Nate Mitchell, Oculus co-founder and former Head of VR Product at Facebook, has opened a new game studio called Mountaintop Studios. Despite pioneering the first wave of consumer VR, Mitchell says Mountaintop isn’t focusing on VR just yet.

Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, Mitchell said this, responding to whether Mountaintop would ever produce VR games:

“The short version is nothing has changed. The developers working in VR today are trailblazing some incredible gaming experiences—Half-Life: Alyx, for example—and I’m super excited to see what they build next.

“We haven’t left VR behind at Mountaintop—and I doubt we ever will—but it’s unlikely our first title will be VR.”

Mountaintop has a number of positions available, however none of them specify VR/AR experience as a prerequisite. Instead, the studio appears to be focused on creating multiplayer games for traditional platforms.

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“Games are a reflection of the teams that make them. So to make the best games, we’re building a studio that puts the team first — one that’s collaborative, anti-crunch, diverse, and inclusive,” Mitchell says in a blog post.

Mitchell left Facebook back in August 2019, representing the final Oculus co-founder to leave the company.

Mountaintop also includes co-founder Matt Hansen, a former Executive Producer at Oculus, Hidden Path’s Mark Terrano, and Naughty Dog’s Richard Lyons—a team seemingly fit for the task of building a VR game, but alas.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Darkentity

    Spends years developing VR and then creates a flat studio game company. This makes no sense and will most definitely fail, especially if they are working on a multiplayer game which is a near impossible market to tap into at the moment!

    • sfmike

      I’m sure it’s because they can’t see the profits making them a quick billion or a studio they can sell to someone else for a billion so VR just isn’t worth it to the get rich quick startup mentality.

      • Bob

        “studio they can sell to someone else for a billion ”

        Fresh game companies like this one which usually compose of former veterans of X and Y companies almost always end up in failure because their grand ambitions and optimism doesn’t go hand-in-hand with the harsh realities of good game development. And before you know it, the founders lose the motivation to continue developing whatever that game was and decide to sell off the company and whatever assets it owned to the usual suspects like EA or Activision.

        It’s a good way for these entrepreneurial “founders” to get a cash injection when the going gets tough. And it always gets tough :)

        Either way the story is always the same.

    • MeowMix

      It’s also probably just a side gig for Mitchell. They guy has money, he doesn’t have to work. He can take it nice and slow and focus on the quality of game development; sounds like a good decision

    • care package

      It makes total sense actually. There’s a lot more money in flat, a LOT more.

    • brandon9271

      flat games are where the bulk of the money is. Sad but true. If the AAA companies aren’t doing it with their huge resources you can’t really expect a start up to take the right.

  • Good luck to him!

  • Bumpy

    Maybe we need something way bigger than HL:A; Fortnite VR?

    Then VR will take off.

    • AJ_74

      Right? HL:A was supposed to be VR’s savior, wasn’t it?

      I mean, we could be getting ready to play Cyberpunk 2077 in VR, if only CDPR didn’t have those pesky motion controls to worry about.

  • TechPassion

    Who cares about this loser. If you are wondering why I am calling him like that, just read articles from the last 1.5 year. This guy has no charisma and balls.

  • impurekind

    ” anti-crunch, diverse, and inclusive”

    None of those things have anything at all to do with what makes a great video game.

    If that’s how you’re determining how good your games are going to be then you’re off to a bad start.

    Just focus on making creative, magical, exciting, polished, world class and, above all, fun games–forget about all the virtue-signalling trite–that’s how you make “the best games”.

    • brandon9271

      You mean diversity hires and woke politics don’t make for great entertainment? Well.. You’re right. lol

  • AJ_74

    Yeah, let’s just ask capable people to make shit we like for no profit.

    Or, get off your ass and make something yourself.