Welcome to the community download. This is a place for people from all different walks of life to come together as one and disagree on the room-scale capabilities of different VR headsets. In all seriousness though, this is a post meant to inspire thoughtful, informed discussion about virtual and augmented reality. Today we stand on the cusp on one of our industry’s most significant times of year. Next week, the Game Developers Conference (GDC) will be getting underway in San Francisco and this year’s show should be a big one for VR.
Last year, going into the event, the only headsets we had commercially available to us were powered by smartphones. This year, the gaming PC your friends all said you’d “never use” is now happily humming away, powering your eighth straight hour of Space Pirate Trainer without a bathroom break.
Last year’s GDC was all about teasing an amazing new era of gaming. This year, it’s all about delivering on that promise. We’ve already ran through what we expect to happen at GDC, so now our question for all of you this week is this: out of all the VR studios, manufacturers and conglomerates attending GDC this year, which do you think will be bringing the most exciting VR games?
Before you answer let’s consider your options.
HTC/Valve/Vive: The double threat of VR companies, HTC and Valve worked together to release the Vive VR headset. Thanks to an early emphasis on room-scale VR and hand tracked controllers, the Vive has become the best selling PC-powered VR system on the market today, according to third party estimates.
Since last year Vive has started Vive Studios, an organization with the sole purpose of finding, supporting, and developing the best VR games it can. On top of that, Valve itself has recently teased that they it will be releasing not one, not two, but three new VR games in the near future. What better time than GDC to shine a light on these mystery projects?
Sony: Sony is a GDC veteran. These guys were likely running keynotes at the Moscone Center back when VR meant the virtual boy. Sony knows how to make great content and how to communicate it to the world. Its PSVR headset is projected to be quite a hot seller already, but there hasn’t been a huge amount of high profile games lately other than Resident Evil 7, or rumors that there will be more on the horizon.
GDC is Sony’s chance to prove its commitment to PSVR and remind us all who the video game legend in the room really is. Fingers crossed its got some tricks up its sleeves.
Oculus: GDC has been around since before Oculus was even so much as a glimmer in Palmer Luckey’s dad’s eye. However, Palmer Luckey has a new dad now named Mark Zuckerberg. And Daddy Zuck has very deep pockets.
Oculus has already made a name for itself as “the platform with the AAA content” but that content has come at a price. At OC3 Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has already spent $250 million facilitating high quality VR content. He also revealed that his company would spend at least that all over again on even more content for the future. Now’s the time for Oculus to show us what that big war chest can do.
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What do you think? Which of these companies, or any other company, is going to be keeping you glued to livestreams next week? Let us know in the comments below.
Tagged with: community download, GDC, htc, oculus, sony, valve, Vive
Source: Community Download: Who Will Have The Best VR Games at GDC 2017?
