CCP Games, the Icelandic studio known for their long-running MMO Eve: Online (2003), shuttered their VR production studios in a surprise move last year, selling off their Newcastle-based branch behind their multiplayer space dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie (2016), and completely shutting down their Atlanta studio behind sports game Sparc (2017). Now, CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson speaks out in an interview with Destructoid about the studio’s reconsolidation back to traditional desktop gaming, and his thoughts about the VR landscape. In short, he thought VR would be bigger by now, and more capable of supporting a healthy multiplayer userbase.

EVE: Valkyrie, the company’s flagship VR game, was the result of over three years of development before becoming a day-one launch title on Oculus Rift and PSVR, arriving shortly afterwards on HTC Vive via Steam in 2016—a seemingly best-case scenario for any multiplayer-only game.

Image courtesy CCP Games

Under CCP direction, EVE: Valkyrie saw a number of updates designed to entice players back, including new ships, maps, and weekly events; CCP even pushed a major update to the game last year that brought support for desktop and console players, a move to help boost sales and revive the ailing VR-only playerbase. Still, the multiplayer game just didn’t perform as CCP ultimately expected, and the company officially stepped back from VR shortly thereafter.

“We expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was, period,” Pétursson tells Destructoid. “You can’t build a business on that.”

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Early VR Pioneer CCP Games Acquired by 'Black Desert Online' MMO Developer for $425M

Pétursson still has hope though that headsets like Oculus Quest, the $400 high-end standalone 6DOF headset launching in Spring 2019, will have the mass appeal to bring the user numbers the company needs to see before jumping back into VR.

“If it does take off, and I mean if, we’ll re-assess. The important thing is we need to see the metrics for active users of VR,” he tells Destructoid. “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.”

Image courtesy CCP Games

While CCP Games has been recently acquired by Korea-based developer Pearl Abyss, the studio behind the MMO Black Desert Online, it may still have leeway to begin anew in VR when they think the time is right. According to Pearl Abyss, CCP 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.”

Despite shuttering the Atlanta-based office behind Sparc and selling EVE: Valkyrie to Sumo Digital, both games remain functional today.

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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.
  • DanDei

    Well they didn’t exactly design a killer app here and also overspent on it. Why did they need three years to make a cockpit game with most of its assets recycled from their EVE MMO? They didn’t innovate at all. They just brought basic dogfighting to a seated VR experience where you can turn your head around and then overpriced it heavily, included microtransactions and forgot to add a singleplayer campaign. I love space combat games since 1992’s X-Wing and was a day one VIVE owner. But Valkyrie never excited me enough to spend 60 Euro on it. Much later I bought it in a steam sale for 35 – and returned it, because MP was already dead, therefore matchmaking took forever plus the game crashed several times when loading the map. CCP Games are nothing but mismanaging whiners who can’t admit they developed from a bad pitch.

    • Jan Ciger

      I actually have Valkyrie because I got it with my Rift. The problem with that “game” is not VR but that there isn’t anything to do. Weird “non-story” in the tutorial (you are dead and keep coming back to fight some more), weird user interface where you had no idea what is for what without trying to click on everything. PvP dogfighting where you never have enough players and a massively steep learning curve exacerbated by grind (and originally microtransactions too) without which you can’t improve your ship or get a better one, so you are constantly cannon fodder for everyone else.

      And that was basically all – add a few arena-like locations (you couldn’t fly outside of a pre-designated area or you would be insta-killed) where you get killed within 2 minutes and then you can sit and wait for your turn again. There hasn’t been anything more to the game. Maybe the later patches have changed that but I think many have abandoned it at this point and just went elsewhere. It simply wasn’t fun.

      Yes, visually it was great looking title but there was simply no point in returning to it. Oh and each patch was like 25GB (no kidding!) download as well. Ridiculous, especially considering the amount of content and replayability in it.

      So this is something the folks from CCP need to blame only on themselves, not the VR market. They built something that was originally meant as a Rift demo and tried to sell it as a full blown game. It didn’t work.

      • AmazingTechVR

        They should look at the compeitition and ask themselves how have they managed to hit the top sellers chart? Content and pricing. Looking good isn’t what it’s all about. I actually played EVE Online for a very long time, but the VR version of it, as mentioned above, wasn’t a killer app. It’s a shame and lessons need to be learned, then improve on it.

    • I totally agree. I bought my copy at the PSVR’s launch, and at the time, it was the game I was most excited to play. When I actually played it though, within a few hours, I realized that this was a pretty lousy game.

      It took forever for CCP to patch the controller options to allow for customizing the layout, and I only know that they finally got around to it because after CCP’s people starting pissin’ and moanin’ about their game failing and not being able to admit that it was their own fault it failed, I actually loaded it up to check out what, if any, changes had been made since my last session. The controller options had been fixed, which was good, and they’d added a lot more ships and ship-classes, but there still lied the main problem… the style of overall gameplay, particularly the lack of a solid single player mode –which should have been the primary focus of the game with multiplayer mode being just an extra option, rather than the main point. IMO, CCP really blew it, thinking that we would want what they delivered. Sure, it tested well at shows early on, but that was because none of those testing it had time to get infuriated with it, unlike those of us that actually paid to play it.

      The funniest part, to me, is that I play “End Space” 10x as much as I play EVE:Valkyrie, and enjoy it much, much more, in spite of it being ported from a mobile VR original build. Valkyrie is a better game *now* than it was at launch, but CCP’s timing on withdrawing from VR development was a kick in the balls to those of us that bought it, wanting to see it improve. Rather than meeting demands, CCP decided to open the game up to non-VR players… like that was going to save it from oblivion. It’s those kinds of boneheaded moves that make me wish them to experience a hostile take-over. I’m sure they have some good code that would be much better off in the hands of a management team capable of some actual vision.

  • Schadows

    We expected VR titles to be two to three times better

    • FriendlyCard

      Or perhaps, we expected two to three times the amount of AAA big studio VR games.

      • cirby

        Considering that the most popular current game (Beat Saber) is one developed by a small Czech company, it’s pretty good evidence that the big studios are dropping the ball.

        • FriendlyCard

          Yes. Those corporate publishers/studios exist to make big money and please shareholders. Whereas small studios exist because they love to make games. That’s why there are so many AAA titles in the VR sector from small passionate devs, and most big publishers/studios generally stay away from “not-yet-profitable” vr.

          • cirby

            You might also note that at any given time, the big studios are the ones that used to be small studios that wrote games in genres or on platforms that weren’t the top sellers when they started.

          • FriendlyCard

            Very true

          • Excellent point. When Psygnosis originally published Shadow Of The Beast back in the early 90s, they were a fairly new company that wasn’t that well known. But by the time the PS1 dropped, Psygnosis was well known among console & PC gamers alike, and then Wipeout dropped, was fairly successful, and then about 2 years later, Wipeout XL dropped just shortly after the movie “Hackers” had hit theaters, and both had an early prototype of Wipeout in the movie (arcade scene, toward the beginning of the movie), and had Prodigy on both soundtracks right as they were hitting MTV for the first time.

            Now, Psygnosis has long since been bought up and absorbed by Sony in to several separate studios around the UK, and Wipeout Omega is one of the top 10 games on a VR platform. Prodigy is well known worldwide, thanks to all the above, and Wipeout has grown from a niche series over the last 20+ years into the shining example of what evolved into its own genre (combat racers).

            But yeah… some of the best VR titles I’ve played have been indie titles. I’d like the big publishers to take a more active approach to VR, but really, we’re not hurting all that bad with just a few of them involved and it’s helping to shape what the industry will evolve into over the next decade, already.

            Whatever happens next… these are exciting times indeed, especially for hardcore fans of VR gaming, because we’re here on the ground floor, helping launch a whole new generation of gaming by buying in as consumers. If there’s one thing we all need to work on though, it’s finding better ways to demo VR to those that have never experienced it, because as I was reading yesterday, apparently some people still don’t get that it’s a whole lot more than just strapping a monitor to your head.

    • Get Schwifty!

      Exactly – one of the best examples, Arizona Sunshine, shows that for the right development and format people will pay and play – but it has to be serious and enough put into it to warrant the time and hassle.

  • impurekind

    I think you expected too much too soon. VR is still in the high-end niche bracket right now, and even something like the Quest is still relatively expensive for a brand new gaming/entertainment platform that most people don’t know about yet and would almost certainly have to choose to purchase instead of something like a PS4 or Xbox One, rather than alongside–even as amazing at it is. If your core focus was on getting a lot higher multi-player numbers–in fledgling VR no less–then I think you just made a bad decision ultimately. But VR will get there in time, and not too long I expect.

    • MW

      Being expensive is one thing. Poor quality is another. It is just not worth the money for many. And it never will be with this altitude. Look on Pimax 8k hype . People want better VR.

      • jj

        so what games have you developed for vr? oh yeah none, thats why you assume its easy and why you think everyone can dedicate 100% of their time to it. it takes time and money, without concrete data on ROI, nobody can put 100% time and 100% effort into a vr game yet. just be happy and stop whining like a little bitch about things you don’t understand.

        You sound like a kid arguing about time travel. “Aww man these lazy ass companies haven’t figured out time travel yet! How hard could it be, those lazy bastards…” <— thats what you sound like.

      • MosBen

        First, what do you mean by altitude? I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but you use it in two posts and I don’t quite follow what you mean.

        Second, sure, people what “better” VR, but what they mean by better differs. People that already own powerful graphics cards, or who will be receiving shiny new RTX 2080s, want VR hardware that will push their machines to the limits in order to provide a maximum level of fidelity. Others, I would say likely more people, want VR that is affordable, comfortable to use, and easy to set up. And others still focus more on the development of interesting VR experiences that help define what the medium is capable of, and the language that goes into VR design. Sure, there’s overlap, but the number of people who are really being held back just because of SDE or FOV are pretty small.

        • Jistuce

          Altitude as in height, as in the bar doesn’t have enough of it.
          He’s saying they need to aspire to be better.

          • MosBen

            Using altitude for a given level of technological development isn’t something that I’ve seen before. I’m certainly not an expert, but I read a fair amount of tech press. Is it a common usage?

            To the substance of the point, well sure. This generation of VR isn’t going to be a set of mainstream products, and likely never was, given its limitations. The current generation of VR is good enough to be compelling; it shows that VR as a consumer technology can work. But the current generation is, even today, fairly expensive, non-ergonomic, difficult to set up, etc. It wasn’t crazy to think that millions of PC gamers that already had expensive machines, or people that buy the PS4 Pro would buy into VR, but that’s a fairly limited population of potential customers. There’s a reason that in the console world accessories that aren’t bundled with the system tend to fail; people just don’t invest in secondary hardware when they’ve already spent a lot on a gaming machine. That’s doubly the case when it’s still a developing technology that shows promise, but has a lot of improvements to be made.

            But Oculus, HTC, and others aren’t just sitting on their hands while wonderful, fully developed technology is just sitting there, waiting to be released. This sort of thing just takes time.

    • apoc1138

      To be fair the ccp games were shit. I got free access to valkyrie for the short time I had a rift and didnt spend more than 30 minutes playing it. By comparison games I have half a dozen games I paid for that I’ve spent 100+ hours on. The problem isn’t VR player numbers, its CCP’s utter crap they call a video game. “Because its VR” isn’t a reason to just put out a 3d version of asteroids and try to call it done. Its not the 1980’s anymore, gamers expect actual games.

      • gothicvillas

        I bought Valkyre on Steam on sale but I barely lasted 30mi tbh. I could have returned but thought I’ll take it on a chin in hope they make smthg else.

      • realtrisk

        Couldn’t have said it better myself.

    • ArSh

      If you produce a crap game with crap controls like Eve:Valkyrie, keep it exclusive to one headset for a year, and then try to flog it to others for $60 when it was already well past its sell-by date… Yeah, I wonder where it could possibly have gone wrong for these fools.

      • impurekind

        It certainly wasn’t a crap game.

        • DanDei

          It had good production values what was so basic on gameplay mechanics that it utterly lacked any longlasting appeal. They made a nice looking dogfighting game that felt boring and repetitive very fast. That is something a MP game can’t afford.

          • impurekind

            I would probably agree with that. I thought it was quite impressive to look at but I played it for maybe ten mins and then just never felt compelled to even boot it up again.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    They made a 425 million sale isn’t exactly a loss or bankruptcy.Seems like a smart move and the company who bought it believes in vr obviously so that means they will invest more time and effort into it.

    • impurekind

      Yeah, I’m thinking this is just an example of a company expecting too much too soon.

      I’d be lucky to have even a thousandth of their success, and I’ll almost certainly get way, way, way less than that.

  • Jar

    No, as an industry veteran himself, he did not make a bad decision.
    Going back 3 years ago the trajectory for VR seemed promising. One
    thing that happened all of a sudden was the Nvidia and Intel GPU/CPU
    monopolies going full retard amidst AMD trying to pull up to them. In the 3 years that followed, Nvidia postponed their GPU releases, raised prices, and snake oiled RTX. Intel double downed on postponing their CPUs (rip tick tock),
    raised prices, and had measly ~5-10% annual improvements. Bitcoin
    mining raised RAM prices to stupid levels. This all greatly raised the
    barriers of entry from a hardware perspective. We were supposed to have
    far cheaper VR hardware today but in many respects, current VR builds
    are about the same if not more expensive than mid 2016. To put it in perspective, we are still stuck on less than 4-core made games and its been a decade. Mobile VR could
    help but Snapdragon is, again, yet another monopoly by Qualcomm.

    • MosBen

      Promising is a bit ambiguous. There were analyst reports estimating several million HMD sales in the first few years, but that always seemed a bit too rosey to me. VR won’t hit the mainstream until it’s super easy for people to buy, set up, and use. Pretty much all of the early VR reviews talked about it being a pain to set up, and that a pretty robust PC was required. Even today, most off the shelf PCs aren’t going to be able to run VR, especially on the laptop side.

    • Muzufuzo

      PC tech in recent years has been stagnating heavily. Without paying more you can’t really get much more than 4 years ago (970 was 330$ and now 1070 Ti is 450$, RAM is more expensive, Intel CPUs have ridiculous prices). This means companies like Oculus cannot really offer anything new for PC VR as computer hardware would get too costly. What is necessary for VR to move forward are much much lower prices, much much better hardware. Without it, PC VR will keep being a niche and it won’t attract many /good/ developers.

    • Sandy Wich

      Good show old chap, hit the nail on the head.

  • MW

    Be carrfou man. For speaking the truth you may be called troll, pessimist, moron etc.
    The truth is that VR was killed (for now) by gridines. Instead of new inwentions, new hmds with better screens, we have two giansts milking old tech with altitude: no profit, no invention.

    • wcalderini

      I don’t think i like your altitude. :)

    • Andrew Jakobs

      And now back to reality.. Are you willing to spend $1000+ on a headset you need at least $2500 worth of GPU’s to drive? great if you can, but for mainstream that’s completely unrealistic..

  • Ombra Alberto

    The only reason VR does not take off is the lack of quality Hmd.

    When the wearable Hmd vr have the right quality the VR will take off.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      No, it isn’t the lack of quality HMD, it’s the lack of affordable GPU’s.. You need at least a 250+ euro GPU to drive the current headsets, and then you can even run most games only in lower settings.. Even I as a VR enthousiast am not willing to spend so much money on only a GPU.. And it’s the prices of the GPU’s that’s holding me back from buying even the current Rift or Vive. I’ve still got a lot of older VR headsets and the DK2, I thought the 240 euro’s I paid back then for my GTX760/2GB was already stretching the limit of what I thought a (not even) midrange GPU should cost. Current prices of GPU’s (and their power) is what’s holding VR back, not the headsets itself. IMHO current headsets need better optics (no awful godrays etc) and being able to adjust it to the user better (because THAT’S 90% of why people have motion sickness in VR, not resolution or fps).
      But for mainstream it certainly will take a few years before VR really will take off, when a headset like the Quest are available for $200..

  • Skippy76

    What do you expect?? It’s an overpriced seated cockpit shooter. Most people with roomscale don’t want to sit. Except maybe those weird simulator junkies. I think this game was over hyped and a lot of people were disapointed. The price is what turned me off. The VR community is not that small. Just look at REC ROOM. That’s what you call a sucessful title!! And it’s totally FREE!!

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Uhm, it’s a spaceship combat game, it doesn’t need roomscale, it’s a game where you sit in a cockpit… and hell yes, we also want those kind of VR games.. Even with roomscale I don’t want to have to stand with every game I play..
      You cannot compare a demo like REC ROOM to a game like Valkyrie, one developed to show/test the capabilities of API’s and the money coming in through other services, and a commercial game where the money needs to come from the game itself.
      Again, I’m really baffled by how unrealistic a lot of you guys here on Road to VR are.

      • Skippy76

        Dude.. you’re royally annoying!
        Do you need to reply to everyone that you don’t agree with???
        It seems you’re in the minority here. Everyone thought it was crap so why are you so bent on defending this overpriced title?
        For me, it’s the opposite. I didn’t buy VR just to sit on my ass to play simulators. I enjoy moving around and being immersed in the action.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Dude.. you’re royally annoying!
          well, that’s just exactly what I can say to you.. Not everybody bought VR to keep standing around and swaying their arms.. A lot of people bought them to be able to do BOTH!
          And I enjoy both.. Ofcourse I agree, the title was never worth 60 bucks (but then again, I don’t think most games are worth 60 bucks, certainly not ANY online-only game).

  • Mike

    4 years ago, there existed a lot of hype about VR and the future growth. This did not materialize for multiple reasons. For one, bitcoin mining fueled demand for high end GPUs, which seemingly outstripped demand by the top two producers. Prices remained very high for this critical VR component. If you price out a VR rig today, it is nearly the same as it was two years ago, despite advances and price reductions with Rift. As a result, the barrier to enter VR remained higher which damaged the adoption rate.

    On top of this, for whatever reasons, people don’t live in VR, they still spend much of their time in front of 2d phones and monitors.
    On top of this, new technology requires talented developers. VR is harder, not easier, than the existing platforms. I have launched titles under many platforms and it is a difficult medium to develop within.

    What is the result? Well, it costs a lot more to develop on a platform that still has a thin user base. This will probably change over the next two years, but for now, it would be a hard decision for any studio to devote themselves to this platform. I am willing to wager that the studio spent at least $2m on that title and they probably saw a fraction of that in return for their efforts. It is likely they lost money making their title. And on top of this, people freely criticize the effort or complain about the quality or cost.

  • Lucidfeuer

    This just in: the earth is round. And Kool Aid never changed the current reality of VR…

  • lnpilot

    It’s the graphics. 90+% of the screenshots of new VR games in my “Road to VR” newsletter have such bad graphics that they don’t make me want to click on them. I just scroll right through them.
    Movies promised us amazing graphics in VR, and we ended up with 1990s graphics, like in “Job simulator”.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      No, it doesn’t tell us anything..
      It’s expectations that’s just unrealistic. Ofcourse better resolution/optics/smaller would be great, but it’s unrealistic to demand that at this point in time, with GPU’s not even being able to drive the current headsets with the visuals you describe/expect, and certainly not at consumer prices..
      Yes, you might want to spend 3000+ euro’s on a headset and PC, but that’s not even close to what mainstream consumers are willing/able to pay for VR.
      GPU’s need to at least get twice as fast (as the current 2080ti), for the headset/visuals you expect/want.
      Again, be realistic. VR has progressed so incredibly fast the last 2-4 years in comparison to the years it took since the 90’s.

      • lnpilot

        You missed the point. As engineers, you and I understand the limitations, but non-technical consumers don’t care. They just see them as excuses. They saw amazing VR tech in movies, and the “reality” looks like crap, compared to that, so they are disillusioned.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          uhh, isn’t that what a consumer is used to? Most commercials show stuff that when you get it in reality it doesn’t look that good or doesn’t even work like they show.. And let’s not forget the hambuger commercials, and when you actually look at the hamburger you get when you buy one..
          Most people I talk to who are non-technical like the current VR headsets and think they’re cool, BUT they don’t want to spend so much money on them.

        • kool

          People are waiting on prices to go down and graphics to go up. I think this can be done with game streaming on a cheap headset!

      • kool

        I think you could achieve ready player one graphics now on a $500 headset with a gigabit internet connection and game streaming!

  • Unimpressed

    Lol please. I can tell you why Valkyrie failed. It had nothing to do with the market.

    – They locked their half-baked gamelet to the Oculus’ walled garden, preventing the rest of the market from purchasing it. By the time they released it to the rest of the market, it was too late. Seriously, a multi-player shooter locked to what was essentially the inferior experience back then (since it came without tracked controllers) was a terrible idea.

    – They released their game based in the EVE universe. Who gives a crap about the EVE universe other than EVE players? No one. If they instead released the same game dressed in Star Wars (think X-wing vs Tie fighter…in VR) it could’ve kept its player base for a lot longer. Hell, a game like that could’ve been the system seller VR needed
    – It did not have enough content to keep the player base in the game. Singleplayer was almost non-existent.

    -Mechanics weren’t that good, it was essentially a shooter that almost felt like it was on rails. Gameplay did not have any sort of variety to it

    It isn’t the market that failed here CCP, it’s you. You spent too much time on visuals and not much time on anything else. Admit that your shitty game was shitty and move on.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Uhm, Valkyrie doesn’t have any use for tracked controllers, it’s a space combat, all it needed was joystick support.

      There wasn’t anything wrong with releasing it in the EVE universe, as ofcourse everybody wants a updated X-wing VR version, but it’s not easy to get a license for using Star Wars properties.

      I guess you just have a different taste in games.. It’s not like x-wing wasn’t essentially a shooter that almost felt like it was on rails…

  • Bonzai Badger

    CCP will say anything because they have no spine when it comes to developing any IP, VR or not. Their track record for abandoning IPs speaks for itself long before VR even came out.

  • Bonzai Badger

    It’s a shame to see so many people buying into this BS article.

  • Ghosty

    It needs to be better and cheaper!! People don’t want screen door effects after playing on high def screens… We want to be able to enjoy movies in high def in VR and we simply can’t YET!! The tech still needs to get way better and fast… The funny thing is we have better screens now, we have eye tracking now, we have the ability for larger FOV now, we have foveated rendering now, we could have a much better second gen HMD now so what’s the hold up?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      We just don’t have the GPU power to drive the headsets you want with the AAA visuals you expect. For me the current headsets are good enough, especially since GPU’s still haven’t caught up with driving the current gen headsets (with that I mean, affordable prices, 250+ euro for an 1060/6GB is NOT mainstream prices, and that’s what you need as a minimum these days to have even remotely decend visuals for PC VR-gaming).
      We’ve been at much worse resolution/FOV headsets for over a decade before we actually got the better looking headsets we’ve got today.
      As long as it takes 1300 euro costing GPU’s to drive a 4k/90fps per eye headset (and hell even that card, 2080ti won’t be able to drive it properly with everything on max/ultra) it won’t be interesting to put a consumer PCVR headset on the market with those specs. In the real industrie it really doesn’t matter if a headset costs 2000+ but ‘consumers’ already bitch about the Rift/Vive prices..

      Yes, those headsets you want technically would already be possible, but not at a pricepoint of below $300 (anything above will already become enthousiastic consumer products), oh and that’s ofcourse including tracking and controllers.

  • (Roc) Wayne Alford

    Can someone help me.
    I have been checking up on all the MMO websites and none have info past 2018 are all mmo websites shutting down?
    We ahould see some article on this whats happening games everywhwere are shutting down

  • KOSTANTINOS KOD

    Nvidia amd and intel is the problem.Few days ago We watched a dud wearing leather telling a nice story about 6x-10x faster gpus and the end result is a 25% faster and 30%more expensive gpu. Also the attempt to extent profits selling the same tech for five years,from vr harware sellers did damage a part.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    If they had added single player campaigns (much like the original X-wing series), than Valkyrie would have been much more interesting.

  • Sandy Wich

    Things don’t just, “get big”, that’s a fantasy.

    Look how long Cell phones took to go mainstream. What… 20 years? And now they’re the biggest mainstream technology on the planet.

    VR was ~always~ going to be a long RnD and price reduction road. Either get on board and be a part of the future or don’t.

    Seriously just make a good traditional game that ports over to VR perfectly like Project Cars 2, Flight Sims, Skyrim/Fallout.

    FFS it’s not a hard concept to understand.

  • Justos

    Your games failed because they are boring, not because VR is too small/niche. If you (cpp games) could develop anything that wasnt eve online then you might have stood a chance.

    Seriously, whos bright idea was it to make a one trick pony multiplayer VR game? Its BORING. It was a launch title for Rift and and people still hated it. I spent < 1 hour in it because it sucked.

    Now that the BDO guys own you, fix your shit.

  • MosBen

    Yes, pieces within a piece of technology which was released a couple of years ago have been improved upon, but no company releases a new product the minute that one piece of that product can be upgraded. The next generation of VR is going to have better screens, but it’s also going to have lots of other improvements, many of which aren’t necessarily ready for prime time yet. I don’t know where you got the impression that the first generation of VR was only supposed to be a preview or glimpse, but as far back as I remember the upgrade cycle for VR was discussed as being somewhere between a cell phone (2 years) and a console (5-6 years), so a 2020 or 2021 release for the Rift 2 would be right in line with that. The second generation is coming, but these things take time.

    As for VR needing to be great visually in order to succeed as a mainstream device, the average consumer has very different conceptions of what good graphics look like than a tech enthusiast. If the next generation of top tier VR headsets had a minor increase in resolution, roughly the same graphical complexity, and widened the FOV just a little bit, that would be fine for most people if it meant that it was affordable, had better ergonomics, was easier to set up, didn’t require an expensive gaming PC, etc.

  • Raphael

    So CCP not the brightest buttonz then. VR has been pushed forward at a colossal rate since octopus DK1. We now have big name game developers routinely making VR games (Ubisoft, Bethesda etc, Croteam etc). If CCP ever make another VR game.. I won’t be buying. They’re not the first developer to blame VR rather than take a look introspectively. Ossic so-called 3d headphones recently shutdown and no-one actually received any units (although they created a fake story that some units had been sent to early backers). Ossic blamed VR and also said “it’s not just us… other developers are failures too”.

    I like Valkyrie. Most people didn’t. Why? Because they compared it to Elite Dangerous. They were disappointed it wasn’t “a full space sim” and that it lacked single player campaign. The final nail was the asking price: CCP kept the game at full price for the entire life of the game.. premium pricing. They only dropped that price when it was too late.

    I will never buy anything they create again.

  • Konchu

    There is a Hype Cycle that you can see in a lot of new tech its a spike at the beginning it droops then has a steady climb before becoming a way of life.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

    This is true for almost all tech. But I personally feel VR is too good to fail it just needs a little more time to move past the enthusiast market to mainstream. I really am excited for Quest for this reason. Quality cheap VR that is easy to use will energize this and make it go further I’m sure.

  • JonBishop

    Yea, I was excited about VR, so excited that I built a gaming rig and ordered the Rift for day one. My rift has been collecting dust for about a year, now. The problem is lack of a killer app to sell the technology. Still waiting on SoulKeeper VR to be re-released.

  • Maybe they believed too much the Superdata predictions. Analysts predicted a too much enthusiastic future for VR, something that has not happened and that has later on lead to everyone not believing in VR anymore.

    Just give VR the time it needs to become widespread