Back a Oculus Connect last year, the company teased an upcoming Oculus exclusive game developed Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind Titanfall and Titanfall 2, which has since been acquired by EA. The title, which has yet to see a formal announcement, appears to be poised for FPS action when it launches in 2019.
While VR is certainly suited to doing more than just shooters, it seems that Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming VR game is going to stay true to the studio’s speciality, and aim for an FPS combat experience.
Job listings for Respawn Entertainment refer to the title only as “Unannounced VR game,” and characterize it a “AAA VR shooter game” and a “combat VR game.” Several of the listings seek candidates whose “prior experience on an FPS title is ideal,” with one listing looking for someone “experience[d] with first person weapons and full body animations.”
Listings for the title span Art, Game Design, Software Development, and Quality Verification; 14% of Respawn’s 35 current job listings are for the studio’s Unannounced VR game. All positions are for the studio’s LA location.
Little is known about the game to date, though we hope to get some details at Oculus Connect 2018 coming up in late September. Back during the initial tease from Oculus Connect 2017, Respawn Game Director Peter Hirschmann confirmed that the title is not related to Titanfall or Star Wars (both of which the studio is working on for separate projects).
Respawn Entertainment was acquired last year by EA, just a month after Oculus announced that it planned to publish an Oculus exclusive made by the studio, however both Respawn and Oculus have said that the acquisition won’t have any impact on the project coming to fruition.
Depending upon the success of Respawn’s VR project, the acquisition could potentially act as a trojan horse for getting EA more involved with VR. The massive publisher hasn’t delved deeply into the young tech—there’s not VR game to date that’s reeled in enough revenue to be more than a drop in the bucket for EA’s bottom line—but they aren’t ignoring it entirely.
EA’s Star Wars Battlefront (2015) launched with a special VR mission exclusively for PlayStation VR. Though it was a single level, it was well received and, tellingly, built on the company’s own Frostbite engine—meaning the publisher has invested time into adapting their core engine for VR rendering. Unfortunately Battlefront II (2017) didn’t end up launching with any VR content of its own.
EA will likely have a major say in what the studio does next, but with the Rift-exclusive VR project already signed between Oculus and Respawn, the outcome could be a major factor in whether the publisher decides to take on more VR projects or scrap such initiatives until VR has further matured.
