vive – Page 36 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

February 10, 2017

John Wick Chronicles Review: The Keanu Reeves Simulator

John Wick Chronicles feels like one giant metaphor for Keanu Reeves’ acting career. The man has starred in some of the best films Hollywood has ever birthed, such as The Matrix, Point Break, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and of course the John Wick series. I’d also throw in Hardball as a personal favorite, but it’s not for everybody. In addition to these, he has starred in some real stinkers as well and some films that would have been far better had anyone else taken the main role instead of him.

You see, the problem is that he’s just not a very good actor. His performances are wooden and lacking real character and his delivery leaves much to be desired. But at the end of the day he does a great job of looking and acting like a badass. Luckily, he fits the John Wick persona perfectly. And just like Reeves himself, John Wick Chronicles is a VR game that does a passable job of feeling and looking like a badass experience, but when you dig beneath the surface, it’s lacking enough substance to really make you feel satisfied.

The premise of John Wick Chronicles is that you take control of the titular assassin as you embark on a killing spree of your very own. There are lots of guns to use and enemies to kill in this 1-2 hour action romp that will leave you sweaty and sore from all of its pulse-pounding intensity. Things start off with a Training scenario that runs you through the game’s basics and teaches you to take stock of your surroundings in full 360-degrees, but it’s quite a bit more active than the training scenarios in most other games.

At its core, John Wick Chronicles isn’t much more than a standard wave shooter. Enemies will funnel in towards you from all sides until the game has determined you’ve killed enough of them. It doesn’t number the waves, but it’s still just a wave shooter at its heart. Imagine something along the lines of of Time Crisis, but in the John Wick universe.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, but after playing the game it’s clear to me that this was originally designed to be featured in location-based entertainment settings and marketing activations at events. The action is spot-on, the production values are leagues beyond the vast majority of VR content, and the gunplay feels fast, responsive, and smooth. You’ll have to really get up and move around your play space, ducking behind cover, and even crawling on the ground. It’s one of the more visceral shooters on the Vive so far, no doubt. But it just ends far too quickly.

With only three real missions (each ending in a boss fight) and a 2nd “mode” of play that’s only slightly different than the standard game mode, it feels like it’s missing content. I struggled to muster up the desire to revisit levels after completing them and there’s just nothing to do really after you finish it once or twice.

You don’t have any progression systems for unlocking new items beyond playing the training mode, there are no ways to improve your abilities, alter the gameplay, or do much of anything other than shoot through the levels. It’s fun while it lasts, but it feels like it ends right after it’s getting started.

To get the most pleasure out of the game, I’d highly recommend taking breaks between missions and spacing it out as much as possible to elongate the length of the experience. Some guns and mechanics that feel novel and interesting at first are underutilized, making you feel a bit cheated.

Final Score: 6/10 – Decent

John Wick Chronicles feels like it’s exactly what the teams at Starbreeze and Lionsgate intended to create. You feel like a badass while playing it, the overtones of the universe are there, and the action is fun enough to keep you pushing through to the end. In terms of gameplay mechanics, it was fun. But just as you get into it and feel the intensity reaching a point of true adrenaline, it’s all over. There is little reason to come back and the floor is left littered with dead bodies and under-utilized potential. As a result, just like Keanu Reeves himself, it lacks depth.

John Wick Chronicles is available for purchase on Steam for $19.99 with official support for HTC Vive. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

Tagged with: John Wick Chronicles, keanu reeves, lionsgate, shooter, starbreeze, steam, Vive

February 6, 2017

Roomscale VR is Great, But the Gamepad isn’t Going Anywhere

For many people, the end-all be-all of virtual reality is being able to get up and move around inside of a digital space with roomscale. With the HTC Vive, you set up lighthouse base stations in opposite corners of your play space and the system tracks your movement in 3D space around your entire room. With the Oculus Rift, you can accomplish something very similar with extra sensors and the Oculus Touch motion controllers.

There’s nothing quite like taking a step forward with your own feet and feeling yourself moving in a digital environment. For some genres of games, like first-person shooters, it’s nothing short of revolutionary. Even though roomscale is amazing, it doesn’t mean that something else isn’t just as impressive and exciting in its own way. Just because we have full movement in roomscale VR now, it doesn’t mean that gamepad-based VR experiences are dead.

History of Excellence

While the VR industry is still in its infantile stages, developers are constantly experimenting and seeking new ways of delivering exciting moments to players. The best horror game I played last year was a roomscale-only title called A Chair in a Room: Greenwater [Review: 8/10], the riveting Onward is an incredible shooter that immerses you in its action, and exploratory puzzle games and adventure titles like The Gallery [Review: 9/10] breathe new life into formerly dormant genres. I recognize the potential of roomscale, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the gamepad.

The first VR game I ever played almost two years before it released was EVE: Valkyrie [Review: 9/10] and it blew my mind. Cockpit experiences and racing games feel great using gamepads and are arguably even more immersive than their standing, moving, roomscale counterparts. This is especially true while we’re still struggling with VR’s distracting wire problem and room size requirements.

But when it comes to gamepad games, the best practices of how to create a control scheme, what works for different genres, how to design a game world, what makes something fun, and all of the other guiding principles have been researched, developed, and iterated on for decades. Bringing those existing ideas into the immersive world of head-tracked VR is complicated enough without asking people to move around as well.

With so much potential and history in the game industry that’s rooted in the player holding a gamepad while seated, it feels like a disservice to that legacy to simply ignore it altogether. Some roomscale experiences have the potential to wrap us up in the power of their stories and innovation of their technology, but other times I just want to sit down with a controller in my hand and play a good game.

Iteration and Innovation

When I play a game like Lucky’s Tale [Review: 9/10] in VR, I’m reminded of Super Mario 64, but I feel closer to the action than ever before. Edge of Nowhere [Review: 9/10] reminds me of Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and The Last of Us, but the sounds of the world surround me. Resident Evil 7 [Review: 9/10] feels like the most immersive and terrifying game ever when you’re trapped alone inside the PSVR headset.

Damaged Core [Review: 9.5/10] is inventive and unique in a way that couldn’t work outside of a headset. These and other games we’ve seen over the past couple of years are proof that you don’t necessarily need to get up and move around in roomscale to enjoy a VR experience.

Landfall, which just had its free weekend beta, is a clever implementation of a top-down tactical game that uses a gamepad as the bread and butter form of controlling your unit. Updating a genre and re-imagining it in a new way doesn’t necessitate throwing out the gamepad in favor of motion controllers.

I love being able to look down at my hands and see them accurately represented with hand controllers, but depending on the type of game, that could be a poor form of interaction. If I’m playing a fast-paced shooter like Rigs [Review: 8/10], that cockpit isn’t conducive to using motion controllers. Third person games feel right at home while holding a gamepad and plenty of obscure or more niche genres work better with dedicated buttons and analog sticks.

Diversity of Options

At the end of the day, there is enough room in the industry for both gamepad and roomscale VR. There is a certain time, place, and mood that lends itself well to moving around a room in an immersive digital space. Getting physical with sports games, ducking behind cover in shooters, and exploring strange new worlds feels like a natural fit. But if you’re putting me in charge of an army, sticking me in a cockpit, or asking me to control a character in third-person, I’d feel more at home with a gamepad in my hand.

And finally, being perfectly honest here, sometimes I just want to relax on a couch. It’s the same reason that despite my love for VR as a medium and as a way to advance technology, I don’t want to give up traditional gaming either. Looking at a TV or monitor a few feet or yards away is satisfying in its own way and I don’t think everything needs to be in VR to be good, and just because it is in VR doesn’t mean it can’t use a gamepad.

The more options we have the better chances there are for innovation and simply good game design. I want to play and enjoy VR games because they are good games first and foremost, not because they are novel experiences.

Tagged with: gamepad, oculus, PSVR, rift, room scale, roomscale, touch, Vive, VR

February 6, 2017

First Impact: Rise of a Hero Review – More Quest For Peace Than Superman II

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace was an infamously troubled movie. After the success of the first two entries, the third film in the series was not met well by critics and 1984’s Supergirl subsequently bombed. The rights to the series traded hands and the fourth film found itself with budget constraints that made for a movie that actually looked worse than its predecessors.

First Impact: Rise of a Hero sadly ended up reminding me more of Quest for Peace than it did any of the other classic Superman films. As one of VR’s first superhero games, it’s certainly got its heart in the right place, with a big colorful world to explore and a charming comic book atmosphere. But it needed significantly more development time before it should have even been considered for a full release, let alone an Early Access launch, which developer Red Meat Games has seemingly decided to skip altogether.

It’s a shame, as there’s a foundation for a likable open world comic book romp here; you have four elemental superpowers to play with, each enabling different attacks, defensive measures and special movement options. Fire powers have you spurting flames, while ice hits enemies with a heavy impact, and gusts of wind send them hurtling into the air. Earth is easily the best, causing spikes to shoot up from the ground and impale your foes. You rightly use the Vive’s wands (or Touch controllers, when the Rift support officially launches), to aim, and attacks shoot out of your hands Iron Man-style.

Powers are nicely varied and all upgradeable by finding items in the world, but they also present First Impact’s first real problem: it could have done a lot more with a lot less. On Vive, the game’s controls are stiff and awkward, with almost every button assigned to an action in seemingly random placement. You use quarter-sized sections of the right touch pad to move between powers, but this isn’t effective in the heat of battle, especially as touching the pad also turns your character one way or the other.

Moreover, many of your abilities end up feeling redundant in comparison to others. Jumping great heights, for example, is useless in comparison to the flight mechanic, though sluggish movement means neither is especially compelling to use. I stuck to super speed almost the entire time I played, with little reason to utilize other movement systems. The short distance teleportation feels useless unless you’re affected by motion sickness.

Combat, too, ironically lacks impact. In the early stages of the game your powers merely chip away at the enemy’s health, and fail to really stop them in their tracks. There are times you’ll be overwhelmed by foes and just don’t seem to have the right tools to take them down, though the balance does start to shift as you upgrade your abilities. New powers like super strength are fun to play with, but you’ll almost instantly tire of fighting brain-dead bad guys that mindlessly march towards you. Not a battle went by where I didn’t see at least one get stuck in a piece of the environment and just march on the spot, without moving.

Being a superhero should make me feel powerful and, well, heroic. First Impact’s lifeless fights were instead spent struggling with controls and bugs that made me feel anything but those two qualities.

Immersion-breaking issues like this persist. As I walked around town I found parked cars placed inside concrete floors rather than on top of them; pedestrians that would regularly either vanish right in front of me, or start flickering back and forth between character models; and a draw distance that I could use to make trees simply disappear from sight by either raising or lowering my head. The world just isn’t well designed, with items and assets seemingly scattered at random in some areas.

Final Score: 4/10 – Forgettable

With its colorful comic book throwbacks, First Impact clearly has the heart of a hero and even the foundation for a good game, but Red Meat Games needed much more time to realize its vision. The game world is buggy, the controls are stiff, and many of the powers feel like they aren’t worth using. Sadly, this is one game that made me feel anything but super.

First Impact: Rise of a Hero is now available on Steam for $34.99. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

Tagged with: First Impact: Rise of a Hero, Red Meat Games, rift, steam, superhero, superman, Vive

February 4, 2017

Vive Consumer and Business Headsets Will Diverge into Increasingly Separate VR Systems, Vive President Says

After launching the consumer HTC Vive in early 2016, the company began offering a $1,200 ‘Business Edition’ version of the headset which is essentially the same system but with dedicated support, an enhanced warranty, and bulk buying options. Going forward, however, the consumer and Business Edition systems will become increasingly diffentiated products.

Speaking Alvin Wang Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, at CES last month, I asked if the company saw the need to create separate product lines to serve the needs of in-home VR use vs. out-of-home usage.

“We actually do, honestly. What we’re finding is that the business users are less price sensitive but they really care about other things like manageability, range of use, comfort for long term use, and other things” said Gaylin. “So the kind of things that I think that were just [announced, like the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap], that’ll probably be adopted initially moreso by the business market than by the consumer. Wireless upgrade from TPCAST—were getting a lot of business and out out-of-home entertainment users who want to use that.”

With VR picking up in China’s out-of-home market in a significant way, non-consumer of the Vive may presently be outpacing that of the consumer in-home sector. Last month, HTC announced touted two major Vive initiatives, Viewport Arcade and Viveport Enterprise.

Viveport Arcade is a dedicated app ecosystem and management platform that connects VR apps that are made for out-of-home play with VR arcade operators running pay-to-play HTC Vive setups. VR games made for out-of-home use are usually more ‘arcadey’, allowing quick pick-up-and play gameplay which is fun in short bursts, compared with in-home VR games where users may want a lengthy narrative, long play sessions, and persistent progression. Viveport Arcade also handles app purchasing/licensing in a way that’s built around the arcade business model.

Viveport Enterprise is a similar VR app ecosystem designed to bring VR productivity apps into businesses.

Atlantic Ghost Is Like Star Trek: Bridge Crew Meets Naval Submarine Combat

You may not have first thought of submarine simulations when you theorized about the prospects for multiplayer virtual reality games. You probably thought about space-based flight, first-person shooters, and exploration-based puzzle games like the majority of our new industry. When you watch the trailer below though, it all makes sense.

In actuality, manning a submarine deep below the ocean’s surface feels about as applicable of a brave new frontier as the deep black sea of stars above our heads.

Atlantic Ghost is a currently in-development submarine simulation game that puts you and a crew of comrades into a submarine tasking you with controlling it and completing missions in a realistic simulation environment. We first got wind of the game when one of the creators, Karel Airapetjan, posted a brief gameplay video on Reddit. Naturally, we reached out to get more information.

“Back in 2008 I suddenly discovered that I liked submarine simulations,” Airapetjan explained over email. “Sadly there was no VR industry back then. Fast forward to August 2012 when the Oculus Kickstarter was announced and my first thought was that I wanted to build a virtual submarine for this and I pledged for the headset on the very first day. So as soon as we got our development kit we started to build a German TypeVII U-boat. At first it was going to be a single player only game with a short narrative…but everyone in the VR industry knows how fast things are changing. In 2014 we were lucky enough to get a tour of the Valve offices. We had a chance to try out their VR roomscale prototype and after coming out of that room we suddenly knew the direction that we wanted to take our game.”

A year later in 2015, the team got the chance to try the Oculus Toybox demo for an early taste of the prospects of social multiplayer VR and the concept for Atlantic Ghost started taking shape more clearly.

“Suddenly it all made perfect sense, working together as a team in a submarine,” Airapetjan said. “To this day I wonder why we did not think about this sooner.”

It’s not just strictly about multiplayer though, even if that is where the most enlightening experiences will likely happen. There is going to be a short story mode in single player still, including narrative explanations for the holographic ghosts you see in the screenshots and video that are alluded to in the title. The multiplayer experiences will be loosely tied to that story. You could even play the multiplayer segments alone if you wanted, but good luck managing an entire submarine alone by yourself. Dividing tasks and assigning duties is key to survival — similar to the gameplay flow of Star Trek: Bridge Crew.

“Before Bridge Crew was announced I was sitting on YouTube for hours and looked how people are playing Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator,” Airapetjan said. “I was fascinated by how the entire social aspect molded the gameplay experience. How different people and their body language affected the entire gameplay loop. The only problem was that to play this game you required all this equipment and people had to be in the same physical location. Thanks to VR, anyone can play these types of games in their home.”

Currently, the plan is to include only one single submarine: The Type VII. Despite the lack of diversity though, Airapetjan explains that the actual submarine is planned to be replicated with as close to 1:1 accuracy as possible. This is geared towards being a true simulation in VR, not just a gamified submarine combat experience — with some modern or “futuristic” as it were alterations for ease of gameplay.

“One good example is attacking the enemy ship,” Airapetjan elaborates. “We have a torpedo calculator but there is no good way to get readings from periscope in the game at the moment due to the low resolution of VR headsets. Mast height and bearing is hard to tell if you are looking trough a small hole on a texture that is rendered on a lower resolution through the HMD. So we do have some automated processes that help players out in this regard.”

In regards to actual game objectives, when playing in multiplayer the goal is to “sink as much tonnage as possible”. Elements such as the weather, time of day, convoy routes, and sub protections will be randomized each time you play. If those sound like superficial or cosmetic differences, they aren’t.

“Every element will affect the gameplay differently a bit,” Airapetjan said. “It is super hard to calculate torpedo attack in rough seas but it also makes your escape a bit easier since enemy sonars are receiving a messier signal and have to rely on bigger guesswork.”

Another big part of these types of simulation games is the prevalence of failure. Difficulty has to be high enough that you won’t win every time, but low enough that when you finally do succeed you feel like you earned it. In other words, they want to ensure that failure is still fun.

“We are trying to create a gameplay loop that contains three crucial elements: 1) Find and intercept convoy, 2) Plot your attack, 3) Evade enemy depth charges and escape. All these elements require communication and teamwork. You are free to do everything alone but having good companions makes everything so much more fun.”

A typical multiplayer session is expected to last 1-2 hours, so this won’t be a casual pick up and play experience by any means. That is unless you’re terrible, your captain makes bad calls, and you’re dead in under 30 minutes. That’s totally possible and perhaps likely at first.

None of the roles are locked down as gameplay elements like they are in Star Trek: Bridge Crew, anyone can do everything so it’s all about actual verbal communication and teamwork. This allows players to switch roles on the fly as a situation evolves.

Atlantic Ghost is currently in development for the HTC Vive as the primary target, but they hope to officially support the Oculus Rift and Touch as well. The only stipulation is that it requires constant 360-degree turning and quick movement, making it a challenge for non-360 setups.

The team is currently only three people right now, but they’ve been dabbling in VR creation ever since they got their DK1 and made “tons bad demos” to learn. No date is set yet, but it will be releasing a private testing session first, followed by Early Access on Steam, then a full release after that.

Tagged with: atlantic ghost, co-op, cooperative, multiplayer, simulation, submarine, Vive

February 1, 2017

Super Data Report: 6.3 Million Virtual Reality Headsets Shipped in 2016

A new report from Super Data offers new estimates for the market size of virtual reality in 2016, suggesting 6.3 million VR headsets were shipped in the whole of 2016.

Last year saw the launch of several high-end VR headsets complemented by new mobile offerings. The report, titled “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: 2016 Mobile and VR Games Year in Review,” is a compilation of information Super Data and Unity Technologies, though we clarified with Unity that they did not contribute to the estimates for VR headset data in the report.

The report estimates 4.5 million Gear VRs were sold through last year. Clocking in at number two on the list is the PlayStation VR with sales “approaching a million” by the end of 2016. This leaves Oculus, Google and HTC to split about a million units. According to this report, HTC’s Vive edged out Facebook’s Rift selling “more than 400K at its $800 price point.”

The report also notes “Oculus has shown a strong interest in gaming and social applications so consumer penetration will be more important to the Rift. Meanwhile, HTC Vive is becoming the device of choice for enterprise developers…”

We won’t know official numbers until manufacturers themselves start releasing more solid information. Samsung is the only company to have released actual numbers, saying 5 million Gear VR headsets have been sold so far. Last November, before the figure was released by Samsung, Super Data estimated the company would sell far fewer headsets in 2016. This gap between Samsung’s and Super Data’s numbers highlights how different the figures in this report could be from the actual sales numbers. Here’s how Super Data says it arrives at its numbers:

“Every month we collect spending data on millions of unique online gamers directly from publishers and developers, totaling 50+ publishers and 450+ game titles. We combine the digital point-of-sale data with quality consumer insights to speak to the ‘why’ of the market. We clean, aggregate and analyze these data to establish market benchmarks and models for all segments of digital games and interactive media. Our research covers everything from worldwide genre benchmarks to title-level KPIs, country-level deep dives and brand equity. The mobile and VR studies were based on the following: 49 million unique transactions from 15 million unique gamers between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016, a survey of 1,000 U.S. mobile gamers from July 2016, data collected from partners in the VR Data Network.”

Tagged with: numbers, PS VR, rift, sales, shipped, sold, super data, unity, Vive

February 1, 2017

HTC Executive Vice President Jason Mackenzie Leaves After 12 Years

Last week HTC lost its VP of Design to Google. This week, the company’s Global Executive Vice President has also departed.

Jason Mackenzie yesterday announced that he is leaving the company after nearly 12 years. The executive did not give a reason for his departure, nor does he know where he’s heading next, as one tweet reveals. We’ve reached out to HTC to ask why he left the role and who the company plans to replace him with.

After 12 amazing years, today is my last day @htc. It was a great run & I feel blessed. Thank you Peter Chou, @cherwang, & TeamHTC.

— Jason Mackenzie (@JasonBMac24) January 31, 2017

Mackenzie came on board at HTC in 2005, having preciously worked as Vice President of T-Mobile USA. He’s held various roles at the company over the years, moving from President of the Americas to Global Executive Vice President in January of 2016. Over the past few years Mackenzie has worked on HTC’s VR headset, the Vive, helping to bring it to market in April of last year. Much of his time, however, was spent on the company’s smartphone business, which has been struggling of late.

It a statement on LinkedIn Mackenzie thanked Peter Chou and Cher Wang, the former and current company CEOs respectively, for his time working with them. “To say that I enjoyed my time at HTC is a massive understatement,” he said. “HTC was family and I loved the challenges and opportunity to work on so many cool products and partner (and learn from) so many great customers.”

The news follows the reveal that Claude Zellweger, HTC’s VP of Design, was moving to the Google Daydream team. Both loses are a blow to HTC, but it’s still pushing on; 2017 will see the company release a new Tracker peripheral for the Vive along with an upgraded headstrap with integrated audio.

Tagged with: htc, Jason Mackenzie, Vive

January 30, 2017

John Wick Chronicles Brings Gun-Toting Action To Vive Next Week

Action movie sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, hits theaters next week, so it only makes sense its anticipated VR tie-in arrives then too.

The Steam page for John Wick Chronicles: An Eye For An Eye has been updated, confirming a February 9th release date along with a $19.99 price tag. That’s next Thursday, for those reaching for their diaries, and the film opens next Friday. Officially, only HTC Vive support is listed for the game right now, but we’ve reached out to developer Starbreeze Studios to ask after Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR support. Grab Games, GameCo, and Big Red Button all also contributed to development duties, and the game is published by Starbreeze with the help of Lionsgate.

John Wick Chronicles Coming to Steam and HTC Vive on February 9! #johnwickvr #johnwick2 #htcvive pic.twitter.com/EIZmlLTEgh

— John Wick Chronicles (@JohnWickVR) January 28, 2017

Chronicles features an original set of missions that cast you as the titular character, played in the movies by Keanu Reeves. You’ll visit the Continental Hotel, a familiar locations to fans of the franchise, to pick up assignments that will then lead into shootouts using Vive’s position-tracked controls.

We got hands-on with the game back at New York Comic-Con last year and, if that preview is anything to go by, then it’s definitely one that Vive fans will want to look out for. We’re particularly eager to see how the full game will standout next to the flood of other VR shooters that have released for headsets over the past few months. The production values alone have us hoping for something memorable.

If you pre-order the game you’ll also get access to co-op bank heist shooter, Payday 2, complete with some John Wick-themed DLC.

If you don’t have a Vive but still want to give the game a try you can book a ticket to Los Angeles; the newly-opened IMAX VR center is showing the experience.

Naturally, we’ll be looking to bring you a full review of the game next week.

Tagged with: FPS, John Wick, John Wick Chronicles, starbreeze, Vive

January 29, 2017

Community Download: Are Oculus and HTC The Apple and Microsoft of VR?

The technology world is always a game of rivals. For every Facebook there is a Twitter. For every Nintendo there is a Sega and for every Apple there is a Microsoft. This latter pair is perhaps the best representation of tech rivals in Silicon Valley. These two monolithic companies have been warring in the personal computer space for decades. The battlefields may shift to mobile phones, tablets and online services, but the competition always remains.

Virtual reality may be one of the newest arenas for these types of competitions, but it already has gladiators ready to do battle. There are a handful of major players already cutting their teeth in VR including Google, Sony and Samsun; but the two titans sitting at the top of the heap are Oculus and HTC.

These two organizations, and their Rift and Vive VR headsets, have come to encapsulate the emerging “console wars” of the modern VR scene. The devices they sell may be new, but their growing rivalry is a tale as old as tech itself. Our big question today is this: when it comes to VR, are Oculus and HTC the respective Apple and Microsoft of the industry?

Oculus/Apple

The similarities between Oculus and Apple begin with a shared interest in controlled content. Much was made last year about the so-called “walled garden” of the Rift’s Oculus Home software distribution platform. Unlike the Vive’s Steam platform, Oculus Home is far more selective about what pieces of content it houses.

Thinking that a moderated stream of high quality content is essential to the growth of a new industry is not a new way of thinking in Silicon Valley. Nintendo had a famously tight grip on what cartridges its home video game consoles would play in the 1980s and 1990s, but the most famous exemplar of the technique today is the Apple App Store.

The App Store may have a seemingly endless wealth of content to chose from, but ultimately everything you see in this online marketplace was carefully vetted by the boys in Cupertino. The positive and negative aspects of this approach are open to debate, but the similarities being displayed by Oculus and Apple in this area highlight a notable resemblance between the two companies.

In addition to a similar marketplace strategy, Oculus and Apple are both more willing to products products that are easier to use over ones with flashier, more complex features. The Vive has a better, more robust positional tracking system than the Rift, but Oculus was willing to forgo that edge in favor of a simple, one camera (or two with Touch) approach that doesn’t require as much space in people’s crowded homes. The “It just works” attitude that Apple has made so famous is clearly in the DNA of Oculus as well.

HTC/Microsoft

Despite what you may see on the average college campus or Starbucks, Microsoft still has the edge in market share for the PC space. Windows drives the modern computing world and a large part of that is down to Microsoft’s commitment to three things: enterprise clients, open computing and deep, technical tool kits.

HTC’s Vive has a lot in common with those philosophies. Since launch, the near-future rhetoric from Oculus has been focused on what interesting games and experiences are coming up that make a Rift purchase worthwhile. Meanwhile, HTC has chosen to release powerful new developer tools like a open-sourced design information and a Vive Tracker peripheral. The company also has a more stated interest in realms outside of entertainment content like education, science and enterprise. Sound familiar?

Both Microsoft and HTC are building more “professional” devices while Apple and Oculus drill into the “consumer” side of things. The old notion that Windows is for work and Macs are for fun/creativity is echoed noticeably in the philosophies of VR’s two most notable companies.

What do you think?

Do you agree with this analysis? How do you think the different strategies of HTC and Oculus will play out and do you think it’s wise for either of them to be doing what they’re doing at this point in the game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Tagged with: apple, community download, discussion, feature, htc, microsoft, oculus, rift, Vive

January 29, 2017January 29, 2017

Over 80,000 pants ruined as people opt to play ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ in VR

Official numbers show that over 80,000 gamers are opting to play the new horror game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in virtual reality, making the genre one of the most compelling for the platform.

The post Over 80,000 pants ruined as people opt to play ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ in VR appeared first on Digital Trends.