Atari has confirmed that the forthcoming Rollercoaster Tycoon Joyride, its first VR title, will make its debut at GDC 2018 later this month. The game is slated to launch in the first half of 2018 on PS4 with support for PSVR.

The existence of Rollercoaster Tycoon Joyride was confirmed initially last year in small blurb in an investor announcement, but now Atari is planning to give the game a proper reveal this month at the GDC 2018 conference in San Francisco, the company announced in an email.

Details are light on exactly what the game will entail, including who will be responsible for developing the game (Atari functions as the publisher), but PlayStation VR support has been confirmed. Unclear at this time is whether the game is VR-only or VR-optional, and whether or not it could end up on PC VR headsets.

At first blush Rollercoaster Tycoon, a legendary theme-park management game, seems like a perfect fit for VR—build awesome roller coasters and then ride on them! But, as many developers and VR gamers have learned quite early on, rollercoasters can be a recipe for nausea in VR if the locomotion design is not very carefully considered.

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We expect to be able to try Rollercoaster Tycoon Joyride for ourselves at GDC 2018 later this month and will find out whether players will indeed be riding with joy, or if park managers will need to hire plenty of new janitors for the post-ride cleanup.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."