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> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base

The problem is that you're associating quality with only AAA titles. There are have been plenty of quality indie titles for years now.

> Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem.

I don't know about the oculus store, but there's already enough content with existing titles on Steam.

I agree that there have been plenty of quality indie titles but I think the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR. A major goal of VR is to recreate reality or some "reality", which requires well designed 3D models and animations. That being said I think there will be great indie experiences available, but they'll also be up against a limited user base when it comes to making money.

Another way to look at it is that the Oculus isn't just a peripheral, it's a platform. Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base, which in turn draws developers and subsequently a larger library which leads to more platform purchases.

Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR. The best experiences, and the ones that will drive sales will be designed specifically for VR.

Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.

I don't think that even AAA level models are good enough for VR. They have the "uncanny valley" effect -- they're close enough to looking good that they just creep you out and throw of that "presence" feel you're looking for. I think it's going to be a long time before you see human faces in VR.

So everybody, even the AAA guys, are going to be putting you into environments like cartoons, space and buildings rather than natural environments, and the people you interact with are going to be in vehicles or space suits or avatars or anything to avoid having to model a human face.

So, ironically, AAA budgets probably aren't going to be a hugely limiting factor, at least in the first wave of VR games, in my opinion.

In my opinion indie games don't sell platforms, AAA titles do.

Neither do. Good games sell platforms. Even better if they're exclusive and you can't find that experience any place else. Basically, you need a killer app. Who makes it is irrelevant.

I agree that AAA games have the marketing power to broaden appeal. However, indie gaming is becoming a powerhouse of sorts. Look at the Steam Top Sellers list at any time, and you'll usually see at least half the games listed there being indies. Currently, it looks to be a solid 50/50, although I'm sure the residual affects of the last Steam sale are there.

Something with the viral appeal of Minecraft, released for the Oculus, would be a massive draw.

Bought PS3 to play Journey :) Worth it.

> the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR

Well there are plenty of great 3D indie games as well, so it's a moot point.

> Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base

That happened generations ago. With the growth of the internet, now they're inefficient gatekeepers compared to the app stores, notably Steam. It's much easier and cheaper for developers of all sizes to make a release on an App Store. How this translates to gamers is that they get a lot more variety of quality content that risk averse giant publishers would never approve for release, let alone development.

> Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR

Yes, but this is a PC release with an audience that's accustomed to tinkering (mods, custom desktops, ...)

> Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.

When consoles like the NES, Genesis, PS One, Xbox, and the Wii were first released, you can say the same thing about plenty of 3rd party titles. That didn't turn off consumers from video games altogether.

You make some solid points, the key is the successful consoles had killer titles that provided awesome experiences and pushed the technology early (Sonic, Tomb Raider, Halo, Wii Sports, etc.) Also those consoles launched at (relatively) consumer friendly prices.

There is likely a market for cartoony style 3d games.

EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_video_games

You can also adapt many AAA games to 3d glasses with minimal issues. The physics and models are unchanged just a 'minor' change to the UI and renderer.

> The problem here is if developers will be able to make money creating quality experiences for Oculus if the userbase is tiny because no one can afford one. The user market is already being fractured by the different units available - if I develop a game for the HTC Vive (which supports room tracking) is it easy or even possible to port the experience to the Oculus?

The Vive will be as expensive and likely more expensive than the Rift.

> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base

Oculus has already paid for a number of Rift exclusive games. Expect them to keep doing that.

Oculus claims that the point of the Facebook acquisition was that they'd have infinity money. As both Oculus and Facebook assert that there's a blank check there, one would hope they've already also heavily invested in a high-quality software library. If not, they need to quickly start doing so. They could start a developer program where devs qualify for free or discounted hardware. They could even start their own game studio. Most other gaming hardware manufacturers do have their own studios and release their own games for exactly the reason you stated (ensuring that there are killer apps on their platform). Oculus has got to put that Facebook money to work!

I agree 1000%, at $600 we need to see some killer early titles and Facebook is absolutely in a position to finance them. Let's just hope they're NOTHING like farmville ;)

They have already started their own studios called Oculus Studios and Oculus Story Studio. There will be at least 20 Oculus Studios games released this year.

Companies have been developing content for Oculus for years now, with basically 0 market outside of the dev kits. The immersion of the experience alone makes fairly simple indie titles much more profound on the Rift than say a $200 million 3D movie, much less a big budget game.

As someone that plays Star Citizen regularly with my Oculus Rift (that I got as a backer in the original Kickstarter, with an SDK), the one thing they won't need to worry about is the games/experiences available for the device.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying the Star Citizen experience alone is enough to sell the Rift? How is the Rift experience for the FPS segments?

Yes, I believe for a certain kind of player, the SC experience is enough to sell a lot of Oculus Rift CV1 units. Obviously, this price point is above what most people would spend on a computer, let alone a peripheral. With respect to FPS, I don't know. I don't play FPS. :P

Star Citizen is of limited appeal, isn't a "AAA" title, and won't sell a platform.

Not to mention, it's only 1 game... for this to work, pretty much 99% of AAA titles need to be designed for VR (not just the "enable VR" checkbox).

Call of Duty Black Ops III was just released... no VR support. Battlefront was just released, same thing. These are the AAA titles that would bring support... but they aren't. (it also shows Facebook et al did a terrible job of convincing AAA studios to think towards VR... which could be a nail in the VR coffin in they don't come around on their own).

(and yes, I know there are ways to get both games to work with VR... but it's not native, and the game wasn't designed with VR in mind).

Given it can take 1-2 years to develop a AAA title, it could be a long while before we see it becoming the "norm". In the meantime, all of Oculus' competitors will be on the market, probably cheaper and better (due to learning from the first-to-market's mistakes).

If $105 million (and counting) in dev costs and hollywood actors is not AAA what is?

While budget does play into what makes a AAA title, it's not the only factor. Star Citizen is Cloud Imperium Games' first game... and it's still not a final release. They are an "indie" shop for all intents and purposes.

AAA status is usually reserved for big studios that produce many games of high quality(ish), and yes, with big budgets (GTA5 cost over $265 MM to create).

A parallel would be a big budget movie produced by Sony vs. Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars was produced by successful people within the film industry, but it's not on the same level as a full production.

> $105 million (and counting) in dev costs

Well, that's not in dev costs... that's money raised... and they're trying to bootstrap a company at the same time, so not all of that money will even go to the game development (unlike a big budget big studio development where literally every penny of their quoted budget is in development cost as the business is already established and earning on it's own).

While Halo was not Bungie's first game, Bungie was not at all a well-known developer at the time. But I think Halo on the original Xbox was very much a AAA game.

First person shooters probably won't make the transition to VR. Not without basically being redesigned from the ground up. The control scheme is just barf city.

(Although expect to see people playing FPSs on virtual IMAX-like screens in VR. A little bit of stable context can mitigate the nausea.)

But why are you counting the titles available today? The Rift hasn't even been released yet. Even if they are planning to adapt those titles, there's not much incentive for EA and Activision to rush their ports out.

> But why are you counting the titles available today? The Rift hasn't even been released yet

The development kits have been out for years. The failure to bring big AAA titles to the Rift at launch clearly shows one of two things:

1) Facebook et all were unsuccessful in persuading AAA studios to work with them on VR for relative lined-up launches.

2) Facebook et all did not try to persuade AAA studios to work with them on VR, instead opting for it to grow "organically".

Both are total failures for the Rift, and may spell disaster. For an expensive device like this, it needs several AAA titles featuring full support... they don't exist.

Part of this miraculous unplanned and very sudden firesale to Facebook was so that Oculus could have "virtually unlimited funds", which would be used to further the platform... Facebook could have easily subsidized AAA studios to produce full Oculus/VR support on their next title... but that clearly didn't happen.

You're assuming that all of the titles that will be available at launch have already been released. I think that's a bad assumption.

Right now they are limited by supply not demand. If they sold them at $1 there would be the same number in the hands of consumers at the end of the year. So I don't see how the high price could be resulting in not enough developer interest. If the VR experience can be something everyone want to try if they get a chance Oculus isn;t going to have any problems.