted more we could make virtual reality storefronts to use instead of websites. It would be fun I think.
The concept of buying real items inside a videogame has never made sense to me.
With RickyRigatoni’s idea, it wouldn’t be a videogame. It would be a separate program you launch specifically to order things online. It just happens to use a game engine for its implementation, because game engines are the most advanced simulation tool humanity has developed…
A high quality VR store where I can actually physically browse the isles would be superior to trying to browse a 2D website. And being able to pick up a product, with a realistic 3D model, look at it from any angle and visually compare packaging sizes across brands - like I can in a real store but can’t on a website - would be nice.
I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally ordered a too small or too big version of something, because product photos on websites are always the same size (just fill the frame).
Of course, this will never happen. If a store had a budget to make this, they could use that budget to make their online shopping website 10x better instead.
One time, I got delivered teaspoons instead of spoons, because I couldn’t tell the difference from the picture (and the description did not bother mentionuing that at all).
Another time, I got delivered light bulbs the size of a toddler’s head, because the manufacturer decided to use a picture of a regular-size bulb. Well, and in the online store, the size only got mentioned as actual width/height values in the details.
But yeah, we do already have the technology to place a banana next to your product, and to take photos from all angles. Manufacturers and stores just don’t see enough of a benefit from actually doing that, so have a singular picture in a white void, which shows a different product. You’re welcome! 👍
Finally we have a solution to “I want to play a game, but feel like I’m at Walmart.”
There’s been a few Store-something Simulator lately, soo maybe
Oddly enough that’s not far from how many Unity games already felt.
I cannot imagine wanting that to be in a game you’re playing
Is this actually real? Is it really no a satire?
