Last month submissions opened for the 2nd annual Vive Developer Awards (VDA), seeking the best virtual reality (VR) experiences available on the platform. Now the ten nominees have been announced for the five different categories covering the breadth of VR entertainment.
The five categories are: Entertainment, Education, Arts & Culture, Enterprise and Arcade, with any app considered so long as it was available on Viveport.
The successful nominees are:
Entertainment
Education
Arts & Culture
- Galactic Gallery
- The Kremer Collection VR Museum
Enterprise
- Gravity Sketch VR
- Primitive
Arcade
The nominees are now inline for some significant prizes, with the first prize winner taking home $50,000 USD. They’ll also be featured in a studio profile video produced by HTC Vive, get priority access to new developer hardware and of course, a shiny trophy. For those that don’t snag first place, coming in second will still get them $20,000 to spend.
Winners will be announced at a special event on 19th March coinciding with the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018.
Last years VDA saw Fantastic Contraption, by Northway Games secure the top spot in the Create category, Apollo 11 VR, by Immersive VR Education Ltd win the Explore category, Cloudlands: VR Minigolf by Futuretown won Connect, while Penrose Studios’ short animation Allumette secured the Experience category.
It’s been a busy year for HTC and HTC Vive, with the company launching its first standalone headset, the Vive Focus in China. While a western release date has yet to be confirmed, 2018 is shaping up to be the year of standalone head-mounted displays (HMDs), with Oculus Go and Lenovo Mirage Solo due out, and the Pico Goblin already available. In China the Vive Focus will have to compete with a new version of the Pico Neo which uses the HTC’s Vive Wave platform, and Xiaomi/Oculus collaboration Mi VR Standalone.
As for Viveport, the platform recently announced new membership benefits in addition to increasing the monthly subscription price from $6.99 USD to $8.99. When the winning nominees are announced, VRFocus will bring you all the latest details.