4A Games, the developers behind the popular sci-fi shooter franchise ‘Metro’, are not only allegedly working on an Oculus Rift title with Touch support, there’s a chance we’ll get to see it soon. In the mean time, this is what we know.

Oculus’ reasoning for the protracted delay in the launch of their VR motion controllers ‘Touch’ is that they need to ensure the consumer has enough compelling content to make it an essential purchase. Head of Oculus Studios Jason Rubin spoke to Road to VR at a special pre-GDC event this year on just that topic (see interview below), and more recently at Gamescom. Holding the launch of Touch, pending the arrival of more substantial, quality titles from established developers has predictably taken some time, but we may start to see Oculus’ patience (and ours) and pay off soon.

4a-games-logoOne of the content partners teased by Oculus at its Oculus Touch unveiling at a pre-E3 event last year, was 4A Games, a development team which made a name for itself building the excellent Metro series, may be about ready to show what it’s been working on.

The company initially published a 360 screenshot via their facebook page at the beginning of this month which not only showed 4A’s development offices in Malta strewn with Oculus Rift headsets, but also several pairs of Oculus Touch controllers can be seen on desks and in hand too. In fact, one angle shows a developer in the middle of play testing a Touch title, which can be seen displayed on the wall-hung TV in front of him.

SEE ALSO
Meta Explains Why It Sees Wide Field-of-View Headsets as a 'bad tradeoff'

4a-games-oculus-touch-2

This may or may not be an early glimpse at the soon-to-be-revealed title, but other shots of developer monitors pulled from the panoramic shot almost certainly are.

When might we see this new title? Well, sharp-eyed Redditer /u/bekris over at /r/oculus noted that yet another angle from the 360 photo revealed a TV hung in the office with a large countdown clock reading just under 34 days at the time the photo was taken (around September 1st judging purely by its posted time on Facebook) – that would indicate a target date which coincides nicely with Oculus’ forthcoming third developer conference Connect, which starts on October 5th.

4a-games-oculus-touch-4

And whilst this assumption is not confirmed officially by 4A Games, Oculus’ Jason Rubin later tweeted out the Facebook post saying “Remember when I teased 4A games as an Oculus Partner looong ago? Well they’ve been working hard and it’s coming.”

As I write this, we currently only have one official shot of this mysterious title and it was posted a few days ago, again on 4A Games’ Facebook page. The screenshot is obscure at best, but does seem to show some kind of futuristic suit, specifically what looks to be a glove grasping a weapon – the grip for which can be seen on the edge of the frame.

Minor Update: Our community has been chiming in with their thoughts on what the images tell us. The image below is more likely of a hand gripping a joystick, the kind you’d find in a futuristic mech. This also ties in the with the images below. Thanks Bas van Elst for the thoughts.

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Official Quest 3S Image Leaks Ahead of Anticipated Meta Connect Unveiling

4a-games-oculus-touch-tease-1This could indicate the title is the first person shooter title that Jason Rubin hinted at in a recent interview with PCGamesN here in which he highlighted the challenges inherent in bringing the genre to VR.

As fun as all this speculation is, we’re now forced to wait for further information from both Oculus and 4A games to know what the game actually is. But with the Oculus Touch launch window of Q4 this year edging closer, a new triple-A first person shooter exclusive from a respected triple-A developer would be exactly what Oculus needs to begin putting a troubled 2016 behind them and follow through on that content promise for their new motion controllers.

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.

  • Some of the best Vive titles using controllers are not from AAA studios. That proves that getting the controllers out, in the hands of LOTS of developers is important; not just the big boys. The Oculus touch controllers are virtually inaccessible. Conclusion: Oculus is wrong in their decision.

    I’m about to go to my 2nd OC (missed #2, but spent 30 minutes talking to Carmack at #1), have nearly all the VR hardware worth mentioning and even I can’t get the controllers. Perhaps I could pull a favor, but I shouldn’t need to. Something is wrong with this situation.

    • Me

      Although I think you’re mostly right in what you say, telling the best controller titles are not from AAA studios for the Vive is a bit misleading: there simply is NO AAA title at all for the Vive…so nothing to compare to.

      • My reply to Paul above included a bit meant as a reply to your comment.

      • Ahhhh.. what? There are several very high end titles for the Vive. If you’re idea of “AAA” is better then Solus Project or Call of the Starseed, then there are no AAA VR titles at all, on any system.

        • Me

          Solus and Call of the Starseed aren’t AAA games. They’re good, but not AAA. The closest would be maybe Raw Data, but it’s lacking content and all the little things that make an AAA game what it is:

          AAA games mean hundreds of people working on it, localization for most languages, add campaign, and on and on. Think the likes of Assassin’s Creed, The Sims, the Call of and Battlefronts, The Witcher, and all these other games that are sold 60 bucks and bought by millions of gamers;

          When Fallout 4 will be released, we’ll have our first AAA game on the Vive.

          • DiGiCT Ltd

            You cant compare AAA on VR on the same level as on normal game platforms.
            One drawback is the render requirements to have it run smooth in VR as you theoretically render to 2 screens at the same time.
            VGA card cant easy catch that up atm, so it requires some lower art parts.
            This result in a lower quality game as it would be on normal pc with the same specs.
            The mainr eason why AAA are not into VR is simply the sales amount to low.
            Most of those companeis are stockmarket companies and shareholders are the ones making the decisions.
            They dont care about the game at all, only if they believe it is going to fill their pockets well enough they will allow to go on with it.

            AAA game studios are not having hundreds of people working for them, i dont know where you got that strange information.
            If they would have so many people they would be working on more than just one title at the smae time and still have dedicated support on already deployed games.

            With the current state of internet and communications many companies just hire people project based instead of 24.7 in a studio, it is only the core team that will be there to work.

          • Me

            Have you seen somewhere a mention of graphics in my comment ? I know the tiltes won’t be very demanding in graphics, but look at a super mario galaxy that runs on a wii. Don’t tell me that with today’s hardware you can’t do something like this. The problem’s not the hardware, the problem’s the number of talented people you put t work on a title. It takes time and money, and usually AAA studios don’t do that on a new platform unless it’s financially attractive.

            In this sense, Oculus poaching all the studios they can is a good strategy, and that’s why I don’t understand why Valve hasn’t published anything solid like Half-life, Portal or Left 4 Dead.

            Think of it: leaft 4 dead 1 would run flawlessly on today’s VR minimum hardware, it just needs refined control and movement schemes. This wouldn’t cost much and could potentially be the system seller we’re all waiting for.

            Oh and for the number of people involved: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/11/2007s-assassins-creed-was-a/

          • DiGiCT Ltd

            HTC Vive invest a lot of money for developers to create content.
            your question you answer yourself already as it takes time to make good content, for VR even more time.
            Looking at old titles and just modify to VR is a bad idea, if you are a real VR supporter you would never ask for this kind of games at all.
            For sure valve itself is working on their own titles for VR, that they dont say anything in public yet does not mean they are not doing it.
            As you can see on other articles Vive/Valve is also working hard to lower the cost and improving the quality of current VR device, which will in return have more people buying it.
            The reality currently is quite simple… most people dont have a VR set

            , mainly because of the high cost at this moment, content is the other part.

            The picture showing the entire team does not say anything, even the article is dated from 2009 so based on that time it could have been like that, but still most of them are not developers, but rather fullfill other jobs, so “creating the game ” is not hte same for me as you see it on a picture.

            It is clear to me that you are not that long in the gaming or either a gamer itself.
            No hard feeling but your information is just outdated and not complete.
            Internet is a thing you cant always rely on as it blows stuff up and let you see the things as they want you to see it, having the expierence in real life is the only thing that matters instead of online shared stories.
            For me there is content enough that rates IMHO good enough as being AAA, even when it is bugged or not working smoothly it still would happen to an AAA release game.

            If you still believe in Oculus stories, i am fine with that too.
            As the only way i will get an oculus is from the easter bunny or santa claus, it is the same for me as believing oculus pr stories all the time.
            I took already the most expensive Vive VR and dont regret it at all.
            Additional in my plan is google daydream and PSVR.
            The gear VR been rejected already after just trying it for 1 hour, the rift might be more complete later on this year but still lesser quality tracking device and even end up similar price as a vive for the total.

            As a developer and business owner i cant agree on most of your statements.
            We take huge time and lots of investments to make a good VR product and not just a port from existing stuff, that is not what VR is ment to be at all for us.

          • Me

            Gee, the things we have to read these days…

            Ok, so first of all I build my own PCs since I was a kid, which takes me back to the DX4/100 era, among the first of x86s, so I think I know a thing or two about tech and PC.

            Next, wha can i say, I start building my gamer skills with an Amiga 500, and never left the gaming community.

            Finally, I work as IT admin in the science dept in a University.

            Does this qualify enough to be considered as tech-savvy and a gamer ?

            We saw the rise of indie games quite recently, but this is believe it or not, a side-effect of mobile gaming and the sudden ease people got to enter the dev community by being able to release quickly small games that could turn into money making machines if you had a good idea or two. The translation to PC/console market was quick enough to become sustainable, helped by the push of DLCs and episodic games sale model.

            Where do I go with this ? Well my take is, all these marketsare healthy only if the platform they rely on is widely adopted (think iPhones, Playstations and Xboxes). We do NOT have this right now in VR: the state of VR right now is where mobile phone was prior the iPhone and Android. There’s no real solid base right now, but it will come, that I’m sure of. The question is, whre will it come from ? How many places are there for a viable platform to survive ? We already know the PSVR will probably be widely adopted because half of the product (the PS) is already widely adopted. Then, if you continue the comparison with mobile, there’s only room left for maybe one or two major actors: will it be the Vive, the Rift, or something else from Microsoft ? This I don’t know, and many devs don’t know also, and while this lack of clarity remains, no big studio will invest any money in a platform unless properly motivated.

            That’s what Oculus is trying to do, but I’m not sure it will succeed. For me, Valve would be the one in the best position to do that, because it already owns the right distribution platform for content, but I’m baffled we haven’t seen or heard anything yet, while Oculus occupies all the news with their shiny exclusives.

            I haven’t drunk the Oculus cool-aid, and my sole HMD is a Vive. I just hope it won’t end up like a wiimote.

          • DiGiCT Ltd

            Yeah i can understand what you mean.
            Mines is a vive too.
            We have a big similar background, only my first computer was even before the C64, Atari st, amiga 500, zx spectrum, MSX i went trough all of them.

            The first gameconsole was for me PONG!
            Now this just would make you laught rofl.
            Later on the Philips videopac, colocovission, atari…..

            The whole bunch of it.
            If you are from europe you might still know SnakeServers hosting compoany which was been created by me.
            Next to it i been IT admin too, certified Unix specialist and Mainframe operator.

            All this is the past and even more, now I went back into Game industry(actually entertainment industry i must say to make it more clear as not all is games.

            We both know steam is around a long time for PC, there where more before but they left the field in the times Consoles became more popular and later on those mobile games.

            For most you say above i can really agree and understand you.
            The only thing is that what oculus does HTC Vive already does as Valve want to have people come back to steam and they will win for PC becuase of the reason they support any HMD on hteir platform.

          • Me

            I hope you’re right

          • David

            As games like Onward have taught us, you don’t have to have a AAA dev team, or even a team for that matter (Onward was made by one guy) to create games that are fun enough to keep people coming back again & again. Its all about the overall experience not the polish, which is what oculus seems to be concentrating on. You can have all the polish in the world but it doesn’t necessarily result in replay value

          • David Herrington

            I will agree that smaller studio games can be a lot of fun and are usually very creative. However, unless an indie dev works for many years on a game, they cannot match the total content (game length, story, graphics, musical scores, gameplay variations) that a AAA studios can output. Its just simple math. One very smart person cannot do the work of 50-100+ people.

    • I used the world ‘substantial’ as well as ‘triple-A’ for a good reason. And besides, there is a distinct lack of Triple-A content on either platform right now so the definition of ‘best’ could very easily change (Rift demonstrably has the more substantive line up but whether you judge them as ‘better’ is entirely subjective).

      It’s not just a question of getting the controllers out either and my comments mentioned Triple-A simply because that’s the context of this article.

      Good games, the type you’ll play for weeks or months and remember forever take months or years to develop. Valve too will reap the rewards of having their hardware in developers’ hands with titles which benefit by a longer gestation too, but there aren’t many people of sound mind or any sort of perspective that would say either the Vive or the Rift lineup has an abundance of those ‘substantial’ titles comparable to mature gaming platforms (PC or Consoles), and arguably the Rift only has a slight edge purely because it’s been around a lot longer.

      And with respect, we’ll have no idea if Oculus’ plan was “wrong” until Touch is out and the games are available. If after 12 months sales have died, we’ll know it may have been a flawed idea. But, given decades of console launches followed this very same model very successfully, I’d say they’re working from good historical evidence.

      As for Touch availability, yes this really seems to be a problem and we’ve heard this frustration from a few sources. And yes, I very much doubt this is a situation Oculus wants. It seem most likely that Touch delay was both the product of a longer development gestation and that pause for content. Anecdotally, it seems to have improved over the last few months, but there really is no way to be sure. Perhaps Oculus will hand every developer Touch controllers at OC3. :)

      • You make quite a few, very good points.

        I think the lack of AAA titles only reinforces my point. I’ve only been gaming since the days of the ColecoVision, but from my perspective, AAA titles have never been Innovative, they just have the budget to go bigger, using innovation that happens on smaller titles. Perhaps the reason we don’t see any AAA titles on the vive using those controllers, is because it’s a new tool, requiring a paradigm shift in how we think about interactions and what is possible in apps/games (not just VR either). I’m not trying to ignore solutions that came before either. I’ve been playing with the P5 and building my own gloves for Johnny Lee’s Wiimote project for at least a decade, (I’m currently toying around with the idea of the vive controllers, calibrated to a projector screen, without VR) but those were edge cases compared to what the success of VR is enabling. Only experimentation will see the field progress.

        If I’m right, it’s all the more important that smaller teams get those controllers sooner than later. I don’t think a successful launch would prove my point wrong though because we still can’t know how much better the duration might be if they had released the controllers to more developers sooner, even in a more raw form. I think it’s fair to say that the VR is in the state that it is because they released the dev kits. Why would they think the results would be different in regards to the controllers?

        At least the field isn’t stunted thanks to Vive. Im just saying that I think they’re inhibiting the number and quality of experiences on the Oculus platform by not enabling more developers, sooner.

        Perhaps I’ve been to one too many Google IO’s, but I am hoping that they’ll hand out Hardware to the attendees of OC. Haven’t heard back from Nate (not that I expect to) ;) https://mobile.twitter.com/rainabba/status/776663883557679105

    • Andrew Jakobs

      And yet, a lot of indie’s have a set of Oculus touch controllers..

    • OgreTactics

      The VR crowd is disappointingly blind and unperceptive. Oculus and Vive sold between 150,000 and 200,000 headsets, and most owner I know have letting it aside in the dust for weeks or months…

      The problem is way larger, Vive or Oculus don’t need touch controllers, they need hand tracking periods. It is unacceptable that these pseudo “high-end” HMDs, amongst others things, launched without mobile depth tracking, for tons of reasons that I can’t start to enumerate.

      PSVR, although not perfect because it too doesn’t have hand-tracking, and GearVR -might- save VR another 10 years in the limbo if the market doesn’t pick-up while momentum is here, but nothing is less certain, unlike you are completely oblivious to how new technology markets, consumer behaviours, and socio-marketing rules work.

      • VR fell into a 20 year lull, not 10.

        I think, when you say “Hand”, you really mean “Fingers”, right? That can be easily added with the Leap for around $30. It’s great in social environments, it really brings a chat room alive, but in games, all of those digits tend to make the physics go wonkie.

        Physics in modern games are actually very simplistic, based on collision capsules and bounding boxes. Objects often occlude and then erupt in over calculations that cause simple objects to explode off in various directions. More fingers, more problems. Single touch points can reduce alot of bugginess.

        Also, without the ability to stop those fingers (and the hands they are attached to) from going THROUGH items, you’re not going be able to use those fingers well. Real, full tactile response, would be the holy grail here, but the robotics to pull that off still seem to be a ways away.

        • yag

          Did you see that article, these guys seem to have found a good compromise :
          http://www.roadtovr.com/virtualgrasp-aims-to-finally-deliver-realistic-hand-interactions-in-vr/

          What would be the solution to do realistic hand interactions with complex collision shapes ? More GPU horsepower dedicated to physics ? Or some software optimization wizardry is still possible ?

        • OgreTactics

          I meant 10 years NOW. And yes similarly to what happened in the 90s, but for the same reasons, but in a different context that makes it 10 years (if VR doesn’t pick-up by next year).

          And THIS is why VR is on the road to fail, the unperceptivity, lack of vision and conception, that led to common arguments like “hand tracking is wonky”, “there’s too much latency”, “physics engines are not ready”…WHO gives a fuck?

          By that I mean, who EVER said that first generation hand tracking had to be real-time, 1:1 visual feedback and real-interaction oriented?

          For example mike the article that was posted below which found a compromised, and in order to be developed in a real world consumer market should have been included in consumer HMDs, or semantic hand gesture library could have created a matrix of pre-defined moves and interactions, or just sketching, selection and touch-like interaction would have been enough.

          What is the FIRST thing people who try VR for the first time try to do? They try to see their hands and touch things, because this is a natural extension of virtual immersion that doesn’t makes human sense without it.

      • Bookoo

        They aren’t collecting dust because it doesn’t have hand tracking, they are collecting dust because they don’t have content.

        That is what VR needs.

        EDIT:

        I guess I should have qualified that it needs polished/feature complete content. Vive has content, but most of it is early access, demos, or prototypes, that isn’t going to push sales. Vive is giving people a new experience right now and that novelty will eventually wear off much like it did for seated VR experiences.

        I own both headsets and I choose to use my rift headset slightly more normally to check out the bigger releases that come out. I don’t think I have really used my Vive since May.

        • OgreTactics

          I think that’s a secondary problem. Lots of people think it’s about content because again, they are self-centered on their own tiny VR/Digital/3D world and expect fabulous Senza-Penso like content..but the truth is it has nothing to do with VR market success and in fact momentum:

          Even if a super amazing VR experience were to be release, but everybody had lost interest in VR meanwhile, nobody would talk about it. If there were not much new content, but there was news that suddenly 1 millions people bought the HMDs, and they did because a new headset or tool that completely pushes VR forward, or just toward what it should have been, is released.

          I trust only Google Tango can change that on a consumer scale soon.

        • David

          Who’s HMD is collecting dust?! I can see that maybe Rifts are sitting there unused because honestly its just not that fun to use VR with a game pad but as a Vive owner its a different story. I pretty much use my Vive ever day. If it weren’t for Witcher 3 I probably wouldn’t play anything but VR

          • Charles

            The only reasons my Vive sometimes collects dust is 1.) I’m often busy with other stuff, and 2.) It really needs comfort improvements.

        • Charles

          “they are collecting dust because they don’t have content”
          My collection of like 75 Vive games says otherwise.

        • David Herrington

          Huh, That’s exactly what I said. I agree entirely. Content content content.

      • Buddydudeguy

        Spoken like someone who has no clue.

      • Get Schwifty!

        Hand tracking is nice, but given that people are willing to game even with pads it seems to be an evolutionary step, but not one that is a requirement. The market is still small because the cost of entry on the PC side is high, not due to lack of full hand immersion. The greater issue is still the lack of quality content more than anything else.

        As far as the notion of VR failing to take off, it appears that with the Gear, soon to be in the public hands PSVR, and not to mention the movements by IMAX for instance the word is slowly getting out. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the awareness that the technical and medical communities are expressing in the value of VR as well, so it’s more than just Vive/Rift home users that define the market. This “pure VR” attitude, that full immersion is necessary, is just not true for success. The HMDs are sitting idle for many folks who are waiting for quality content, not because they are displeased with simply not seeing their hands.

        The biggest issue I see is most people simply 1) don’t know about it, and 2) have never experienced it and don’t have a system that can run it. For every person I have talked to directly about VR only one has actually returned their unit after using it, and that was simply due to the lack of a mature software market and they are waiting for a couple years for better units and software.

        For all that crap that Oculus has gotten on this site, they at least see that a body of quality software is what its going to take because history is replete with examples of great hardware with no software, and those platforms fail every time. Amiga anyone?

        While agree that “full hand tracking” now would be nice, I can’t believe that’s the real slowness of VR adoption, it’s primarily one of unawareness and cost at this stage IMHO.

        • OgreTactics

          I disagree. And already developed on why “hand tracking” (certainly not “full” hand-tracking which is the excuse why it still hasn’t been implemented) is not “nice” but is a requirement for the market to take of.

          Then there are the very simple market, consumer, psychological rules which makes is that if VR doesn’t take-off on the consumer market (I don’t have a precise number as to what is “taking-off” but I think we should be looking at console-like or smartphones-like numbers) while it has momentum, the content problem will not even be a factor because their will be no investment, producers and enthusiasts left to sustain it, until another iteration emerges 10 years from now.

          I hope this is not the scenario we are going for, but I only see PSVR and Google Tango being the hopes for VR to be sustained until it picks-off. And I would had to that, the biggest problem is that 3) people, including those invested or developing for VR, don’t actually UNDERSTAND what VR is and it’s implication.

      • David Herrington

        While I do agree about there being a much larger problem, I do not think that the lack of hand tracking is it. While you may assume that good hand tracking is all that is necessary to get the best immersion, there are many cases where having something in the hand, like a controller is more immersive. Like in the case of shooting a gun or wielding a sword. The lack of a physical object in these cases makes immersion almost impossible. Seeing this issue there are glove makers that are trying to fix this by creating an exo-suit for your hands to simulate VR feeling to recreate the lost hand presence. See this article, http://www.roadtovr.com/dexta-dexmo-exoskeleton-vr-glove-haptic-force-feedback-touch-vr/
        That being said, however, the real problem I see is the lack of content. While I would rather invest in the highest quality VR system I can purchase, the fact is that it doesn’t matter what system you own if there isn’t any content to experience. We just need more content!!!!

        • OgreTactics

          Content, is not really a topic, since it depends on its adoptions (not just in small numbers of indies, but in terms of mass adoptions to get the real production investments and evolving tools around).

          And adoption for me is dependant on VR to meet certain pre-requirements to be a coherent product proposition, of which hand-tracking is a big part of. And again, the reason I’m particularly disappointed by the lack of HT is because NOBODY asked for perfect or even good hand tracking, because nobody needs to have a 1:1 sub-millimeter physical transcription of their hands, (which will only come later if had been iterated and experimented enough before, hence again my point about integrating it now) but just being able to skeep, touch, resize interfaces, buttons or interactions (it exists), and then at best have semantic gesture library which translate approximate gesture into one command, action or interaction (it exists too).

          I explained in other comments why this is important, amongst other things. But I have hope that Tango was developed enough to be capable not only of reverse tracking, external tracking, and hopefully some kind of hand-tracking as mentioned above.

          • David Herrington

            So you are saying people are not buying Vive and Oculus not because of cost, or lack of content, but just because of a lack of hand tracking… Despite never hearing this complaint from anyone else, I already addressed this issue in my previous post. Not all applications need hand tracking. In some cases it is actually PREFERABLE to NOT have hand tracking as it RUINS IMMERSION, without proper feedback.
            Think about this, I want to play some VR Star Wars, I get thrown a VR light-saber and as it hits my tracked hands, I get no feeling that I am gripping something. I can crush it and as I do my VR tracked hands clip right through it. It is dissatisfying and breaks immersion immediately. It doesn’t matter what my hands look like in vr space, my mind cannot fill the void that I am not grabbing anything. In this case it is ALWAYS better to use a Vive-like controller.

    • Nada

      To this day, I haven’t find any Vive titles use the motion controllers or just create the games in general in an innovative way that people will be impressed with. On the other hand, I see real innovations come from studios like Crytek, Ubisoft. Dynamic FOV adjustments, Discrepancy direction turning, VR emoji, to name a few.

  • Mermado 1936

    fcking exclusives… I hate Oculus.

  • Emanuele Ciriachi

    More hostageware for no reason. Fuck exclusives, and fuck Oculus!

    • Justos

      If you think Oculus exclusives are bad then you will cry when you see what Sony is packing!

      • YzaiCreate

        Sony have the reasonable excuse that psvr titles are only tested for the playstation and its accessories. It’s the reason why any console has exclusives, it’s easier to focus on one thing (or two with the PS4Pro) and can take advantage of the hardware and software framework as well as possible. They could totally make it multiplatform but it’s much cheaper and easier to not.

        Oculus has some excuses, such as bringing in the store framework and all that, but the hardware requirements for the oculus are the same for the vive, they’re testing for the same stuff and the functionality is pretty much the same. It’s a much much weaker excuse and the cost of having it on both peripherals is really not an excuse especially compared to the size of the potential audience.

        • Justos

          Their excuse is that its 100% of their money to create this game and get it out on their platform. You can be vocal about not liking it but you cant dismiss it as its a perfectly valid business decision. They’re going up against frigging STEAM.

          • YzaiCreate

            I’m not saying it’s a bad business decision. That will only be seen as time goes by. Lots of companies do rather unpalatable things and make a profit. By excuse I mean what reasoning is given that doesn’t make it look like they want as much money as possible and don’t care how much their tactics may fragment the market and possibly hinder vr as a whole. The term hostageware was used by op because they’re holding games to ransom in a fashion that is distasteful because there is little to nothing stopping any of these games working on other pc vr peripherals other than oculus’ desire for money.

            Not saying it’s a good or bad thing either way, just clarifying the difference between playstation exclusivity and oculus exclusivity. Aside from the desire for money, oculus doesn’t have much of a reason for exclusives, whereas Sony atleast has significant technological aspects to its reasoning.

          • Justos

            That was true two generations ago. But most PS4 and Xbone exclusives are due to contracts not technical limitations. As for PSVR exclusives, im sure there are some barriers but nothing that cant be done. Its still business that decides exclusivity, not technical limitations.

          • YzaiCreate

            Actually the PS3 was famous for being wildly different from other consoles and most pc architectures due to its cell processor, which led to a lot of terrible PS3 ports. But even Though the ps4 has pc architecture, testing for a console and testing for a pc is very different, because you only have to test for two systems using very similar tech from the same manufacturers. The pc has thousands of different major variants from multiple manufacturers and software companies all trying to work together. It’s a massively larger task to work on all of those different systems and variants on systems, which is why a lot of pc games have options menus for graphical settings, which is another load of work to implement. And you have to test for some of the most random things. There are a slew of cheaper ports where they crash without explanation after 15 minutes because you have a Wacom tablet connected.

            Now I’m not saying that money isn’t the driving force here and I’m not saying that the 2 companies’ intentions are that seperate. Personally I would prefer less exclusives in general and I don’t think Sony needs them, but I’m just explaining that people are more accepting of sony’s exclusivity because there is a significant amount of testing work required for Sony. Mountains more than there is for oculus.

            Psvr games are tested for two systems and would have retest for all systems and bring in new menus and tweakable features and the like. Oculus games have already been tested and already have the features they need to work on the pc marketplace. The workload implementing vive compatibility is drastically smaller. Most of the work is already done.

            I’m not disagreeing with you in terms of the motivation of the companies, but I don’t agree with your vehemence that the situations are the same.

      • David

        Not really worried though since the their controllers suck. They are better than Wii remotes but not by much

  • Ryun Patenaude

    OOOO THIS WOULD BE SO SICK! I LOVED METRO!