cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Oculus reducing focus on true high-end PCVR gaming?

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Interview with Jason Rubin (I've put some text in bold):

"Hamilton: Are you still developing new games, beyond the ones we’re seeing here today, for Oculus Rift first?

Rubin: Oculus Rift first? I’m not sure. If the right project… I mean yes there are some in production, but what we look at is if the right project comes that we think can only be done on PC, and needs to be done to prove something out, we would fund it. Because again innovation is what we rely on the PC for delivering.

We are not graphically married…we are not pursuing graphics as like a goal. So if someone just comes and says we don’t want to build it for Quest because we want to have cutting edge graphics and we don’t want to worry about porting it down the Quest, that’s probably not a title we would make. If it can come to Quest, we want it to come to Quest. So for the most part the titles that we’re looking for now will run on both (that we’re funding)."

Source: https://uploadvr.com/jason-rubin-oculus-quest-index-rift-go/ 

From now on we only get low-poly low-res-texture phoneVR games funded by Oculus on the Rift(-S)? 

It really worries me. Of course there're Defector, Stormland, Lone Echo 2 and Asgard's Wrath - but these games have been planned for long. Will these truly high-end PCVR games, which are far beyond the Quest's ultra-low hardware capabilities, be the last Rift-only PCVR games from Oculus? 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

167 REPLIES 167

Anonymous
Not applicable
SuperHOT was first released on the Oculus Store due to funding from Oculus/Facebook, then released on Steam and then the PS Store.

The problem that indie developers have with releasing stuff on the PS Store is that it's VERY expensive to do compared to PC development.

You need to pay for either an office or a safe for secure storage of the dev kit, a dev kit, Submissions for Standards and Functional Testing and once your game passes Submission you need to pay for a licence fee.

With a game for the Oculus Store you don't have to pay for a thing apart from your headset, and if you're a member of the Oculus Start programme you don't even need to pay for that! 😮

If anything is going to be the saviour of PC VR it's going to be the Nextbox having VR headset compatibility, but there's no news of that happening yet. It seems a bit of a no brainer for Microsoft to do, the WVR headsets are already out there and are reasonably priced.

We need big publishers to jump into VR development with big name franchises for things to really take off.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
According to Wikipedia SuperHot was first on PC (2D pancake), then XBox and then PCVR:

"Superhot was released for Microsoft WindowsOS X, and Linux in February 2016. An Xbox One version was released in May 2016, and a PlayStation 4 version was released in July 2017. A rebuilt version of the game to better support virtual realitySuperhot VR, was later released for the Oculus RiftHTC Vive, and PlayStation VRheadset devices."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhot

So:
  • Microsoft WindowsOS XLinux: 25 February 2016
  • Xbox One: 3 May 2016
  • PCVR: 5 December 2016 (VR)
  • PlayStation 4: 21 July 2017
  • Oculus Quest: 30 April 2019
I guess the PCVR version is built on the XBox One version? 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

falken76
Expert Consultant

RedRizla said:

@CrashFu - I took @RuneSR2 to mean we won't see games like Lone Echo again for PC -VR. Unless games like Lone Echo can be made for Oculus Quest, can they?
I suppose there's other game developers, but I do like Oculus titles like Lone Echo for PC -VR, and just hoped titles like that could continue.



That's exactly what appears to have been said.  You'll still have 3rd party studios, indies and of course access to Steam which will have those games that the devs don't want to put on the Oculus store.  Expect the same from Tripple A though, they'll only develop for the demographic that will give them an ROI and Enthusiast based PCVR is NOT where they're going to get their ROI, expect them to develop for the quest first and in most cases exclusively also.  Eventually a whole lot of people will have quest and practically nobody will have PCVR and it's for the same reason since this all started.  Costs, the cost prohibitive nature of PCVR will most likely never be solved with the cost of GPUs and the fact that nobody owns a computer so that in itself is a cost.

falken76
Expert Consultant

MowTin said:


snowdog said:


Like I've said in my post above Oculus and Facebook NEED PC VR for their standalone lines to move forward. 
Just because you believe that's true doesn't mean Facebook agrees. Companies do stupid short-sighted things all the time. If they're building games for the Quest, how are they going to grow PCVR? Games are more important than hardware. It takes years to get a good AAA game made. 

If they're giving up on making PCVR games then how can you say they haven't given up on PCVR? 



At the moment they're both a hardware and software company.  Just because they don't fund the development of Rift games because their new toy came out doesn't mean they gave up on it.  There's still a large 3rd party pool of developers that make content for the device.  All of my favorite games are made by indies or studios that are not oculus.  You'll know they gave up on it when they no longer produce and sell HMDs for PC.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

Unless games like Lone Echo can be made for Oculus Quest, can they?




They cannot  - this is Quest vs. GTX 1060:

Image result for quest benchmark 1060 vr 830
https://uploadvr.com/standalone-vs-pc-power-compared/

Quest is actually much worse when it comes to GPU power than GearVR using the latest Samsung S10 phone. Samsung S10 is nearly 100% faster (ok, maybe 70% then). 

But eventually phone GPUs will grow too - maybe in 10 years we can get Lone Echo on Quest5  😄    

Many seem to forget that Quest basically is "GearVR with Touch", and not even a high-end GearVR version unfortunately. Then again my new Samsung S10+ 512GB did cost $1500 - more than a 2080 Ti, so of course that's not exactly cheap VR too, lol. Actually I think the AMOLED screen in Samsung S10+ is better than Quest too... Maybe I should get some GearVR just to test it - but I don't think I'll start funding any GearVR or Quest games, this simply isn't the VR that I love and care about. I'll vote with my wallet when it comes to true VR  o:)

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
Never say never! Echo Arena is PCVR and it's coming over to Quest...

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
But that's not the real Echo Arena PCVR - it's a cut down low-poly version. Moss for Quest is not at all the same as Moss PCVR (or even PSVR), like Robo Recall for Quest is not at all the same as Robo Recall for PCVR. 

BTW, here's a comparison of Samsung S10+ (Snapdragon 855) vs.- Quest (Snapdragon 835):

ri3wgxlrw4pt.jpg

Anandtech has many more results - 855 is actually about 100% faster in many cases:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13786/snapdragon-855-performance-preview/5

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
I also had games on my Commodore 64 based on the amazing arcade machines - I guess we're back to that when cutting down awesome Rift games to fit the Quest.

To me the Quest version really has nothing to do with the Rift version - except you do run around and shoot some robots:

77wf2xti8p1u.jpg

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

CrashFu
Consultant
Let me see if I understand the logic some of you are running on here:

Oculus' mobile market is slightly more lucrative than their PC market, so they'll definitely abandon the entire PC market and focus exclusively on the mobile market...

Meanwhile, Valve's VR market is less than 1% of their business, and they know they'll never control more than 1 or 2% of the entire VR market  (because almost nobody can afford the dang Index).  But they'll definitely put everything else aside and invest millions into making VR games, on the scale of Oculus Studios?   For who?   There'd be no ROI, and Valve - the greediest company on earth - certainly isn't running a charity.

Yeah, I hate to break it to you, but if Oculus ever did "abandon" PC VR,  that would be the end of PC VR, period.   Valve and Microsoft and everyone else would take it as a sign that the market isn't profitable, and that would be it.

Fortunately, the very notion of Oculus abandoning PC VR is ridiculous.  Their business plan from the start was to make massive short-term investments in order to grow the market to a sustainable size, and then got a ROI through software sales.  They've just now reached the point where they're seeing that ROI, and you think this is when they're going to pull out?  Specifically, you think this is when they're going to stop investing in the software that they're making the most money off of? Absurd.

Sure, their promotional efforts right now are focused around the Quest.  Well, duh!  They're trying to establish a whole new market, with a brand new product that has no predecessor.  They havto promote this thing as hard as possible, and get it into as many hands as possible, because they can only sell Quest software to people who actually buy the Quest!

The Rift-S, on the other hand, already has an established market, and people are already aware of PC VR, and there's no other option when it comes to Oculus PC VR systems  (other than buying a used CV1 on eBay).  So there's no need to promote it as hard.
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

Anonymous
Not applicable

RuneSR2 said:

According to Wikipedia SuperHot was first on PC (2D pancake), then XBox and then PCVR:

"Superhot was released for Microsoft WindowsOS X, and Linux in February 2016. An Xbox One version was released in May 2016, and a PlayStation 4 version was released in July 2017. A rebuilt version of the game to better support virtual realitySuperhot VR, was later released for the Oculus RiftHTC Vive, and PlayStation VRheadset devices."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhot

So:
  • Microsoft WindowsOS XLinux: 25 February 2016
  • Xbox One: 3 May 2016
  • PCVR: 5 December 2016 (VR)
  • PlayStation 4: 21 July 2017
  • Oculus Quest: 30 April 2019
I guess the PCVR version is built on the XBox One version? 



Nope, SuperHOT VR is completely different to SuperHOT. The VR version has considerably less content and that content is exclusive to the VR version.