Enthusiasts vs Developers

"raidho36" wrote:

Real developer don't even need the Rift. They just use the SDK to create a Rift-compatible rendering in their conventional game that mainly supports conventional means of display, maybe it's hard tweak something without the real thing - it's only needed for testing, and therefore that's hardly relevant until the relese version even comes out. And even then, there's always means for big companies to get their unit faster, up to "the next day" faster.

I think the whole point is to have your game working prior to consumer release, rather than sloppily slapped together when it is too late. You can't garner attention and market your game as Oculus Rift compatible if you haven't even gotten that far.

I'm not sure what technical problems and challenges might arise when someone is testing their game on the Rift (I haven't gotten that far yet myself) but something often finds a way to go wrong. It could even be something on the design level; perhaps the movement doesn't feel good when the game is played on the Rift, but on the standard screen there is no real way of knowing.

Its like developing mobile apps. Even if you can use an emulator on your computer, you never know how it quite looks or runs until you get it on that phone. Often you'll find unprecedented issues when you do.

General rule of thumb is to never release anything without thoroughly making sure it works. Any other approach is surely bound for disaster.