Category: starbreeze ab

Posted on

Starbreeze to Focus on Core Business Which Doesn’t Include VR

Payday 2 VR creator Starbreeze AB hasn’t been having a good time of late, filing for reconstruction due to poor sales of Overkill’s The Walking Dead and seeing CEO Bo Andersson step down. Today, further details have now emerged with the company stipulating how it plans to turn fortunes around, which could see its virtual reality (VR) aspirations die.

Overkill's The Walking Dead

In a press statement, the company has decided to focus on the group’s core business: internal game development and publishing. Seeing that Starbreeze AB states in its company synopsis that: “Operations are organized in three business areas: Starbreeze Games for own game development, Publishing, and VR Tech for technology development including the StarVR venture.” It would seem that the VR Tech side of the business will be dropped completely.

”We’re now focusing the business towards a portfolio consisting of a mix of internally developed games and publishing titles. We are humble for the task at hand, but our aim to build a qualitative company in the entertainment industry still stands, and the existing portfolio provides a good platform for our first-class teams,” said Mikael Nermark, Acting CEO.

“Our shift to core enables a larger focus on our internal talents and teams, whilst improving internal organizational and development processes,” adds said Stephane Decroix, Chief Development Officer. “Innovation and quality, and further on to deliver the best experiences for our players, will be our main goal in this process.”

OVERKILL's The Walking Dead

It might not all be bad news when it comes to VR, with Starbreeze AB looking to sell its interests: “For the part that does not belong to the core business, the company will immediately initiate a process to find collaborations with external parties to secure that these operations develop in a positive way,” a statement reads.

How much StarVR Corporation and its StarVR One headset will be affected is unclear, as Acer holds the controlling share.  The StarVR Developer Program has been put on indefinite hold currently, so there’s going to be no chance of any studios getting their hands on one. As this story unfolds, VRFocus will keep you updated.

Posted on

Starbreeze Files for Reconstruction as CEO Announces Departure

Swedish publisher and developer Starbreeze AB has announced today that it has filed for reconstruction in a bid to avoid bankruptcy, amid poor sales of Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Additionally, CEO Bo Andersson has agreed to step down.

Overkill's The Walking Dead

The reconstruction will affect all of Starbreeze AB’s subsidiaries, including Starbreeze Publishing, Starbreeze Production, Starbreeze Studios, Enterspace and Enterspace International.

The company said in an official statement that: “The decision is based on a shortage of liquidity and deemed to be a necessary step to give the Company the time needed to negotiate a long-term financial solution and implement changes in the organization and operations. The financial targets for Q4 2018 and 2020 no longer applies.”

Management will be reviewing operations and initiating a programme to lower costs and focus on its core business. During this period staff will still be paid but no payments will be made to suppliers for services or goods.

OVERKILL's The Walking Dead

Starbreeze attributes some of this to the poor reception Overkill’s The Walking Dead has received since it arrived last month, affecting forecasted sales and therefore reduced the short-term forecasted revenue.

The company is also well known for its virtual reality (VR) efforts, having created the rather by-the-numbers John Wick Chronicles experience as well as Payday 2 VR. And then there’s StarVR, the enterprise-focused head-mount display (HMD) made in conjunction with Acer. The headset recently went on sale for $3,200 USD, but looks not to be affected as Starbreeze and Acer spun the project out into its own company, StarVR Corporation.

With the departure of Bo Andersson he will be succeeded by Deputy CEO Mikael Nermark. “In this phase, Starbreeze needs a different kind of leadership and we have therefore decided to ask Mikael Nermark to take on the full responsibility with our full mandate for this new phase,” says Starbreeze Chairman Michael Hjorth in a statement.

As the reconstruction continues VRFocus will keep you abreast of the latest outcomes.

Posted on

StarVR Available for $3,200, Developer Program Commences

Having revealed enterprise focused head-mounted display (HMD) StarVR One during the summer, StarVR Corporation has now launched its developer programme, alongside the final price for the device, $3,200 USD.

StarVR new1

To begin with, StarVR One isn’t going to be made widely available, production units are ready and will be made available to select partners. At that price StarVR will only be viable to larger developers and companies, putting it in close competition with VRgineers $5,800 headset ‘XTAL’.

While the XTAL HMD has a 170º field-of-view (FOV), StarVR One has a market leading 210º FOV combined with integrated eye tracking, and a VR-optimized AMOLED display serving up 16 million sub-pixels at a refresh rate of 90 frames per second (FPS). Included in the box for the $3,200 price is 1 x 5mType-C cable, 2 x 0.5m DP cable, 2 x 0.5m USB Type-A cable, 1 x power adapter, 2 x secure cable holder, cable adapter, and cable adapter anti-slip mat.

You may be surprised to know that controllers and tracking system are not included with the purchase. The headset will support SteamVR tracking versions 1.0 and 2.0. There will also be the StarVR One XT version with active optical markers for more tracking solutions, but as yet availability is still to be announced.

Zerolight

Development teams can now apply for the development programme, answering a few questions about the project they’re creating. If selected, they’ll then be given the opportunity to by the headset, download the SDK, as well as access the support forum and the StarVR community.

Currently, applications are open in the following regions: USA (except for Hawaii and Alaska), Canada; Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Norway, and Switzerland; China, Taiwan, and Japan.

Head to the official StarVR website to begin the process, and for any further updates from StarVR Corporation keep reading VRFocus.

Posted on

Nozon’s Volumetric VR Tech PresenZ Now Available as a Plugin for V-Ray Next and 3DSMax

Developers who use Chaos Group’s V-Ray Next and Autodesk 3ds Max may be please to know that from today, Nozon, a Visual Effects (VFX) studio, is making its volumetric virtual reality (VR) technology PresenZ available as a plugin for both.

This collaboration between Nozon and Chaos Group actually began way back in 2016, just prior to Nozon being snapped up by Starbreeze Group to help boost its StarVR ecosystem.

Using the PresenZ volumetric VR tech, creators can pre-render movies with 6 degrees of freedom 96DoF) in existing 3D visualisation pipelines, helping both comfort and immersion. With PresenZ, the viewer is able to move inside the image or video, get closer to objects or characters, and even look behind them, feeling like they are really there.

Detailing the software’s particular skill set, Nozon explains: “PresenZ can achieve the same visual fidelity audiences are used to from high-end previsualisation, feature length motion pictures or pre-rendered animations. With PresenZ, you can render the most complex scenes and highest quality assets in Virtual Reality. For example – architects can show their customers their creations in VR to scale, with the ability to move around in different scenes. Content creators of CGI movies can easily allow movie goers to further experience all or parts of their work in immersive VR with retained quality by utilizing the existing pipeline and assets.”

PresenZ & V-Ray

So from today, anyone can download the plugin for V-Ray Next and 3DSMax as well as the PresenZ player on the official website. New updates for PresenZ include, a new user interface, a new viewer and improved quality of the overall experience. Both the plugin and the player are free for testing where renders will display a watermark. To remove the watermark, customers can choose between paying per image or buying a player license.

Nozon plans on releasing further PresenZ plugins for other software in the near future, when the happens VRFocus will let you know.

Posted on

StarVR Brings PVRK Dubai to Life

Over in Dubai they like to build things big. They’ve built the biggest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa and when they wanted to reclaim some of the sea and build a few islands the designers made The World Islands, with individual islands named after each country on the planet. So it’s no surprise that Emaar Entertainment’s virtual reality (VR), location-based entertainment (LBE) solution, VR Park at The Dubai Mall (PVRK Dubai) would be any less grand. And powering most of the experiences is Starbeeze AB’s StarVR head-mounted display (HMD).

Emaar Entertainment has been working in tandem with Starbreeze Studios, with the developer providing eight VR experiences for guests to enjoy, four of them premiering at the location.

“We’re proud that StarVR location-based entertainment solutions are powering the majority of the experiences at the newly-opened VR Park in Dubai,” said Bo Andersson Klint, Chairman of StarVR Corporation in a statement. “With an industry-leading resolution and 210-degree field-of-view designed specifically for professional use, visitors can be immersed in premium VR experiences that are way beyond what’s available at home.”

Located in the the Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping and entertainment destination, the building is Emaar Properties’ flagship mega-development and at 12 million square feet, the mall’s total area is equivalent in size to 200 soccer pitches. PVRK Dubai covers a modest 75,000 square feet, spanning two levels of Mall for hours of immersive entertainment.

John Wick screenshots-04 “VR Park is the latest revolutionary experience to be delivered by Emaar Entertainment, offering cutting edge experiences alongside partners including StarVR,” said Damien Latham, Chief Executive Officer of Emaar Entertainment. “As we continue to deliver unprecedented entertainment experiences, we’re pushing the boundaries of innovation for the industry and inviting visitors to #ChallengeReality with our entertainment destinations.”

While StarVR provides some of the biggest and most well known franchise-based attractions including John Wick Chronicles, OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead — Outbreak and The Mummy Prodigium Strike that’s not all that’s on offer. As you’ll see in the video below, VRFocus was invited to PVRK Dubai to see what was on offer, with areas including HTC Vive’s and Samsung Gear VR’s. This is just a taster, with VRFocus bringing you further coverage from the park soon.

Posted on

Starbreeze Confirms StarVR IPO talks With Acer

Last October Starbreeze AB announced that Taiwanese PC manufacturer Acer had invested $5 million USD into its StarVR Corporation, increasing Acer’s interest to 66.7%, while Starbreeze interest will be 33.3% after originally starting the joint venture in 2016. Today, Starbreeze has confirmed that the company is in talks with Acer about a potential Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the joint venture, but no decision has been taken at present.

An IPO is where shares of a company are sold to investors, taking a privately held company and transforming it into a public company. This is done for a number of reasons, usually to raise new equity capital or to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders. In this case the former is probably the most likely reason, with Acer and Starbreeze looking to fund development of the StarVR head-mounted display (HMD), which is being aimed at location-based VR.

“I can confirm that we are in talks with Acer on the possibly of an IPO for StarVR,” said Bo Andersson-Klint, Starbreeze CEO in a statement. “We’re in agreement with Acer that this is an excellent way to propel the business into becoming the leading global VR company we set out to create from the beginning. StarVR’s mission is to provide VR related hardware for enterprise solutions and location-based entertainment set ups, such as the VR center that we are building in Dubai. With the research and development phase of the StarVR headset completed, we are confident we have the best, most durable and most scalable solution on the market.

“With 210-degrees field of view, in high definition resolution over the entire field, eye-tracking, support for multiple tracking solutions, lightweight casing, backpack wireless option and its own 2nd generation Fresnel lens – the StarVR headset is a real technological achievement. With the headset and its subsystems in near completion, StarVR is well set for its own successful business. We are excited to be able to demonstrate this capability in our VR center in Dubai in the near future.”

starbreeze header

Both companies have already shown their expertise in both VR hardware and software, with Acer releasing its Windows Mixed Reality headset last year and Starbeeze studio OVERKILL having launched Payday 2 VR in November 2017. As further details on the possible IPO are released, VRFocus will keep you informed.

Posted on

Starbreeze Bringing VR Installation Experience Hero To Sundance Film Festival

We are but a few days away from diving full pelt into cinema season and this year’s Sundance Film Festival taking place in Utah, USA. It, and the Slamdance Film Festival (which we will be discussing more tomorrow on VRFocus) are but a few days away and the latest immersive technology project to be revealed comes by way of a familiar name – Starbreeze AB.

The independent creator, publisher and distributor of videogames, who are best known for their work on the Payday series of videogames, working with Behaviour Digital to launch the popular horror thriller Dead by Daylight and, of course, being the driving force behind the StarVR head mounted display (HMD) – now produced in partnership with Acer. Starbreeze are now teaming with iNK Stories, who are an entertainment company based out of the US in both New York and Los Angeles who have previously worked with franchises like Grand Theft Auto and, from a VR perspective, also contributed to Capcom’s highly acclaimed PlayStation VR title Resident Evil VII: biohazard.

The pair are working together to bring a new experience called HERO to the festival, which is to be held from January 18th to the 28th, 2018. A Vérité VR experience, it will be shown throughout the festival at a large scale immersive installation in the Kimball Art Center, found in Park City, Utah as part of the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier initiative.

In HERO you enter the modern world in a place of crisis. But when people are in trouble and everything around you is tearing itself apart, what do you do? Combining an interactive virtual world with a documentary style, physical sensations – although the press release from Starbreeze doesn’t expressly clarify in what sense this is implemented – and DTSX object-based audio, HERO will ask attendees, in an era of civilian warfare what a hero is, and if they have what it takes to be the hero people need.

VRFocus will be bringing you more news regarding the Sundance Film Festival in the days to come. Stay tuned for more by following us on social media for the very latest.

 

 

Posted on

Details About the OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead to be Revealed This Sunday

It’s been sometime since Starbreeze studio OVERKILL revealed anything about its virtual reality (VR) compatible title The Walking Dead, the most recent being a postponement of the videogame until 2018. Fans of the series or some of its other videogame spin offs won’t have to wait much longer however, with the studio running a countdown timer due to finish this Sunday.

Apart from the iconic US Capitol building in the background and ‘Washington is about to Fall’ appearing in some tweets, neither the countdown website or the studios social channels reveal any further details, just that you need to tune into the official OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead website on Sunday, 10th December at 12pm PT (8pm GMT) to learn more.

Overkill's The Walking Dead VR

The setup will likely be very similar to the livestream Starbreeze held in May when it confirmed work on a virtual reality (VR) port of Payday 2. Supporting HTC Vive, Payday 2 VR arrived last month as a free beta for anyone who owned the original PC title – or those who managed to pick up one of the 5 million copies going free in June.

OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead was first unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Los Angeles, back in June 2015, and since then Starbreeze Studios has frequently showcased the title at numerous events. The videogame is supposedly an immersive co-op title based on that universe, exploring new exclusive characters and storylines, whether that’s still the case or development has taken a different course remains to be seen.

As further details are released on OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead VRFocus will bring you the latest updates.

Posted on

Starbreeze Finalises Purchase Of Location Based VR Company Enterspace

Whilst most discussion in virtual reality (VR) is about the big name head-mounted displays (HMDs) out there – PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and smartphone-based HMDs such as Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard and Daydream there are of course a great many other headsets out there doing their own specific thing. One of those is the StarVR HMD belonging to Starbreeze AB, perhaps better known as videogame publisher and creator Starbreeze Studios.

Unlike its contemporaries however the StarVR headest and Starbreeze’s focus is more on the event spaces, Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment (DOE) – although that’s not to say they are ignoring the home market – a vision brought to life back in May with the reveal of Storm, an immersive  multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) for StarVR that was in development. Whilst details about Storm‘s future are understandably vague considering what was shown was purely the envisioning of the concept that doesn’t mean the firm isn’t moving forward by degrees with it’s VR vision.

Their latest move sees Starbreeze complete the acquisition of Enterspace, a fellow Stockholm-based tech firm founded in 2016 that focusing on larger scale and multi-user interactive experiences in VR, such as their debut experience Ringwalker. The move was first confirmed last month, and sees Starbreeze take control of the location based company after a deal involving over one million B-shares being issues in Starbreeze AB, the majority of which are with Enterprise’s founders (Staffan Klashed, Daniel Arnberg and Olof Englund) and a cash payment of 3 million in Swedish krona (SEK).

How exactly Enterspace’s acquisition factors in to Starbreeze’s future plans remains to be seen, however Enterspace is set to launch a VR Experience centre in central Stockholm later this year, which is set to include 9 600 square feet of VR experience space.

VRFocus will bring you more information on the developments with Starbreeze and StarVR as it becomes available.

Posted on

5 Million Copies of PAYDAY 2 Going for Free

Last month Starbreeze Studios held a livestream making several announcements to do with future plans. One of those was the unveiling of PAYDAY 2 VR, a virtual reality (VR) version of its bank robbing title. This VR version will be a free add-on for players who already own a copy of the original 2013 videogame, and now even more will be able to access the title as Starbreeze is offering five million copies for free.

The free deal (PAYDAY 2 normally retailed for £14.99 GBP) is in preparation for the release of the upcoming PAYDAY 2 Ultimate Edition, so if you fancy going on a crime spree in VR for free you can. Currently Starbreeze has confirmed that HTC Vive will support the upcoming version but there’s a possibility further headset could be included. In a press release the studio noted: “The free download will additionally grant current and future compatible headset owners the base PAYDAY 2 VR game for free when it releases.”

Payday-2-VR---1

PAYDAY 2 VR will feature crossplay support so players team up with their friends on PC. Additionally, those who’ve poured countless hours into the videogame will be able to retain their current characters and stats.

If you’ve not seen PAYDAY 2 its a four-player co-op first-person shooter that lets players carry out crime sprees, from small-time convenience store hits or kidnappings, to cyber-crime or emptying out major bank vaults.

The title is the work of Starbreeze internal studio OVERKILL which is also working on another VR project called OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead, which has recently been postponed until 2018. Starbreeze also worked with Lionsgate, Grab Games, Big Red Button and GameCo on John Wick Chronicles: An Eye for an Eye, which released for HTC Vive earlier this year.

The beta for PAYDAY 2 VR is expected to start during the autumn of 2017. For any further updates on the videogame and Starbreeze AB’s VR plans such as eSport title Storm, keep reading VRFocus.