Even though it’s still a work in-progress and some publishers are still shy to support a format like VR unless it has a substantial user base, Oculus VR co-founder Nate Mitchell was full of praise for Sony’s recent Project Morpheus announcement in conversation with Develop.
“We’re super excited to have more companies in this space. More developers and more companies investing in virtual reality means more resources put towards games. I think the audience is going to get into VR faster, which means more people to sell to.
“Because that’s really been the ‘Catch 22’ for developers. There are developers who want to make games in VR, but it’s hard to get sign off from their executives because it’s impossible to get the ROI right now. Who are you going to sell to: 50,000 Oculus developers? So with Sony getting in the mix, it really does mean there’s going to be a bigger audience, there’s going to be more people that can buy games.”
It will be interesting to see where the games go though, since Morpheus is going to be on the PS4 for now. But Micthell remains up-beat. “Sony, I’m sure – I hope – is going to start funding development, and hopefully some of that comes to the PC side. Even if they stick to PlayStation and we stay on PC, there is no doubt we’ll have more people using VR than ever before in the history of virtual reality, so we’re pretty excited about the whole thing.”
Oculus VR will be shipping the second Rift dev kit to those who pre-order in July, while Morpheus still has no fixed release date. Stay tuned for more details.