Games to be oculus rift only :(

[[VR] Mad Mike]

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2zpyub/valkyrie_is_exclusive_on_the_oculus/cplmkha

There is going to be software that is exclusive to the Rift, some of our first party content especially. We have been spending time and money on software for our system for years now, it is not "best for VR" for us to spend those finite resources compromising around lowest common denominator feature sets in an attempt to support all headsets.
Other companies will do the same, creating and funding content that is designed around the strengths of their particular system. Most software developers will end up supporting all available headsets to some degree, but you can bet on VR hardware companies (headset, input, capture, and otherwise) funding development of things that show off the cutting edge - expect that to accelerate as things like eye tracking, body tracking, emotional state sensing, and other technologies start to become part of VR hardware, and accelerate further as competition drives people in different directions. It is hard for any dev (especially bigger, slower moving devs) to spend their own resources on new technologies before they are proven out, and that is true even for the relatively limited VR tech that exists today.
P.S. The Rift is not closed.

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Oh god this is what I was afraid off, and can only be a bad thing for us users.

Could you imagine if a game only worked on samsung monitors, and an other only on HP?

sad times......... It reminds me of the days of trying to get Screamer rally running in hardware acceleration on my direct 3D card (that game only ran in acceleration mode using glide)

So now we have a blu ray / HDDVD or VHS/Betamax scenario.

 

[seanwasere]

what i think will happen,
is that as more HMDs come on the market, the competition between the HMD manufacturers for market share will increase,
so they will work harder to make it easier for the games develpers, and the consumer
they will need to lower the price, and standardise the interfaces,
so that games developers don't need to apply to much extra work to support each new minute requirement of the specific HMD manufacturer, eg Oculus.
HMDs may become so cheap, that they are throw away, like some mobile phones, joysticks, monitors, keyboards, mice, motherboards, hard drives,
content is king, and frontier only need to be a little step in front of the competition to remain in front in regards to VR,
because everyone else will be doing the work to make it easy for us.
But until that day comes,
Oculus, aka Facebook and all it's lawyers, will work hard to ensure it is complicated for HMD competitors, by doing things like, ensuring complicated interfaces to the HMD, trademark and copyright protection, licensing and eventually paying games developers directly, to support there HMD over others.
The game is not over for the VR land grab, but the value in VR right now, is the litigation potential,
and until that is finally milked, our VR is expensive, complicated and not that good

 

[Jake_blakeson]

My biggest fear is VR may go the way of the Beta machines like it did in the 80's, there are 3 things that drive the market for toys like VR headsets, Price, Price and Price. I fear in order for developers of VR headgear to create a mainstream usable device the price tag may end up killing the system. Worse yet if a company developing an inexpensive VR knock off that creates a decent experience cheaply like the google glasses which could realistically be priced around 100 dollars, could do in VR headsets like the RIFT and VR headgear could end up losing in the market place like BETA did against VHS.
The answer is to create a device that is not just a toy but one that can be used in everyday life, replacing monitors with VR headgear is viable. Imagine how much office space a company could save if they switched to VR glasses, but they would have to be compact, inexpensive and convenient enough for everyday life. I think Google glasses definitely could have merit in this realm, or how about replacing the big screen tv in the living room with VR headsets ? The problem with this is it doesn't cater to the family style entertainment. VR really needs to find an everyday usage niche before I will be confident that it will end up being just a fad.

 

[CMDR Holycow]

This won't happen. If a dev only coded their game for one particular headset... then it flat out won't sell well. Even president of FD said they plan to include native support for all VR headsets as they are released, in elite dangerous.

 

[Kevin Kyle]

Wont happen in any real way. Supporting new hardware and such is always a good thing but to support only one thing. Anyone remember Tandy? Not too many I bet.

 

[Desert63]

,
Oculus, aka Facebook and all it's lawyers, will work hard to ensure it is complicated for HMD competitors, by doing things like, ensuring complicated interfaces to the HMD, trademark and copyright protection, licensing and eventually paying games developers directly, to support there HMD over others.
The game is not over for the VR land grab, but the value in VR right now, is the litigation potential,
and until that is finally milked, our VR is expensive, complicated and not that good

Sounds cynical, but I agree with the idea put forward by seanwasere here. It would not be quite that one dimensional, but the idea that this happens at all is frustrating and it does all the time. I think the only way we have a chance is to grow the market to the point it has value in and of itself. Enough people go VR and the potential to sell them software outweights corporations playing games to get money. That is why I like threads like Cmdr Dr. something, trying to talk the lurkers (me!) into buying ORs.

 

[Nurmi]

I don't get the panic over this.

"Games" won't be exclusive, but there will be *some* games that are.

That was always going to happen: as long as there are multiple players in the field there will be divergence before convergence.

(1) there wasn't ever going to be a common multi-vendor API to start with, especially not one that supports all features of all HMDs. While many devs and studios might support multiple HMDs, the resources for everyone to support every single one popping on the market were never there to start with.

(2) if a HMD vendor decides to throw money at a game aimed squarely at *their* product, getting an exclusive as part of the deal should not be a shocker.

It is not VR that is going to be the betamax here, but a HMD design and API or two.