SPORTS – Page 4 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 16, 2017

NFL Director of Media Strategy Says Football in VR Is “Very Reliant On The Mobile Phone Industry”

Sporting events have been some of the highest profile paths into the hands of casual VR and 360-media adopters. As a result, significant partnerships with the NBA, NCAA, NFL, and others have sprouted up from interest in the platforms. While some have leaped in headfirst, the NFL is a bit more hesitant and only has documentary style and highlight packages available in the 360-degree format.

Digital Trends spoke with the NFL’s Director of Media Strategy and Business Development, William Deng, along with representatives for Voke and NextVR, about current pitfalls of live streaming, what we could see in the future, and the hesitation to fully integrate with VR.

While PC-based VR headsets provide the high-quality visual experiences that sporting events need, those options are far from being the most accessible and that’s something the NFL understands. Thus, mobile headsets are the main focus for live-streaming with Deng even going so far as to say NFL’s investment in VR is “heavily reliant on the mobile phone industry”. Unfortunately, the picture these headsets produce is a concern for Deng. “When I’m in the headset and I’m watching content or a highlight on the other side of the field, can I actually see what’s happening? Resolution today limits that ability,” he says. Jayaram of Voke also noted that, while they can capture 4K content, not many smart phones are equipped with 4K displays. When it comes to future improvements, NextVR co-founder Dave Cole points out that new panels and the Snapdragon 835 mobile chipset in Japan would be beneficial. “You won’t be able to build a bad Android VR phone, because all of the components supply will be specific to making a great VR device,” he says.

While the limitations of the mobile platform is an important obstacle, it’s not the only one. In 360-degree video, content creators have found ways to direct the users eyes in the right direction with smart structure and clever design. With live events, producers don’t have that luxury. “What’s the right balance between giving our viewers the flexibility to take advantage of this medium, and be able to access this game from different vantage points, but at the same time making sure the story-line around the game is still coming through,” Deng asks.

He also asks how one would make sure users are focusing in on where the action is happening on the field, which seems like a strange concern when the answer lies right inside football stadiums. While in attendance at a big game, even when sitting a good bit away from the action, fans that want a focused look on the action have massive screens they can look at in addition to the live action. If you want precision of live broadcasts in a live 360-degree stream, why not overlay footage from the static cameras with the free flowing 360 cameras? When it comes to a story-line, fans can enjoy the event and seek out more structured content immediately post-game just like with traditional viewing.

Replicating the ambiance and excitement of live sporting events is another element the NFL, NextVR, and Voke want to perfect and, as the technology grows, end-to-end solutions should become more possible. Despite the setbacks, the NFL seems to be invested.

“I think that we’re seeing the NFL recognizing that VR is going to be a significant part of their digital subscription media strategy,” Cole elaborates. “They’ve basically said that with the tests they’ve done and the work they’ve done with us.” Maybe a major mobile leap in capability happens in 2017 that inspires NFL to speed up their integration, but we’ll all have to wait and see for now.

Tagged with: football, livestream, national football league, nextVR, nfl, sports, VR

December 5, 2016

‘Ripcoil’ Review: Competitive VR That’s Big On Fun But Short On Content

I’ve never really known what it’s like to punch someone in the face. Every time I have a dream where pugilism becomes necessary — there’s only one donut left at the bakery, someone tells me that Shia Labeouf will never win an Oscar, that type of thing — I never seem to be able to land a satisfactory blow. Instead, time sort of slows down and my fist just sort of glances harmlessly off Kurt Russel’s donut-chomping jaw. Now, however, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble cleaning the anti-Labouf crowd’s collective clocks and I owe it all to my new friend Ripcoil.

Ripcoil is a competitive VR experience that combines every college freshman’s two favorite things: frisbee and punching. In the world of Ripcoil, you are an interstellar athlete clad in enough power armor to make a Fallout fan weak at the knees. The game of choice for this futuristic fanbase is a Tron-style contest in which two players use ricochets, trick shots, and power gloves to sneak a fast-moving disk past their opponent and into the goal. Each player is mounted on a sort of space age magic carpet that allows for rapid, horizontal movement.

All of this adds up to fast, energetic mechanics that create plenty of marquee competitive moments and satisfyingly enjoyable gameplay. However, a general lack of depth keeps this title from being truly great.

Ripcoil is the second VR creation from Sanazru games, the creators of VR Sports Challenge. Ironically, while VR Sports lost points in our review for the absence of any substantial multiplayer content, Ripcoil suffers from the exact opposite problem. Ripcoil is a completely multiplayer focused game that, with the exception of a limited “training’ mode, only allows for PvP competitions. This wouldn’t be an issue in and of itself — multiplayer only games like Overwatch or League of Legends are some of the most popular in existence and The Unspoken is bundled with Touch pre-orders — but where Ripcoil stumbles is in a lack of interesting features to support the online experience.

The disk duels in Ripcoil offer their players a fun, but fairly limited arsenal. Let’s start with the best of these tools: movement. Locomotion in Ripcoil happens by physically moving your head from side to side, sort of like you’re shifting your torso. As you do, the flight pad beneath your feet moves as well. This takes a bit of getting used to at first. The natural human response to an incoming laser disk is to jerk your head out of the way and this can lead to some frustrating last second misses as your instincts for self-preservation move you away from a last minute save. Once you get the hang of it, however, the sensation becomes highly immersive and surprisingly satisfying.

Once you’ve got movement down, your next mission will be throwing the futuristic frisbee itself. Sanzaru has built in a good amount of spin, loft, and angle variations you can use to score against your foe. You can use an over or underhanded throw, just like real life frisbees, and each option changes the way the disk moves toward the opposing goal. There are also different amounts of walls and bumpers to bounce the projectile off of, Pong style, depending on which of the four arenas you’re playing in.

The most powerful arrow in the Ripcoil quiver is a super-powered punch that you charge by holding down the trigger buttons on your Oculus Touch controllers. Once charged, you’ll be able to strike the disk as it moves toward you and send it hurtling away at remarkable speeds. The power shot can be difficult to deal with at first but, like most of the features in Ripcoil, loses its initial challenge rather quickly.

The first few games you play in Ripcoil you feel lucky just to snag the frisbee before it hits your goal. But after a dozen or so matches, even the most well-placed power shot can be snagged with the right amount of focus. This isn’t to say that the game ever truly loses its overall sense of fun, but the skill cap and play variation wears off much more quickly than it should for a competitive online experience. There just aren’t enough ways to play in order to elevate Ripcoil into the upper echelon of strategic minded VR multiplayer games like Onward or The Unspoken. In fact, The Unspoken is a bundled with all Touch pre-orders, and offers significantly more variety.

That being said, the limited structure that Sanzaru has put in place is undeniably fun. Ripcoil definitely has that “just one more game” aspect down pat. The matches are quick enough, and addictive enough, to keep you wanting to go again the moment the final goal is scored. A well-timed save or perfectly placed shot never fails to feel satisfying, but there just aren’t enough ways to construct those moments as the games wear on.

Final Score: 6.5/10 – Pretty Good

Ripcoil is an immensely fun and visually impressive VR experience. However, in an industry where one of the most significant commodities is users for multiplayer experiences, there just isn’t enough here to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape. If you’ve got a few friends in mind to play with, it’s certainly worth picking up, but don’t expect the servers to be overflowing outside of the launch window if you grab this on a late-night whim.

Ripcoil is available for the Oculus Rift with Touch from the Oculus Home Store for $9.99. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

Tagged with: competitive, review, ripcoil, Sanzaru, sports

November 22, 2016

Hands-On: The ‘NBA 2KVR Experience’ Shoots An Air Ball Instead Of A Slam Dunk

I really don’t understand what happened in the brainstorm meeting that led to the creation of the NBA 2KVR Experience that released today on HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR. The premise is sound: bring one of the most well-known sporting franchises to VR with an officially licensed game from the publishers of the smash-hit NBA 2K game series. But what happened next is a giant question mark.

What we have here is a $15 collection of half-baked mini-games that do very little to get you excited about VR, the NBA, or Gatorade — a clear sponsor of the experience itself judging by the gratuitous product placement and branded powerups. Paul George of the Indiana Pacers is plastered over the introductory screen and the Pacers court is the only playing space in the experience. But the real issues arise once you dig into actually playing the game, especially on PlayStation VR.

Anyone that’s going to try playing a VR sports game, especially one that uses your hands, will want to use motion controllers. That’s why on the Vive edition of the game, the Vive motion controllers are supported and why Sanzaru waited to launch VR Sports Challenge until the Oculus Touch controllers were available. There are even floating, see-through hands represented in the game itself on all platforms. However, the Vive version is the only one with motion controller support; the PS Move controllers on PS VR are not supported.

Naturally, the Gear VR is gaze and tap only using the touchpad, but when loading up the game on the PS VR, I’d expect something comparable to the Vive, motion controllers included, instead of an experience that’s seemingly identical to that of the smartphone-based mobile Gear VR headset.

But the ultimate faux pas here isn’t the lack of controller options, it’s that they’re charging $15 across all three platforms for an experience that is clearly a piece of marketing material without enough depth to support the price tag. It’s hard to understand what happened here.

On PS VR, you simply look down at a basketball, put your cursor an inch or so above the basket, and pull the R2 trigger to shoot. That’s it. You’re exclusively aiming the trajectory, but have no control over the ball’s actual velocity. You can get rid of the aiming icon on harder difficulties, but the entire game still devolves to “look at basket, then press a button.” The skill challenges that require you to bounce and bank the ball across complex ranges of targets are fun, albeit limited, distractions from the otherwise lackluster debut of the NBA in VR gaming.

I really wanted to like NBA 2KVR Experience, but it turned out to be little more than an air ball instead of what could have been a relatively easy slam dunk. You can find it on Steam for HTC Vive and the PSN Store for PlayStation VR.

Tagged with: 2k, 2kvr, basketball, nba, review, sports

November 21, 2016

NBA 2KVR Experience Mini-Game Collection Is Launching Tomorrow

NBA 2K17 Is Getting A ‘VR Experience’ According To Leaked Trophy List

When I first played Carnival Games VR [Review: 6/10] at PAX West, the 2K PR representative was very friendly. He handed me the Oculus Touch controllers and I played a round of Swish, the carnival version of basketball, that tasked me with shooting as many hoops as possible in 45 seconds. After playing the demo I remarked that 2K should add VR features to arguably its most popular franchise: the NBA 2K basketball game series. The PR representative laughed and agreed, that would be a great idea.

Mr. PR Man was perhaps being a bit coy after all, because the min-game collection experience launches tomorrow for PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, and Samsung Gear VR.

Simply titled NBA 2KVR Experience, you’ll be tasked with completing a series of challenges and short game modes. The trophy list, previously leaked on Exophase, is titled NBA 2KVR Experience as well and includes achievements such as Skill Challenges, Three-Point Games, Party Events, and a Time Attack mode. This will not be a fully-fledged basketball title, but instead a new VR-focused downloadable experience, similar to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s Jackal or the X-Wing Mission for Star Wars Battlefront.

According to the game trailer, gameplay consists of aiming with your face and shooting baskets in the various game modes. At the end, it does look like motion controllers are used to actuall throw the ball rather than just using only gaze-based aiming. Hopefully the gaze controls are just for the Gear VR edition of the experience.

VR Sports Challenge [Review: 8.5/10] is releasing soon for the Oculus Rift with Touch and includes a slew of basketball mini games and game modes, and other experiences such as Hoops VR exist on Vive already, but NBA 2KVR should be a big step forward for the sport, and the publisher. This is now the very first licensed sport video game to offer any sort of VR integration. Stepping onto one of the iconic courts (such as the Indiana Pacers, shown in the trailer above) from the actual NBA or donning the sneakers of your favorite sports star is something that could dramatically improve the marketability of VR as an industry.

NBA 2KVR is releasing tomorrow, November 22nd, rerportedly for $14.99 on PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, and Samsung GearVR. An Oculus Rift release is not yet dated. It’s developed in collaboration with Gatorade.

Tagged with: 2k, basketball, nba, PSVR, sports

November 8, 2016

Suns-Trail Blazers NBA Game Streaming Free Tonight Via NextVR

NextVR is a force in the live broadcast industry. They’ve been flirting with that distinction quite a bit this year, but their recent developments solidify their position in the market. The company live broadcasted the US Open, partnered with Notre Dame for a live showing of one of the home games, and set up a full schedule of live broadcasts for the NBA through the NBA League Pass subscription system. They’ve done it all through immersive VR, giving viewers up-close-and-personal experiences when they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend. If you’re not quite sold on the fun of a virtually broadcast sporting event, you can strap yourself into the VR seat for a free basketball game tonight.

The free trial program with NBA League Pass originally included a matchup between the San Antonio Spurs and the Sacramento Kings and it was extended to include the November 1st matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Indiana Pacers. Once again NextVR and NBA League Pass are extending VR content during the trial period with tonight’s game between the Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers, at 7 p.m. Pacific.

This inclusion in the League Pass subscription is an introduction to regular VR broadcasts and could potentially spill over into other similar programs like NFL Game Pass and MLB Extra Innings. If the popularity increases, we could potentially see teams start to offer VR packages to fans as well. Even though that may conflict with getting physical bodies into stadiums, it’d be a good initiative for fans that are abroad or just simply can’t travel as much.

If you haven’t signed up for the trial, NBA League Pass is available for a flat fee of $199.99 or five installments of $44.99 if you want to watch multiple teams, and $119.99/$26.99 to follow one specific team. The package includes League Pass VR and all 30 teams will have VR games throughout the year.

November 4, 2016

Sports Bar VR Update Adds New Games And Toys

As one of the few PlayStation VR games to have been ported over from a roomscale HTC Vive experience, Sports Bar VR (known as Pool Nation VR on PC) does a great job of showing developers it can be done. Now it’s showing them how to support their games post-launch too.

Developers Cherry Pop Games and Perilous Orbit today released a free update to the social sports title, adding three new games to it. Chess, Checkers and Shuffleboard all join the PlayStation Move-supported experience, adding to the list of things players can do when they meet up with friends online or challenge AI opponents. There are also more toys to mess around with in the environment, including a ping pong ball gun, a beach ball, baseball, and American football.

You can’t actually play American football — the sport doesn’t take well to bars and places with lots of glass — but you can still throw them between friends.

Opponent AI has also been upgraded, “to make the game more enjoyable.” I’ve played against the computer pre-patch and it can beat you around a little bit on the pool table. Interestingly the update doesn’t support Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro, which hits next week and gives developers the chance to improve the visuals and performance in PS VR titles. We’ve reached out to Cherry Pop to see if it might add support for the console in the future.

I really liked the developer’s port of Pool Nation for PS VR. “If you have a Vive then Pool Nation is easily still the better way to go, but PS VR owners shouldn’t feel short changed by the console edition,” I said when we compared the two versions. “If all developers show this kind of attention to porting their room-scale projects to the less capable headset, then PS VR has got a very bright future ahead of it.”

With free updates like this, that’s truer than ever.

November 3, 2016

Intel Acquires VR Stream Startup Voke To Bolster Their Sports Division

Intel is one of the largest and most recognizable corporations in the tech industry, supplying processors and other hardware and software for a plethora of computer manufacturers including Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and more. No company in such a prominent field can make a move without catching the eyes of the world but, even more importantly, when you’ve captured Intel’s attention you must be doing something right. Such is the case for VR startup Voke, who’s in the process of being acquired by the computing giant.

The acquisition, revealed on Intel’s newsroom, is yet another in a growing collection of moves to change the sports broadcasting industry forever.

At New York Fashion Week, 13 designers will utilize Intel’s immersive runway experience powered by VOKE’s TrueVR platform and Intel data center technologies to live-broadcast their runway shows in full stereoscopic virtual reality. (Credit: Intel Corporation)

Voke is a startup focused on providing a high-quality template for companies to produce live events and their True VR platform is their means to do so. True VR supplies an end-to-end experience available on multiple devices, integrates smoothly into existing broadcasting options, and has already been used for a few events including the NCAA March Madness tournament and India’s Kabaddi World Cup.

An acquisition like this seemed inevitable considering Intel’s involvement in events like X-Games Aspen and the recent creation of the Intel Sports division that was the result of their purchase of Replay Technologies, a company providing 3D viewing of sporting events through their freeD platform. The combination of Replay and Voke will hasten their trajectory as a pivotal company in the market catering to live-streaming events and likely put other companies with similar initiatives on alert.

More and more frequently VR is being tapped in the sports industry. NextVR is producing a full schedule of NBA games, the NFL is creating a VR film series exclusively for YouTube and Google, and Virtually Live is even digitally recreating entire events so we can step into the action via VR. The sky’s the limit for Intel, Voke, and Replay Technologies and it’s going to be interesting to see the fruits of their labor going forward.

November 3, 2016

The NFL Is Creating a VR Film Series Exclusively For YouTube and Google

The National Football League is one of the biggest, most ubiquitous brands in the entire world of sports entertainment. It’s difficult to capture the visceral, intense, brutality of the sport on-screen, but documentaries, replays, and a slew of films and television series have done their part over the years. But bringing things even closer to viewers is always the goal and that’s exactly what the NFL aims to do in its latest partnership with Google.

Today, the NFL announced an exclusive deal with Google to produce a series of VR videos focused on the NFL that will launch this Thanksgiving Day on YouTube, and eventually on the Google Daydream platform. The exact tenants of this partnership aren’t clear, but it sounds like the series will not appear on other video services such as Within and Samsung VR, or other devices natively, such as the Rift, Vive, or Gear VR. However, it’s worth pointing out that YouTube videos can easily be downloaded and/or accessed on other headsets anyway.

In a press release, the NFL outlined that the video series is being created to focus on “life in and around the NFL — from players, to coaches, to executives, to cheerleaders, to the fans themselves — detailing how each prepares for game day.” It will be produced by NFL Films, the company responsible for the vast majority of the top-tier quality documentaries we’ve seen about the sport over the years.

Stylistically, it sounds similar to many of the programs that are shown on the official NFL Network and HBO. Football Life, for example, highlights the life and struggles of specific players, coaches, and prominent figures, whereas Hard Knocks on HBO follows a specific team throughout training camp prior to a season. There is a wide variety of programming already available, but none of it exists in VR.

As far as actual episode content, the press release goes on to say you will be able to:

“Spend a week with the Philadelphia Eagles defensive line as they prepare for the upcoming matchup and gain exclusive access to the Eagles bench and sideline on game day…Other episodes will give viewers the opportunity to tag along with the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders, experience the distinctive football culture in Green Bay, and take a unique look inside the San Diego Chargers organization, to name a few.”

This is not the first time a major sports brand has gotten involved with immersive media, as the NBA notably released a 360-degree documentary about the 2016 NBA Finals and is currently broadcasting games on VR devices. It’s a great sign for the popularity and growth of VR as a budding new industry.

h/t: The Verge; Featured Image Credit: Dallas Cowboys

October 20, 2016

NextVR Is Broadcasting NBA Games Live In Virtual Reality Every Tuesday

California-based VR content company NextVR has made live, immersive sports broadcasting one of its missions. Today, that crusade moves another step forward. NextVR is announcing that it will be moving from the occasional sports offering, to a weekly VR broadcast of the NBA season as part of a multiyear partnership.

Throughout its journey from science fiction dream to consumer electronics phenomenon, many different use cases for VR were theorized and suggested. One of the most intriguing of these was sports. VR’s unique capabilities have the potential to specifically disrupt the live sports broadcasting industry and forever alter the way we enjoy our favorite competitions at home.

Danny Keens is the vice president of content for NextVR and UploadVR had the chance to speak with him concerning how these broadcasts will be conducted and what they mean for the future of live VR content.

According to Keens, “there will be over 30 games airing on Tuesdays during the regular NBA season.” The exception to this will be the very first broadcast, which will air next Thursday instead. The teams for each broadcast will also rotate so that, “every fan will have the chance to see their favorite team in VR at least once.”

The first broadcast will be the only game that viewers can enjoy free of charge. For all the others, an NBA League Pass subscription costs $199.

The experiences will be available through the NextVR app itself which is currently only available for the Samsung Gear VR headset. Although, Keens indicated that owners of other headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, should expect to hear more concerning apps for those systems “in the next couple of weeks.”

The actual format of the broadcasts, according to Keens, will be heavily produced. Viewers will find themselves moving between eight strategically placed camera positions. An in-house director will alter the positioning in real time as the game progresses to ensure that you will always have the optimal viewpoint to catch all of the action.

“People may say they want to be able to choose their positions at will,” Keens said. “But in our tests we found that they actually rarely use that ability when offered to them. In general, people don’t want to make decisions like that when watching a game. They just want to enjoy the experience without missing anything.”

Keens applies a similar philosophy to NextVR’s decision to broadcast the games as 180, rather than 360 degree videos.

“Everyone says they want 360 but the novelty of turning around to see the guy behind you eat his popcorn wears off quickly,” he said. “In general there’s really not much benefit to it in this case.”

In place of a full 360-degree video feed, NextVR will instead be placing real time graphics that reflect useful information about the game behind the viewer during its broadcasts.

Major sports organizations are notoriously stingy with their broadcast rights but, according to Keens, the NBA was a delight to work with.

“The NBA has always been at the cutting edge of innovation,” Keens said. “They’re always thinking of ways to engage their fans and they think VR can help with that…everyone in broadcast sports is competing for the same eyeballs so you have to find ways to keep people interested.”

The NBA is not alone in its apparent belief that VR live broadcasts can entice in new viewers. According to Keens, “we literally have every sports league on the planet contacting us to do stuff…our tech plays so strongly to the sports business because we’re all about live content.”

The first NextVR broadcast will be the San Antonio Spurs at the Sacramento Kings. It tips off October 27 at 7:30 pm PST.

October 19, 2016

‘VR Sports Challenge’ Is New, Improved And The Perfect Bundled Title For Oculus Touch

“We honestly don’t know,” Tin Guerrero said the day before the big keynote for this year’s Oculus Connect conference in San Jose. “We’re looking forward to finding out along with everybody else.”

The next day, Guerrero sat in the audience of the main event along with thousands of other virtual reality fans, developers, and journalists as a steady stream of Oculus executives took the stage to make major announcements concerning the future of the Facebook-owned, virtual reality corporation. At last, the discussion turned to the price and release date for Oculus Touch — the company’s long awaited hand tracking VR controllers.

Along with a $199 price point and a December 6 release date, another slide flashed upon the massive ballroom’s giant projector screens. This one announcing which two games would be bundled for free with every purchase of the Rift. There on the screens was the news Guerrero and his team at Sanzaru Games had been hoping for. Their creation, VR Sports Challenge, had been selected.

Creating a bundled title is a huge accomplishment for any game studio as it usually means a huge influx of capital from hardware manufacturers that are willing to balance their inability to sell the game at full price with a major cash subsidy. The costs of making a game are all front-loaded during development and then you wait with baited breath to see if the market will respond and you’ll be able to turn a profit. Being named a pack-in for a major platform removes that ambiguity and essentially guarantees a successful game in one moment. This is a huge win for Sanzaru, but it is not exactly a shock.

The best selling video game of all time on a single platform is Wii Sports at 82.69 million copies (for context, the next highest is Super Mario Bros. at 40.24 million). A copy of Wii Sports was bundled in with every Nintendo Wii console sold for the first several years of the insanely popular systems life. The Wii, like Oculus Touch, was also a brand new idea for consumers that centered around motion controls. Nintendo decided that the best way for a mass audience to understand its new hardware was to pack in a game that combined it with the familiar mechanics of well known sports. This worked phenomenally well for the Japanese juggernaut, and now our friends in Menlo Park seem to be adopting a very similar strategy.

Bundling a game like VR Sports Challenge may not be an original idea for a new motion platform, but from what we saw at the show it has the potential to be every bit as successful as the phenomenon that proceeded it.

VR Sports Challenge is new and improved since it was last seen at a pre-GDC Oculus event months ago. At that time only the three-point challenge for basketball, and the passing challenge for football were being shown. At OC3, the game was almost complete with a massive deluge of new content and features.

First and foremost lets talk about the sports themselves. This most recent version of VR Sports Challenge now lets you play football, basketball, baseball and hockey with a variety of game modes to chose from. For baseball there’s home run derby; for basketball there’s three point shooting and a five on five mode; for football there’s a catching challenge as well as a quarterback experience; and for hockey there is a goalkeeping challenge and a fist-fighting section as well.

Guererro also revealed on the show floor that the game will have a loose single player campaign complete with cut scenes and a FIFA-esque manager mode that tasks you with creating the most dominant sporting franchise in the world.

Seeing this single-player mode also revealed more of the world building and personality of this game. As the inclusion of hockey fist fights may have already indicated, VR Sports Challenge is a game with a healthy sense of humor. The cut scenes are funny, the visuals are cartoony, and there are easter eggs hidden in the ads and backgrounds of each mini game that are sure to draw a chuckle or two.

According to Guerrero, there will be no multiplayer and no DLC for VR Sports Challenge at all. Sanzaru’s mission was to create a game that, “focused on nailing skill and fun” rather than trying to shoehorn in a complicated multiplayer system.

VR Sports Challenge is addictively fun and captures that same “hey let me try that” evangelistic opportunity that Wii Sports gave Nintendo years ago. After watching a friend nail a three-pointer or crack a home run in immersive, hand-tracked VR, it’s almost impossible not to want to take a turn.

We will have a full review of VR Sports Challenge as its launch date gets closer. In the meantime, however, we’re hoping that one of the first games you’ll get with Oculus Touch will also be one of the best in its early lineup.