Category: GDC

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Majority Of VR Developers Working On Quest, GDC Survey Suggests

The majority of game developers working in VR are making content for the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, a report from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) suggests.

GDC posted its annual State of the Game Industry Report today, sourced from over 3,000 developers.

Much of the report is concerned with the knock-on effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced GDC itself to cancel and delay its physical event for two years running now.

The report does turn its attention to VR, though, and suggests that Facebook’s Oculus Quest is the primary source of interest in the industry right now. 52% of responses said that Quest was the VR platform that interested them the most, followed by PSVR and Index at 28% each. The graph doesn’t group SteamVR headsets together, instead listing Index, Vive and others as separate entities.

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Of developers that have actually released VR content, 45% said their last release was on Oculus Rift, 39% said HTC Vive and 28% said Quest. But fortunes quickly reverse – while 41% of developers said they currently weren’t working on any content for VR or AR headsets, 27% said they were for Quest compared to 17% for Rift and Vive and 8% for PSVR, which is nearing the end of its life. PSVR 2 hadn’t been announced at the time the survey was conducted.

The gap grew when developers were asked where they anticipate their next VR or AR title releasing – 31% said Oculus Quest, 19% said Rift, 18% said Vive and 12% said either Index or PSVR.

During an investor call yesterday Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Quest 2 continues to perform ahead of expectations. Standalone VR in general, which doesn’t rely on any external hardware represents something of a turning point for the industry.

What do you make of the GDC survey results? Let us know in the comments below!

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Facebook’s Rubin, Verdu To Speak On Quest Store At GDC Showcase

Two of Facebook’s gaming figureheads will be talking at next week’s digital GDC Showcase.

Michael Verdu, VP of Facebook Reality Labs Content and Jason Rubin, the former VR content head that’s now the company’s VP of Play, will both be on the panel for ‘Future of Gaming: Quality and Connection’ on Wednesday, March 17th. They’ll also be joined by Denny Unger, the CEO of Pistol Whip developer, Cloudhead Games and Michael Carter of PlayCo.

This session will take a look not just as Facebook’s own gaming initiatives but also specifically at the work the company has done with the Oculus Quest store. The pair will “share the evolution” of the platform and take a look at how it “supports developers in creating high quality games.” Unger, meanwhile, will use Pistol Whip as a case study for their points.

We wouldn’t expect any major announcements during the talk, though Facebook is also presenting other talks at GDC, including a look at social VR and its use in battle royale hit, Population: One. The BigBox VR-developed title has already generated over $10 million in revenue on Oculus platforms and is currently running its first season. Beyond Facebook, Skydance Media will also be joining in with a post-mortem on its ever-popular zombie slayer, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The GDC Showcase is free-to-attend and takes place over what would have been the traditional spot in the year for the physical event in San Francisco. The return of the full event is planned for July though, again, it’ll be all-digital.

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HTC to Hold All of Its GDC 2020 Talks Live Online, Including Audience Q&A

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) got canned this year due to the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19), but that’s not stopping some companies from releasing their developer talks on the web for all to see. HTC is doing just that throughout the next few months in a live webinar happening every Tuesday, from now until mid-May.

Starting on March 31st and going to May 12th, HTC is streaming live developer talks that it would have otherwise given during GDC 2020.

Why live talks? Well, HTC is also hosting Q&A portions after each session, which will take place every Tuesday at 10 AM PT (local time here).

You can sign up at the registration page here, with registration links periodically going live on a week-by-week basis. If you’re not able to watch live, HTC is also uploading all of them to its YouTube channel.

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Watch All of Facebook's GDC 2020 Developer Talks Here

Check out the schedule below:

  • Tuesday, March 31 – A Step Ahead of the Curve: Using Data Trends to Build a Successful VR Experience
  • Tuesday, April 7 – Build for Tomorrow: VIVE Hand Tracking SDK
  • Tuesday, April 14  – Working Remotely in VR using Vive Sync
  • Tuesday, April 21 – Lessons Learned from Marketing 100+VR Games
  • Tuesday, April 28  – Viveport Developer Console: What’s Coming in 2020
  • Tuesday, May 5 – XR Continuum: Merging VR & AR Development
  • Tuesday, May 12 – What’s the Opportunity in Enterprise?

The company has also provided a description of each talk via its blog post.

Tuesday, March 31 – A Step Ahead of the Curve: Using Data Trends to Build a Successful VR Experience 

By Bjorn Book-Larsson, President, Viveport

Dive deep into Viveport’s proprietary data to get an insider’s look into what makes a VR title successful. In this session, we’ll look at what drives certain consumer behaviors and how to develop content that keeps players coming back for more.

Tuesday, April 7 - Build for Tomorrow: VIVE Hand Tracking SDK 

By Dario Laverde, Sr. Developer Evangelist  

Learn how to add hand tracking support to the VIVE, VIVE Pro, VIVE Cosmos and VIVE Focus with a hands-on coding session using Unity. Sr Developer Evangelist Dario Laverde will walk you through the VIVE Hand Tracking SDK and use cases. Topics covered include gesture recognition, remote and local interactions and custom hand models.

Tuesday, April 14 - Working Remotely in VR using Vive Sync 

By David Sapienza, AVP Content Production 

Working remotely?  On April 14th at 10am PST learn how VR can benefit you and your team.  What are the benefits?  What are the drawbacks?  Is it right for your team?  This session will be given by David Sapienza and will take you through Vive Sync, a powerful collaboration tool that harnesses the power of VR to bring together distributed teams. 

Tuesday, April 21  – Lessons Learned from Marketing 100+VR Games 

By Thomas Gratz, Sr. Manager, Developer Marketing

Curious about how to stand out on a VR app store? Whether you’re marketing your first VR title or a seasoned developer with multiple titles under your belt, this session will expand on the time-tested “do’s and don’ts” for marketing your VR experience in a way that will improve your app’s conversion rate.  

Tuesday, April 28 –  Viveport Developer Console: What’s Coming in 2020 

By  Adhar Walia, Director of Product, Viveport & Stanley Chung, Sr. Manager

Viveport Developer Console, the entry point where you showcase your VR experiences and bridge to the world of VR businesses.  Find out how to leverage various VR business models available to you, learn about new console features to better integrate with your organization, and explore what’s coming ahead in 2020.

Tuesday, May 5  –  XR Continuum: Merging VR & AR Development 

By Jad Boniface, Sr. Director of Developer Relations and Partnership

Learn how VIVE is pushing the future of XR development with the SRWorks SDK and VIVE Cosmos XR. Developers now have access to mix the see-through stereo camera view and their virtual worlds to create experiences that are more interactive and highly immersive, all made possible by the high-resolution dual cameras of the VIVE Cosmos XR faceplate. We will walk through supported features and demonstrate use cases for your own development. 

Tuesday, May 12 –  What’s the Opportunity in Enterprise?

By Chris Chin, VP & GM, Vive Studios & Amy Peck, Sr. Director Enterprise Content, Vive Studios

What are the latest trends in Enterprise VR and how can you best position yourself to be successful?  Learn how Vive Studios is partnering with developers to grow the Enterprise space together. 

The post HTC to Hold All of Its GDC 2020 Talks Live Online, Including Audience Q&A appeared first on Road to VR.

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GDC Summer Announced For August Despite Coronavirus Outbreak

Following the postponement of GDC proper as the coronavirus outbreak worsened, organizers behind the conference have decided to plan the follow up for this August, dubbed GDC Summer.

Informa Tecg, the organization behind GDC, announced the new GDC Summer event today for August 4-6 in San Francisco, CA. Current health expert analysts are still divided on whether or not life will return to normal by summer.

Reportedly, GDC Summer will be a bit different than a normal GDC. It is described as a “unique” experience with a focus on “high-quality technical content” but is not a digital event, it will take place in the Moscone Center of San Francisco, CA like usual.

In addition to the technical content, GDC Summer promises comprehensive developer sessions and panels on how to pitch your game successfully. From the sounds of it, the event will be focused much more squarely on the up-and-coming developer community.

Bolstering this aspect, GDC Summer will also debut a new community-partnership-program allowing organizations to apply for on-site space to host meetings and gatherings. This includes, “SIG meetings, non-profit board meetings, local meet-ups, hosted “office hours” by community professionals, portfolio review rooms, podcast recording and more. This program enables GDC as an organization to reach areas of the industry previously untapped due to space restrictions. Meanwhile, sponsorship packages are designed to be easy to execute, with a shorter-than-average runway compared to other industry events.”

According to the press release GDC Summer wants to bring people together “in a way that hasn’t currently been possible due to COVID-19” but the timing still feels risky given the current global situation. Reportedly they will continue to monitor things, so it sounds like there is still potential that this event is either cancelled outright or postponed once again.

What do you think of the news? Let us know down in the comments below!

The post GDC Summer Announced For August Despite Coronavirus Outbreak appeared first on UploadVR.

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The Facebook: Game Developers Showcase Digital Event Begins Today

Today the first-ever all-digital Facebook: Game Developers Showcase kicked off in lieu of the annual in-person Game Developers Conference (GDC) event in San Francisco, CA. GDC was canceled earlier this year due to the spread of COVID-19 and it would have been held this week.

This is the first day of the Showcase but we’re still waiting to see game-specific announcements. So far, we’ve learned about new features coming to the Oculus Quest standalone VR headset, such as multi-tasking and an improved UI, as well as some new sales figures stating that 20 different titles on Oculus Quest have earned over $1 million in revenue.

Facebook also revealed experimental OpenXR support for Quest and a stat regarding the number of new users in the Oculus ecosystem since Christmas because of the Oculus Quest.

Additionally, Facebook released an introduction video, which was included in a post on the Oculus Blog, going over some of the expected topics this week, including plenty of developer talks and info sessions. In the video, embedded above, you can see Global Director of Gaming Partnerships, Facebook, Leo Olebe, alongside the Director of Content Ecosystem at Oculus, Chris Pruett, discuss the week’s events.

Back when the Showcase was announced we were promised news for games such as Pistol Whip, Beat Saber, The Room VR: A Dark Matter, Lies Beneath and Phantom: Covert Ops, so we’ll have to wait and see what the rest of the week holds.

From the sounds of it this post will be updated each day with new announcements throughout the week. More news is expected to drop tomorrow, March 17th, at 10:00 AM PT.

The post The Facebook: Game Developers Showcase Digital Event Begins Today appeared first on UploadVR.