The annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 is set to take place in March and as in previous years, the event has released its traditional State of the Game Industry Survey, having surveyed nearly 4,000 developers. The report has once again brought up some interesting stats regarding virtual reality (VR), highlighting HTC Vive as the most popular among developers still.
Out of the respondents to the survey, 52 percent said they had never been involved with developing VR or augmented reality (AR) videogames. So the rest of the results came from the other 48 percent, with 33 percent of them currently developing for HTC Vive. Overall, however, 51 percent of VR developers were working on content for Oculus headsets, split 30 percent for Oculus Rift and 21 percent for upcoming standalone device Oculus Quest, which is due to launch this Spring.
When it comes to PlayStation VR on the other hand, only 13 percent said they were working on titles for Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) headset. Which is slightly surprising considering PlayStation VR seems to have the biggest consumer base.
When the game industry professionals were asked about which headsets most interested them the stats stayed relatively similar for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest, with PlayStation VR, Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens all seeing spikes.
As for the future of immersive content development, it looks as though most of the pros think AR will be the more dominant tech in the next five years. A massive 34 percent went for AR whilst only 19 percent of respondents chose VR. 20 percent of those surveyed thought both VR and AR would be equally popular in five years.
GDC 2019 takes place in San Francisco, California from 18th – 22nd March. Also held at the same time is the Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC) dedicated to the immersive tech industry. Alongside VR demonstrations there will be plenty of sessions taking place, for example, Amata K.K.’s Lead Animator Atsuko Fukuyama – currently working on Last Labyrinth – will be holding a talk titled “Animating Memorable Characters that Communicate Without Words.”
For further GDC 2019 updates ahead of the event, keep reading VRFocus.