Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

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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).

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.

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.

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