In what is a little strange for an open standard market such as the PC, Oculus announced a while back their intention to secure exclusive games for the Oculus Rift, games optimized for virtual reality that will work only with the Rift headset. It was a decision that was met with a fair amount of criticism, but Luckey, speaking in a Reddit AMA, feels that they are well justified.
“These exclusive titles, in many ways, essentially are first party titles,” he wrote. “They are funded by us, we have our own staff working on them, and they are optimized around our launch timeline and tech stack. The only difference is that we chose to work with third parties to make them successful instead of competing with them through our own first party teams.”
He also pointed out that Oculus isn’t the only company pulling such tactics- Valve are, too.
“As a concrete example, SteamVR is currently (and has generally been) pretty much broken when it comes to Rift support. When it does work, support through SteamVR is far behind our own SDK,” he said.
“It is pretty clear that they have been prioritizing Vive, and that is fine. They are working hard to launch a product as well, and it makes a more sense for them to focus on improving their own side of things than to try keeping up with every update we make. At the same time, it shows why relying on someone else to keep things working can be tricky.”
Ultimately, he said, content tailored for virtual reality is essential if the power of the format is to be shown, and he hopes to encourage just that with these exclusive games.
“As I have said many times, the VR industry should not be tying every piece of software to the lowest common denominator – many third parties will choose to target everything, many will choose to focus on one specific platform, neither way is necessarily best,” he said.
“The only way technology can move forward quickly is for technology creators to make content that showcases what their hotrod hardware can really do when unencumbered by compromises.”
Oculus Rift launches in 2016. Stay tuned for more coverage.
