Facebook has purportedly spent at least $500 million to bring a wide range of content to its VR headsets. A portion of that investment was bet on big budget exclusive games, like Asgard's Wrath and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, which aimed to satisfy a craving for AA and AAA VR content among gamers. But how much impact did it have? While Facebook has funded a wide range of VR content, from 360 videos to non-exclusive indie VR games, the company has stated that a portion of the money it has spent on VR content was with the explicit goal of delivering larger AA and AAA titles to its platform that would attract gamers accustomed to seeing large scope, high production value content in the non-VR gaming world. These large titles represented many of the largest single bets the company placed on VR content, and indeed, many of the best-funded projects in all of VR, with some titles believed to have budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. Defining Scope Right up front it should be said that there's a number of different ways one could consider Facebook's Oculus exclusive content 'successful' or not. And, since we don't know the budgets of each game, there's not a clear definition for what even counts as the 'big bets' the company has made on content. I'll be clearly defining the assumptions made in order to answer these questions, starting with which games we'll focus on. First, we're going to be looking specifically at the Oculus PC store since the bulk of Oculus exclusive content was made for that marketplace, giving us more data to analyze. To look at the 'big bets', let's start by listing all of the games the 'Oculus Originals' section (and pulling in known 'Oculus Studios' titles that are oddly omitted). From there let's only look at titles with a launch price higher than $30, as we can use the launch price as a proxy for how much value the project was expected to be worth (and therefore a coarse indication of the budget). There's one exception to this rule which is the Vader Immortal games. I chose to keep all three in the list because they were released rapidly (all in the same year) and were effectively meant to form one complete $30 experience (in fact, on PSVR they are all sold as a single game with a $30 price tag). This leaves us with the following list of 25 'big bets' Facebook placed on VR games. Game Release Developer Chronos 2016 Gunfire Feral Rites 2016 Insomniac Edge of Nowhere 2016 Insomniac Eve Valkyrie 2016 CCP The Climb 2016 Crytek Robo Recall 2017 Epic Rock Band VR 2017 Harmonix Wilson's Heart 2017 Twisted Pixel The Mage's Tale 2017 inXile Lone Echo 2017 Ready at Dawn Arktika.1 2017 4A Games From Other Suns 2017 Gunfire Brass Tactics 2018 Hidden Path Marvel Powers United VR 2018 Sanzaru Dance Central 2019 Harmonix Journey of the Gods 2019 Turtle Rock Vader Immortal I 2019 ILMxLAB Vader Immortal II 2019 ILMxLAB Vader Immortal III 2019 ILMxLAB Stormland 2019 Insomniac Asgard's Wrath 2019 Sanzaru Sports Scramble 2019 Armature Lies Beneath 2020 Drifter Phantom: Covert Ops 2020 nDreams Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond 2020 Respawn Defining Value Now the question is, 'how do we determine if the bets Facebook placed on these games were successful'? From Facebook's standpoint, these large exclusive content investments were made to jumpstart its VR content library, and to show gamers that polished, large scope VR games were available and ready to be played. Thus, looking at 'value provided to customers' seems like a good approach to consider the 'success' of that proposition. Luckily, each customer has the opportunity to voice their opinion of a game's value by giving the game a rating based on their experience with it compared to what they paid. Here's how these 25 games stack up by user ratings: Game Release Developer User Reviews Lone Echo 2017 Ready at Dawn 4.70 Brass Tactics 2018 Hidden Path 4.69 Robo Recall 2017 Epic 4.68 Dance Central 2019 Harmonix 4.64 Vader Immortal I 2019 ILMxLAB 4.55 Asgard's Wrath 2019 Sanzaru 4.49 Stormland 2019 Insomniac 4.48 Journey of the Gods 2019 Turtle Rock 4.47 Edge of Nowhere 2016 Insomniac 4.44 Vader Immortal III 2019 ILMxLAB 4.40 Chronos 2016 Gunfire 4.39 Lies Beneath 2020 Drifter 4.35 Phantom: Covert Ops 2020 nDreams 4.34 Wilson's Heart 2017 Twisted Pixel 4.32 From Other Suns 2017 Gunfire 4.31 The Climb 2016 Crytek 4.27 Vader Immortal II 2019 ILMxLAB 4.26 Sports Scramble 2019 Armature 4.26 The Mage's Tale 2017 inXile 4.21 Rock Band VR 2017 Harmonix 4.03 Arktika.1 2017 4A Games 4.01 Marvel Powers United VR 2018 Sanzaru 3.88 Feral Rites 2016 Insomniac 3.83 Eve Valkyrie 2016 CCP 3.82 Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond 2020 Respawn 3.81 Comparing Value So now we have a way to gauge how players valued these exclusive games. But how do we determine if it was 'worth it' for Facebook to have made these bets in the first place? Clearly the goal of bringing these titles to market was to raise the value of the company's VR content offering. By comparing the rating of each exclusive to the average rating of all games released that year* we can get an idea of 'how much' each game added to or detracted from that year's baseline content quality. Game Release Rating Rating vs. Release Year Average Rating Edge of Nowhere 2016 4.44 +0.78 Chronos 2016 4.39 +0.73 The Climb 2016 4.27 +0.61 Feral Rites 2016 3.83 +0.17 Eve Valkyrie 2016 3.82 +0.16 Lone Echo 2017 4.70 +0.80 Robo Recall 2017 4.68 +0.78 Wilson's Heart 2017 4.32 +0.42 From Other Suns 2017 4.31 +0.41 The Mage's Tale 2017 4.21 +0.31 Rock Band VR 2017 4.03 +0.13 Arktika.1 2017 4.01 +0.11 Brass Tactics 2018 4.69 +0.62 Marvel Powers United VR 2018 3.88 −0.18 Dance Central 2019 4.64 +0.43 Vader Immortal I 2019 4.55 +0.34 Asgard's Wrath 2019 4.49 +0.29 Stormland 2019 4.48 +0.27 Journey of the Gods 2019 4.47 +0.27 Vader Immortal III 2019 4.40 +0.20 Vader Immortal II 2019 4.26 +0.06 Sports Scramble 2019 4.26 +0.05 Lies Beneath 2020 4.35 +0.28 Phantom: Covert Ops 2020 4.34 +0.27 Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond 2020 3.81 −0.26 * games with less than 100 reviews are excluded from the release year average to remove outliers So we can see that Oculus exclusives have a good track record at least of exceeding the average game rating in their given release year. Outliers: The low ratings of Marvel Powers United VR and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, are particularly interesting. It's easy to imagine that big budget games automatically get a boost to user ratings thanks to more resources for polish and presentation. But those two games are thought to be two of the three largest investments Facebook has made in Oculus exclusive content. What happened? To an extent, this means most of the exclusive content investments the company made have positively benefited the overall position of the content library. But 'how much' matters here too; this is the year-by-year breakdown: Year Average Rating Difference Among Oculus Exclusives 2016 +9.80% 2017 +8.44% 2018 +4.42% 2019 +4.78% 2020 +1.96% It's clear to see here that Facebook's efforts never managed to produce content which exceeded the release year's average by more than 10%, and the benefit of Oculus exclusives, against games released in the same year, dropped off steadily as time went on. There's two likely explanations for this. Either Facebook's bets were getting worse over time, or non-exclusive content was getting better over time. While it could be a combination of the two, it appears that the latter is the most significant factor, which we can see when comparing the average rating of games in the library each year to the average rating of Oculus exclusive games in the same year. Continue on Page 2: A Better Way? » A Better Way? The data shows us that Facebook's investments in Oculus exclusive content have positively benefited the content library early on, but that benefit shrank as time went on and VR games released in the library improved over time. But could the company have done more with the same money? Some have argued that Facebook could have made a greater impact by making a larger number of smaller bets, instead of a smaller number of big bets on games aiming for AAA scope. "When you fund a startup, your goal is to fund a company that will ultimately become a 'unicorn' (e.g. worth $1 billion). If you play the numbers game correctly, you can invest $10 million into 10 companies, and if just one of them becomes worth $1 billion someday, you've made your money back [...]," said indie VR developer Gerald McAlister, in a conversation with Road to VR prior to taking a position at Oculus. "This seems to be the approach that Oculus took: Invest several tens of millions of dollars into some big studios, and hope that what comes out is good. The problem is that their goals are not aligned with what startups want. E.g. Oculus does not care about making a large profit from their investment directly, but just a decent profit with the ability to have more good titles on their platform. By taking this approach, Oculus has ended up in a situation where of the [hundreds of millions of dollars] they've supposedly [invested in VR content] they have ended up with no games to get above a 90 on Metacritic (the highest rated is Lone Echo at 89 and the lowest rated is the recent Medal of Honor). They have a half dozen AAA games, but few with the quality the platform needed." McAlister believes the company would have made a greater impact in improving its VR content library if it had made many smaller bets. "This is where I say their approach should have actually been the opposite: split up [the content investment] and give it to a bunch of smaller studios [...]. Beat Saber has as high of a rating has Half-Life: Alyx, yet a fraction of the budget (more than likely). Superhot VR has an 83 on Metacritic, well above what Medal of Honor has, yet started as a game-jam game. Games like LOW-FI and Smash Drums are high risk, but also potentially high reward for Oculus in terms of what they bring to the platform," McAlister said. "$100,000 to an indie dev stretches much farther than I think Oculus and others realize, and would allow them to fund thousands of games in an instant. If just 1% of those games turned into another I Expect You to Die title, that would be 50 titles with higher scores than what Medal of Honor had. That's a major selling point for VR right now, and would likely open the flood gates in ways that most consoles haven't even seen before." Without knowing the exact amounts Facebook has spent funding various game, it's hard to conclusively say if their approach was 'worth it', or they would have been better off by spending the money in different portions. With Quest, Facebook opted to curate the headset's content library for the first time. The company said it believed it made a mistake in having an open store with Oculus PC, which led to too many low quality titles that customers found it difficult to find the gems. The curated approach on Quest has led to a smaller library of higher quality content compared to Oculus PC's larger quantity of lower quality content: [gallery td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="101694,101660"] However, to McAlister's point, only four of Facebook's 'big bet' games are among the 20 best rated Oculus PC titles today. Rank Name Rating (# of ratings) #1 The Room VR: A Dark Matter 4.89 (299) #2 Wolves in the Walls 4.83 (1,139) #3 Beat Saber 4.81 (15,137) #4 Moss 4.8 (932) #5 Until You Fall 4.73 (186) #6 Trover Saves the Universe 4.71 (302) #7 Lone Echo (Oculus Studios, 2017) 4.7 (4,851) #8 Brass Tactics (Oculus Studios, 2018) 4.69 (753) #9 I Expect You To Die 4.68 (1,251) #10 Robo Recall (Oculus Studios, 2017) 4.68 (11,336) #11 Electronauts 4.67 (103) #12 Racket: Nx 4.66 (112) #13 Space Pirate Trainer 4.64 (726) #14 Dance Central (Oculus Studios, 2019) 4.64 (341) #15 The Thrill of the Fight 4.63 (561) #16 Vox Machinae 4.62 (383) #17 The Invisible Hours 4.62 (224) #18 Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted 4.61 (655) #19 Bending the Light 4.61 (173) #20 BlazeRush 4.61 (780) While it's true that Facebook has bet big on some 25 titles, not all of the money it's spending on VR content has gone there. In addition to money that went to non-game content (like immersive video and other non-game media), Facebook has made efforts to reach smaller developers through Oculus Start and Oculus Launch Pad. Oculus Start is designed to give indie VR developers a direct line of contact with the company, and offer support, dev kits, software, and more. Oculus Launch Pad is a 'boot camp' style program which aims to increase the diversity of developers building content for VR. For Launch Pad, Facebook says it "may award competitive scholarships in the amount of $5,000–$50,000 to qualifying candidates that require additional financial support in taking their concepts to the next level." Though the funding that's flowing through such initiatives pales in comparisons to the 'big bets' Facebook has made. The latest we've been able to find is that the program has distributed some $900,000 in grants across 37 projects (~$25,000 on average per project) from the start of the program in 2016 through early 2018. It's a drop in the bucket (0.2%) compared to the $500 million Facebook said it committed to funding VR content. - - — - - With Facebook resetting its VR ambitions with Oculus Quest, it has a rare chance at a do-over. While there may be lessons to learn from its first attempt, so far we're seeing the company continue to lean into big bets on exclusive VR content.