VR has probably never been more appealing to the mass market than it is currently, thanks to cheaper mass market VR hardware finally being available, and the release of some VR killer apps such as Astro Bot for the PlayStation VR. And yet, amidst this new surge of enthusiasm for the VR market comes the gloomy pronouncement regarding its current prospects by a company that has previously jumped headfirst into supporting VR game development.

The CEO of CCP Games, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, talked about the state of the VR market in an interview with Destructoid. CCP Games, you will remember, were gearing up to release EVE Valkyrie on the PlayStation VR, a project that was then ultimately cancelled following low sales, accompanied by the shuttering of two studios, and the cancellation of all further VR games from the company.

“We expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was, period. You can’t build a business on that,” he said, speaking of where the market currently stands.

He also says that sales of VR hardware, such as the 3 million units sold by PlayStation VR, might not necessarily be indicative of the VR market as a whole—since a lot of people buy a headset for the novelty, and then proceed to never actually use it afterwards.

“The important thing is we need to see the metrics for active users of VR. A lot of people bought headsets just to try it out. How many of those people are active? We found that in terms of our data, a lot of users weren’t.”

That said, he cited the upcoming Oculus Quest, a low cost standalone VR headset from Oculus, as something that could maybe turn things around for the market, and make the company reassess its stance on VR. For now, however, it looks like he’s not too hot on the segment, and given the losses his company suffered, who can blame him?

Pearl Abyss, better known as the developer of action MMO Black Desert Online, has acquired CCP Games. You might best know the latter for its insane MMO/spreadsheet manager EVE Online.

A press release stated, “The deal outlines that CCP Games will continue to operate independently as a developer with studios in Reykjavik, London and Shanghai while integrating the company’s extensive development and publishing expertise into Pearl Abyss’ operations for all current and future projects.”

Though CCP Games has had mixed success with off-shoots like EVE: Valkyrie, the developer’s main MMO continues to be as popular as ever. It’s been consistently receiving quality of life updates and expansions, the most recent being Into The Abyss, which launched in May 2018.

For its part, Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert Online has been a strong success for the company since launching in 2015 for Korea. It subsequently made its way to North America and Europe in 2016 for PC, and is currently in development for Xbox One.

Regarding the deal, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson stated, “I have been seriously impressed with what Pearl Abyss has achieved ever since I first visited their website for Black Desert Online and subsequently became an avid player of the game.

“Pearl Abyss is a fast-growing company with lots to offer in terms of technology, capability and vision. I believe our two companies have a lot to learn from each other. We are very excited to join forces with them and achieve great new heights for our companies, our games and – above all – our players.”

Given the expertise that both companies have with MMOs (and despite their respective controversies), it should be interesting to see what they could achieve together. Furthermore, it remains to be seen if Black Desert Online could expand further into other territories as a result.

Crackdown 3 and Forza Horizon 2 developer Sumo Digital revealed recently that it has purchased CCP Games’ Newcastle Studio. The studio consists of 34 staff members and will stay at Newcastle but under Sumo Digital’s banner. Owen O’Brien will take on the role of studio director.

Speaking about the acquisition of CCP Games Newcastle, Sumo Digital marketing director Paul Porter said that this was a “great opportunity to bring an experienced, talented, and tight-knit team on board.” CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson felt that Sumo Digital would be a “great home” for its Newcastle studio and couldn’t wait to see what new things come up.

Sumo Digital is hiring across four different studios in Sheffield, Pune and Nottingham with Newcastle joining the list with this latest acquisition. Meanwhile, CCP Games is busy with EVE: Valkyrie, a VR space sim which made the transition to a non-VR format and received significant overhauls to its systems. The developer noted that it would be focusing on less VR titles and more PC and mobile games for the foreseeable future.

CCP Games’ EVE: Valkyrie, an off-shot of EVE Online which focuses on dogfighting in space, is undergoing changes. Originally meant to be played on VR headsets, the new Warzone expansion will allow for playing it on standard screens as well. The entire game will be playable and cross-platform multiplayer will be possible between PC and PS4 players, both VR and non-VR.

Other changes include all ships being available early with more specific roles for each; new weapons and abilities with Ultra abilities being available; the new Extraction Mode; two new maps called Fleet and Outpost; and so on.

Even rewards have been changed with Gold being removed, Silver being less of a factor and XP now serving as the only currency necessary for mods. Salvaging is now used for unlocking Ultra abilities while Spoils of War will provide different Reward Capsules (think of them as Loot Boxes for customization items).

EVE: Valkyrie’s Warzone expansion will arrive on September 26th and will be free for all current owners of the game. Everyone else can purchase it for $30.

Dust 514 may be shutting down next month but EVE Online is still going strong for many a dedicated fan. CCP Games has announced that the next major expansion for the game Citadel will be releasing next week, bringing a ton of new features to the foray. Check out the decidedly epic cinematic trailer below.

Citadel will present a range of different options for constructing bases. It also brings 100 new modules, capital super-weapons and even brings force auxiliary support ships to the game. If you want to learn more, then check out the Fanfest taking place in Iceland currently.

EVE Online’s Citadel expansion releases on April 27th for PC. Speaking of the Fanfest, CCP Games also revealed new details for Project Nova, the successor to Dust 514 and Project Legion. The shared-world, class-based multiplayer shooter is a free to play title and currently in early development stages. Stay tuned for more details to emerge from the Fanfest.

Oculus Rift is now out and about and its accompanied by CCP Newcastle’s long-awaited space sim EVE: Valkyrie. If you want a peek at the gameplay and how it could possibly look in virtual reality, check out the launch trailer below. We have to admit – it’s fairly pretty.

CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson stated that, “This is just the beginning of our plans for virtual reality. Our goal has always been to create the most immersive virtual worlds, and VR now gives us a powerful new tool to achieve that.”

Along with EVE: Valkyrie, CCP Games has a bunch of other VR games in development with $30 million in investments recently received for the same. The developer also announced the release of Gunjack for Oculus Rift, which debuted on Gear VR in November 2015. You can look forward to both titles heading to other VR headsets like HTC Vive and PlayStation VR in the future.

CCP Games’ Dust 514 will be shutting down its servers in May. There won’t be an update as originally planned and there won’t be any items sold in-game or through the PS Store, though players with in-game currency can still access the former.

The studio stated that, “We are very proud of what we’ve learned and accomplished with Dust 514 on PlayStation 3 over the past three years and it is an honour to be a part of such a dedicated community. We consider Dust 514 one of the best free-to-play offerings on the platform, but the years have caught up with us. It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Dust 514 will be shutting down.”

The team is currently moving on to Project Legion instead. “Their experience is being utilized to build a new game from scratch using Unreal Engine 4 while harnessing all our learnings from Dust 514. This is in many ways an evolution of Project Legion, the concept we announced at EVE Fanfest 2014, but without the limitations of technical debt and development paths we quickly discovered in that effort that could never serve as a future-proof technology base for a full production game.

“This new project is still in an early phase of production, and we feel like we’re on the right track and plan to give an update at EVE Fanfest on April 21st as a part of the free livestream of the event. Since this new game will be different from Dust 514 (although keeping many of its great parts), we will provide tiered recognition rewards to our loyal Dust customers; details to be announced.”

Thoughts on the same, especially since Dust 514 has been around for three years? Let us know in the comments.

Remember Project Legion, Eve Online developer CCP Games’ first person shooter meant to be a re-imagining of DUST 514? There hasn’t been much progress on the same since its initial announcement and according to CCP Shanghai managing director Jean-Charles Gaudechon at the EVE Fanfest 2015, the focus is on DUST 514.

Speaking to PCGamesN, Gaudechon stated that with regards to Project Legion, “I would always like to share as much as possible with our fans and players, but of course it then creates expectations. All I know is that we’re working really hard on trying to deliver the best experience.

“Of course PC is a target because that’s our primary platform for Eve Online, [but we’re] seeing how Dust is evolving. Making that as good as possible, and then seeing how that translates – if that ever translates.”

CCP boss Hilmar Veigar Pétursson stated there was “nothing new to report” and that as far as Project Legion goes, the developer is “still exploring in that area.”

At the very least it seems that DUST 514 has been a good thing for the studio, which further drives the motivation to bring it to PS3. Gaudechon stated that, “We’re obviously thinking of the future, but I feel we owe Dust players on PS3 everything. Which means hotfixes and all the things we can do to keep them happy. We have players right now playing and paying for an experience.”

After announcing Project Legion at the EVE Fanfest, which was met with some criticism by fans after it was revealed to be a re-imagining of DUST 514 for the PC, VP of product development at CCP Games Sean Decker spoke to Polygon about learning from the mistakes of the latter to make a compelling project that fans will like. Of course, the success of the game will still depend on feedback from fans.

“I ran DICE for awhile, and the first shooter game out of DICE was a game called Codename Eagle, which tons of people don’t know anything about, and never would, and probably shouldn’t. It was horrible, and at the end of the day, teams usually have to do multiple iterations of something to get to something really great.

“We want to take the things we’ve learned from DUST, and yes it’s in the same IP, same place and all the rest of it, but we want to do some fundamentally different things with it that we feel we missed out on and that we didn’t do right. Honestly, we didn’t make a great game to begin with. It has to be a great game. We tried to do too much [with DUST] honestly in terms of connecting it into the universe and there’s this MMO piece and all the rest of it.

“If Legion does well, we’ll continue to invest in it. If it doesn’t, we’ll open up some beers, have some fun and say,’Ok, that was fun, let’s do something different now and go again.’”

This doesn’t mean that DUST 514 will be going anywhere any time soon. “In terms of three years from now, if there are tons of people playing it, and people are really enjoying it, we’ll keep doing it. It’s as simple as that, and I think it’s true for any game service.”

What are your thoughts? Let us know below.

CCP Games recently announced during the EVE Fanfest that its spin-off of EVE Online – Dust 514 – would be reimagined as a new game for PC, currently dubbed Project Legion. CCP head Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said that this would be “a new approach to being a mercenary on the ground” when speaking to Eurogamer and that it would be a free to play shooter.

“It’s almost that experience made anew. It’s taking all we learned from Dust and almost making a new game from scratch, even though it’s the same team doing a first-person shooter, so they’re very experienced now. And we’ve made good headway on it. [It’] significantly different. It’s almost more a revolution than an evolution, and that’s why we’re calling it Project Legion, because it’s, frankly, more like a new game.”

Whether it will head to consoles depends on fan reception. As of now, a release date is far off and Project Legion isn’t even the final name. It will use assets from Dust 514 and also be a sandbox style game however.

Stay tuned for more details.