Earlier this month we saw a slew of new Oculus Touch game announcements. Many of these new VR titles, which benefit from funding or publishing (or both) by Oculus, will launch exclusively for the Rift and Touch. And while the company has come under fire for that practice in the past, Oculus’ Head of Content defends the decision as the right approach to get the VR market moving.

Last month’s Connect 3 conference saw the reveal of ambitious (and exclusive) new VR content for Oculus Touch, like Robo Recall, Arktika.1, and Lone Echo. With $250 million already invested into VR content and another $250 million on the way, the company shows no signs of slowing its strategy of exclusivity deals.

jason-rubin
Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus

Jason Rubin is the Head of Content at Oculus, and a veteran of the videogame industry. Known for his work on the Crash Bandicoot franchise and founding of studio Naughty Dog, Rubin has been around the block, and contrasts his experience in the early days of the videogame industry with what’s happening today in virtual reality.

Speaking with Road to VR at Gamescom 2016 earlier this year, Rubin laid out the company’s decision to aggressively invest in VR content, often in exchange for exclusivity agreements.

“A lot of the games you see here today are larger than would be practically financeable by developers and publishers at the launch of a hardware system. When you’re talking about VR, you’re talking about a new hardware that has no past analogue, there is nothing that can be ported well onto VR. There are games that work ok like Project Cars for controller. But when you talk about hand-tracking, there’s nowhere those sorts of games can come from,” Rubin said. “By definition you’re shipping into a zero-person install base when you ship this new hardware. For developers to make large leaps of faith—to do multi-million dollar projects—it simply doesn’t happen without the hardware manufacturers believing in their hardware and believing in the ecosystem and helping those developers out with large grants. There’s no other way that Wilson’s Heart, Chronos, or The Climb gets made.”

Rubin speaks to the chicken-and-egg conundrum of getting developers to make content for a platform with no customers, or getting customers to buy a platform with no content.

“Once those games are out there [customers] say, ‘Oh, there’s great stuff out there. I’m going to buy into VR. I get it now, I understand why I want to play.’ Then they buy the systems, and they’re now an addressable market,” he said. “Then the second or third generation of developer doesn’t need our money. They can see there’s an established userbase there built by first generation games, they can build a bigger title than they would have otherwise because there’s now enough consumers to buy their game. That’s the only way these systems work.”

SEE ALSO
Survey: 78% of AR/VR Developers Not Planning Platform-exclusive Content

Looking back at his experience in the early days of the videogame industry, Rubin suggests that not aggressively funding VR content through exclusive deals would mean painfully slow growth for the VR space.

“The other way to [create a sustainable customer/developer ecosystem], is to do it the way PC originally did it which started 30 years ago; I was making games when the PC came out. The way you do it is, you put it in a ziplock bag, you put it on the shelf, somebody buys your ziplock game, and the addressable market gets a little bigger. [Then] you make a better game that you put in a very cheap box and over time it gets to $100 million games. It took 30 years. We don’t want [VR] to take 30 years,” Rubin explained. “We want this generation to race forward. Because we don’t have the luxury that the PC market had, where it was the best-looking thing out there. Well, we’re going up against Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. [Gamers] have the ability to play these triple-A games. So if we don’t compete visually [and] depth-wise, if we don’t jump out there and give them great games to play right off the bat, we may never have what the PC had. We may never have the stepping stone. What we are doing now is the only way to viably jumpstart the market.”

Rubin points to the Oculus store and its library of games as proof that the approach is working.

“There have been a lot of suppositions from various parties who haven’t wanted to fund [VR games] about how it could happen elsewhere, or their particular methodology for getting [VR] to spread, but the proof of any system is in its results. The proof is there in our system—funding developers—that’s creating next generation content that other systems have not.”

If the exclusive titles Oculus has helped fund weren’t any good, there probably wouldn’t be much backlash from the community. But it’s clear that some of VR’s most substantial titles are found on Oculus’ platform, even prompting the creation of ‘Revive’, a hack that allows some Oculus exclusive games to be played on the HTC Vive. When the hack was patched by Oculus, outrage from the VR community prompted the company to backpedal on their approach to DRM.

SEE ALSO
Platform Politics: Inside the Oculus and 'Revive' Dilemma

Meanwhile, Sony has taken a similar approach with exclusive funding of VR content for PlayStation VR but rarely sees the level of criticism directed at Oculus. That’s likely due to the fact that platform exclusive titles are a norm in the console space, whereas PC has long been seen as an ‘open’ platform.


Additional reporting by Scott Hayden

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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."
  • DiGiCT Ltd

    Exclusive only works if the developers get paid out much more as they actually would sell.
    Else developers only would loose money if their game will not sell good enough trough oculus store, as you dont know how many of the rift owners actually going t buy your game.
    I would either call it a buyout title instead of an exclusive.
    Of course they can do this as it is their money they spend and any dev can choose to go that path.
    Is it good to do ?
    I don’t think so as there is one big reason missing…
    As a developer I personally disagree, as i think and have the strong opinion the first rule of making a game is because you love it ! And if you love the game you really would like to share that happiness with many other gamers, as it is just the most awesome feeling for a dev to see so many gamers enjoying your creation, which is not measurable with any money.
    Second those huge investments are from the past, as game engines are already for free and many tools needed for developing games are free too.
    The only thing that does not come for free is the time a dev needs to spend on making it and equipment/office space.
    SO sorry oculus dude, i don’t agree and i think you lost your gamers attitude too and became a cooperate asset with dollar sign in the eyes.
    But hell yeah i cant blame him for that as it is just a job and shareholders keep pushing to more dollars all the time.
    In life you simply cant expect to be rewarded well if you did a bad job, giving people satisfaction does…. and this policy does not satisfy people at all.

    End this year 1 or 2 of our games will hit early access, no investment funding but rather hard working every day for it.
    We would like to add the rift but that for sure be delayed due to need to have the motion controllers for it which might be January for us, so Vive will be first to enjoy it.
    And none of our titles will ever be exclusive, simply because the fact we strongly want it to be for any gamer which want to play it, thats the purpose of games.

    Don’t think your 30 years is a lot of experience Rubin, as i have over 36 years of it, sure made money with it, but still priority is quality over quantity, something you seem to have lost over all those years.

    I hope and think many gamers and developers feel the same about it.

    • DM

      so your 36 years experience is valid, but someone else’s 30 years is not? ok…..

      • DiGiCT Ltd

        The point is not the years, the point is that he seems to have forgotten why you make games.
        His story become like business wise only, which was for sure not 30 years ago the thing as less people had access to computers and games that time, it was only available for people with some good income and parents willing to buy that kind of machines for their kids.
        For me it seems he lost it in 30 years, as all talks only about money.
        As in a way he says they are “exclusive” because they paid for it.
        On the other hand you also say you dont want to share good games with others unless you buy their device.

        Maybe you get the point if i tell you like.
        Exclusive music in a bar.
        Exclusive movie in a cinema.

        You like it ?

        The game itself is already exclusive as somebody made it and it is their game and their creation, it has nothing to do with oculus.
        Keeping it on a platform and exclude others from enjoying it is IMHO not reasonable.

        The years difference is only to state that one thing never changed, and that is simply people play a game because they love it, it has never been about money and exclusive.
        I can tell you that at least i learned from all those years, and also seen a lot of games collapsing in the time consoles went online and mobile games came to live.
        Just look at what you see nowadays being released, so many rubbish, just because someone thinks to make some easy money quickly.

        • Xron

          I guess without oculus support developers wont even try to make game at the lvl they make it with oculus support, so oculus gets some rights on this game.

          • Get Schwifty!

            That is the point. I get the “develop with a passion” argument, but the reality is it’s a business at the end of the day and there are other factors. Oculus isn’t trusting the fickle developer market to fiddle around with doing what’s “fun” and what they “love” and leaving relatively unpolished games coming to market, hindering VR-adoption in the process. Will the games be of the quality someone just does it for the love of it? in some cases yes, because the “art and love” shine through, in some cases no.

            Consoles actually prove the point, like them or not (I personally don’t but I don’t begrudge the reality they exist). Exclusives matter, and people sometimes make decisions wrapped around them (in this point I simply disagree with DigiCt) In the short term there is a need to establish quality content at a level that is necessary to give VR adoption a good shot. “Butts the VR Experience” for example, while it has artistic merit, is not likely to inspire many people to jump on VR as it is too different and not really a serious experience.

            Exclusives are nothing new, I find it a bit strange that Vive-supporting people are really so obsessed with them currently as there is plenty of content on Steam.

      • delrael_death

        I see by this intellect-less face on the photo that he indeed has 30 years of experience.(He doesn’t.)

    • whitedragon101@gmail.com

      “Second those huge investments are from the past”

      We want to get to AAA VR games as fast as we can. AAA games cost tens to hundreds of millions. Check the cost of GTAV, Call of Duty etc

      “a cooperate asset with dollar sign in the eyes”

      Making hugely expensive games requires keen focus on the return value.

      “Don’t think your 30 years is a lot of experience Rubin, as i have over 36 years of it”

      Experience and sucsess are two different things. He is one of the most respected game producers and was head hunted by one of the Richest companies in the world to join a team of some of the most talented and qualified games industry/tech industry people every assembled.

      Also you seem to be about the love of the game which is to be applauded so I googled your company. Digit makes Kings of the Realm. People seem to like the game so no problem there. But how does it earn its money? Does it encourage players to play for the love of it, or is getting their money a driving force? Here is an extract from a review :

      “Pay to win is the name of the game at later stages where players would be better off comparing bank accounts,”
      and another
      “there are some players who are paying more than 500 usd per month inside these alliances and they shape the game”

      This doesn’t make you evil. You made a game where people keep paying you to progress faster or be more powerful in the game. Not the best player experience as real money = power in game but its a model shown to be very profitable. As much as I don’t like this business model I don’t have to buy it. Oculus pays for games to be made and sells them to its hardware customers. Not that evil either.

    • Graham J ⭐️

      Totally agree – well said!

  • Me

    What bugs me is the argument that you need to see AAA games to get into the system. To me it’s the chicken/egg argument all over again, and it makes no sense.

    I went into VR – and chose the Vive – not because of the AAA experience, even if I wouldn’t mind getting more of them – but because I think I understood pretty soon the huge potential of this new medium.

    If you look at what people are raving about these days on reddit for instance, it’s not about AAA experience, but about new mecanisms, new experiences, new gameplays.

    Sure everyone likes what’s shiny, but I think I’ve never seen a group get bored so fast with genres already seen in 2D. Platformers, FPS, Wave shooters, etc… what was a guaranteed success in non VR is no more in VR. It’s truely uncharted territory and this is what makes it so exciting, not overused IPs.

    On the PSVR side, if you read here and there, people are the most amazed by indie games like thumper, even if they were “lured” to VR by AAA licenses at first.

    • Raphael

      Non-vr kiddies use the “no AAA ganes” as the basis of their attack on VR. “no games” cliche rhetoric. I actually have the stuff I need for VR… DCS World, Elite, Pcar, VR porn, Virtual desktop, anything else is a bonus. Having fun getting into Raw Data at the moment.

      AAA will come gradually.. Ubisoft with their Eagle Flight is a great start. I’m not convinced Croteam’s Serious Sam is worth buying at the price they want given it’s just a wave shooter. Alice VR looks like it could be great. I do think there’s a hell of a lot of amateur trash flooding steam now though. Games that don’t even deserve to be called games. That kind of low quality experience from sub-par bedroom coders doesn’t help VR at all.

      • Me

        Yes, Steam VR should definitely clean up a bit the Vive offer and put more categories to separate games from experiences, technical previews from finished stuff, filters to remove early access for instance.

        • DiGiCT Ltd

          Steam VR is not a platform but an SDK, read my article above.

          • Me

            Whatever, replace this with Steam period if you want, the idea is the same.

          • DiGiCT Ltd

            The “whatever ” attitude clearly does not sound convincing you know what you are talking about.
            I can understand your an end user on VR.

          • William A. McDonald

            Actually with Steam VR (Open VR) you don’t need steam to sell or play your game….

        • matnojje

          I agree i have been starting to use Vive port just because its easier to filter out stuff.

    • ✨EnkrowX✨

      That might be fine for you, but all of the indie VR content for the vive was just boring and unimpressive to me. I have yet to try a vive game I wouldn’t refund after 30 minutes.

      This is why after trying both headsets, I went with the rift. The HMD itself is far superior (the vive also does not fit on my small head) and all of the games I want to play are either on the Oculus store, or coming to the Oculus store.

      • Bryan Ischo

        Which Oculus games do you play that are so much more awesome than the Vive games? I didn’t see any myself, but I haven’t looked in a couple of months.

        • ✨EnkrowX✨

          I really enjoy EVE Valkyrie, DiRT, Elite, Adrift, and Technolust are cool, I use virtual desktop a lot too.

          I know these aren’t all “exclusives”, but they are all available on the Oculus store, as previously mentioned.

          They’re also all sitting experiences- I wasn’t sold on roomscale at all after trying lots of vive games, and won’t be buying the third camera for touch. In my experience, roomscale is a gimmick which developers are unsure how to properly utilize, is a pain to setup (if you can find the room), and adds very little to the games.

          • DougP

            Re: “In my experience, roomscale is a gimmick” / “adds very little to the games”

            “gimmick” – That’s very interesting to hear.

            For me it’s exactly the exact opposite. I *know* intellectually that there are decent *sitting* games, however, after experiencing true presence / full immersion of room-scale, I just can’t bring myself to play non-room-scale games.
            I want to be standing/walking & interacting in my “virtual world” (/holodeck type experience) & the moment I’m sitting or at my keyboard (or non-VR game on monitor) I feel like I’m “in prison” again.
            The freedom of room-scale is what sold me on VR & I don’t think that I’ll really ever be going back to seated w/controller/keyboard type games. I even quite playing Fallout 4, which I love, to wait until the VR version comes out next year. Similarly, I haven’t played much of Doom 4…as I want to wait for VR.

            The only way that I can imagine a seated game, is along the lines of some you mentioned (EVE & DiRT) – where it’s a *cockpit* type game & your avatar/character is meant to be seated.
            However, even for those I’m looking at getting:
            1) something like the roto vr chair – so I’ll still have *motion* in VR, like when I’m standing/moving to create presence/feeling of full imersion
            2) specialized input – steering wheel & HOTAS

            Anyhow….very interesting to read completely different preferences & conclusions from the same base input/info.

            To each, his own – for some people, Rift’s “seated & ~180-degree” approach seems to have a market.

            For many of us – room-scale is exactly the opposite of a *gimmick* & is instead now necessary!

          • ✨EnkrowX✨

            Well I do have a HOTAS, rudder pedals, a wheel/pedal/shifter set, and a Recaro chair, so that’s what I use with these cockpit games.

            My introduction to VR was a short demo of EVE Valkyrie, which is fairly simple when compared to other games like Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. Still, I was sold. My mouth was watering at the thought of hooking up some dedicated controllers to it.

            On the other hand, the vive games I’ve tried were cool as demos, but none of them had me wanting to come back for more. None of them had me thinking, “I NEED a vive”, or “I want to play this again”.
            As a whole the vive reminded me of the wii- the motion controls, like roomscale, were cool. But past that initial “shock value”, they both didn’t do anything for me.

            A large part of it is probably just the games I play; I don’t really like the FPS genre. I’d also rather spend 40 hours in one game than one hour in 40 games. This is probably a large reason of why the content of the vive falls flat for me, there is an abundance of short FPS games and not a whole lot else, at least from what I’ve seen/been shown.

          • DougP

            Re: “HOTAS, rudder pedals, a wheel/pedal/shifter set, and a Recaro chair” / “A large part of it is probably just the games I play”
            Yeah…that makes a lot of sense for the games you play.
            I’ve come to VR from the FPS, even for storied/adventure titles that’s what I’ve mostly played…so with Vive the likes of Raw Data, Island 359, or Vanishing Realms are more my speed.
            So if I’d been playing more seated/cockipt games, I could def see the appeal of the Rift.

            However, I’m hoping to get into more seated (https://roadtovrlive-5ea0.kxcdn.com/longer play session) type games. I’ve seen quite a few pop-up that I’ve just held off on trying, as even after ~6mos I’m still *hooked* on standing & room-scale. But I’ll get to the others some day. :)
            When I do, I’m taking the financial plunge – HOTAS, Wheel & then (most likely) a Roto VR chair …as I feel the lack of actual *movement* will make me feel like I’m missing something in VR. The roto seems like a great seated compromise – at least there’s that turning momentum.

            There’s also the “long play session” fatigue. Which on one hand is a great thing for health – picture are pre-conceived notion of a fat nerdy gamer who doesn’t move, actually getting up & dancing around a room to fight bad-guys/go on an adventure…. the reports & demonstrations online of losing weight in room-scale/standing VR.
            But…. I do see that for many really long-session games, seated could wind-up being a better option. For myself, I just rarely get enough time to play more than “an hour or two” anymore & titles I play are fine in “bit size”.
            Once I get into say Elite Dangerous or the next Skyrim type adventure… & can put in many hours long play, seated sounds like way to go.

            Nice that we have options.

          • Pepitopalotes

            Adds me to lose 20kg, get fit and have fun all together. So enjoy your chair

      • DougP

        Re: “the vive also does not fit on my small head”
        Wow – that’s rather shocking to hear.

        Are you an adult?
        If so – is this due to a medical condition/otherwise not typical head shape/size?
        Genuinely curious how a Vive couldn’t fit an adult’s head.
        I routinely have our friends children playing comfortably using my Vive, ages ~13, ~11 (?), and 7yo.
        The 7yo has spent literally hours in play sessions & not had issues.

        • ✨EnkrowX✨

          Yes, I’m an adult, and I have no conditions regarding my head size.

          I just can’t get any vive to fit comfortably and hold focus.

          However the rift (which I have on a very small setting) fits perfectly, and the OSVR HDK2 fit me as well.

          • DougP

            Thanks for confirming. I was curious because I think that my head is probably on the med-sml size & I hadn’t had issues….but seeing our friends 7yo in Tiltbrush for ~2hr straight ( we had to pry the controllers from her, as she was hooked on VR drawing ) I recall thinking – wow, this really does fit anyone.

            I do wonder if you didn’t have it strapped down tightly or some such, since you mention focus.
            Also, I’ve found that with any VR hmd, due to the small “sweet spot” that you really get used to moving your head instead of darting your eyes far off-center (again -true for all VR currently with this gen of lenses).
            Glad you found something that fits you better.

    • Brian

      exactly.. if you’re around 30+ years old you understand. the haters call all the current vr games “arcade games.” why is that bad?

      do they ask why or think about it? arcade games STARTED the gaming industry. they were made because they were simple to create and they fit the platform. the gaming industry would not be here if it wasn’t for arcade games.

    • OgreTactics

      That’s a non-debate. We don’t even know how FPS games would work, let alone AAA games in VR.

  • guest101

    Cornering the market =/= investing in PC VR

    Facebook is trying to build their own ecosystem on PC and is just using VR as a mean to meet their ends. If they don’t make the games exclusive, no one would buy their headset. This has no bearing on the success of PC VR, but only the success of their ecosystem. In fact, if games are not exclusive it would speed up the growth of PC VR even further. They should just be honest.

    • Get Schwifty!

      To say no one would buy their headset without game exclusivity can’t be correct because people already do buy the headsets when next to no exclusives exist (and frankly before anyone even had a list of upcoming ones) and also the fact Rift owners have access to all Steam content and other VR media. The reality is Rift owners get the best of both worlds, it’s only the folks who opted for Vive who are so bent out of shape. Never mind that if a game is made for Vive there is no guarantee of it being released to support Oculus Touch for instance, but no one complains about that since they perceive it as a given that it will work for Vive controllers. Adopters of either platform are making decisions they have to live with.

      The point about exclusives hampering growth of PC VR is true IF and only IF the quality level is there without them, and that is a gamble FB/Oculus isn’t taking (agree with them or not). If Oculus is right (and I think they have a point) that they are needed currently, then it’s a good idea. If OTOH, Valve/Steam has enough content made by developers then it doesn’t matter and there is no point in all this bitching about Oculus exclusives except people just plain want access when they opted for their platform of choice.

      • DoubleD

        If a game is made for Vive and isn’t ported over to oculus, it will probably be a technical issue.
        While the other way around it will probably be a Oculus trying to hog all games issue.

        Both Facebook and Valve are funding game developers to create VR content.
        But only Facebook is demanding exclusives from it.

        These exclusives aren’t helping the VR market.
        They are only helping the investors of the device they are exclusive on make more money.
        This is with consoles as well as with VR headsets.

    • DougP

      Well said!
      The mental gymnastics / cognitive dissonance of the Rift fans (/Valve or HTC haters) is amazing.
      Their defence translates to something likes this:
      “You see – if devs could sell games to possibly TWICE as many gamers… or people weren’t forced to sit-on-fence waiting for a *winner* in these necessary VR wars – VR would lose!”.

  • Wassoll Das

    —-

    • delrael_death

      Hopefully Oculus saleas are much worse than Vive’s. The only thing that keeps Oculus afloat is dirty Facebook’s money.

      • Get Schwifty!

        Not really, but if it makes you feel good to think that by all means please do. If you are correct then exclusives don’t matter and mean old Facebook’s funding for Oculus will mean nothing. Your first comment betrays the fact you see that the reality is likely otherwise. The numbers right now put them at about a 60/40 split, worst case 65/35, and that is likely to even out in near term as Touch is released and the “lack of room scale” issue is finally put to rest. Why you would push for a near monopoly by Valve/HTC is beyond me, that will not help push VR adoption ultimately.

        • PrymeFactor

          You are wasting your time arguing with irrational people.

          If These games would never have been made without Oculus funding, then there no issue with them making it exclusive.

          As long as they aren’t blocking ReVive, why this desperation to make your purchases just from Steam, for example?

          Vive owner? Buy from Oculus store and use ReVive. Does it have exclusive Touch features? Too bad.

          • Kevin Walker

            I’m not disagreeing with your whole comment, but where you say “why this desperation to make your purchases just from Steam”.

            Personally I want to have everything on Steam. Not just because everythings in one handy place, but also for future use. I have an Oculus now, but what if I buy everything on Oculus Home, then next generation I decide to go for Vive or something else. Suddenly I can’t play any of the games I’ve payed for (OK maybe some with a hack). Whereas if I get them on Steam, in most cases I can use them with whatever.

            This is why even as an Oculus user, I don’t like Oculus exclusives. I understand why it happens, and in a world that revolves around money it makes sense, so the real problem here is capitalism. Only in a world this fucked up would developers (who are essentially artists creating art) be happy about limiting their audience. Bring on the resource based economy.

            Sorry I didn’t mean to get political when I started writing this, It just drifted that way.

          • Get Schwifty!

            That’s a fair criticism I think, but at the same time there is little question in the long term these “exclusives” will be available on every platform, i.e. Rift and Vive, and whatever other platform comes into play on the PC. I suspect that once the Touch hits and the natural uptake on the market most of the existing games will be patched to support them.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            And that’s just like the way with a lot of VR-games on Steam, they are Vive exclusive due to using exclusive Vive controllers, but the vive owners don’t bitch about that, as it’s their preferred platform.. And it’s HTC that’s not supporting the Oculus platform, not the other way round..

          • Brian

            you’re missing the point.

            those games are never coming to the rift.

            most oculus home games are on steam.. later you can switch from rift and vive if you want or use both.

            if you buy games on oculus home, if you switch to a vive later, you cannot play any of the games that you already bought on home. if you bought them on steam and the game supports rift, it will still work.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            So you think Steam monopoly is a good thing? And that’s exactly what Valve wants and it’s what drives them, they don’t care about users at all, it’s all about getting people to buy through their platform as that’s where their money comes from..

          • bschuler

            Wait, Steam don’t care about users? So the first of it’s kind refund policy, the green light initiative to develop more games, all the payment options, chat abilities, friend tracking, in game recording and screenshot, etc features.. They didn’t make any of that for us users.. they made it only for themselves and to get people to buy through their platform. How dare the…Wait.. even if true.. I think I can live with that. Yeah.. does not sound that bad after all.

          • Get Schwifty!

            If they are really “good”, lets see them push for Oculus Touch controller integration into existing and future games…. then I will agree.

          • DougP

            Re: “If they are really “good”, lets see them push for Oculus Touch controller integration into existing and future games”

            You don’t seem to understand what Steam actually IS.
            It’s a distribution system (/marketplace).
            “Steam” isn’t making all of the games that are sold there nor is it their job to “push for” *anything*.

            Should they “push” certain developers to support a certain webcam/headset/other hardware integration?
            No – leave that up to devs & user demand (market).

            You’re viewing Steam the same Facebook’s approach – whereby the VR hardware/system is completely intertwined with the distribution.
            Also….answer me this, how many Vive games can I purchase on Oculus Home? Are you expecting Facebook to “push for Vive controller support” in Touch-enabled games?

          • Get Schwifty!

            To answer, Steam and Vive/HTC have a cozy relationship. Is it identical to Facebook and Oculus? No, of course not.

            OTOH, no doubt that if Steam is helping promote VR development I have a hard time believing they give Rift equal focus as they do Vive. No question in my mind Steam/Valve have input on what platforms get supported, you’re kidding yourself if you think they are just a distributor with no bias here towards HTC/Vive. This can (and does) influence the likelihood of Touch support in games destined for Steam in the first place, I am certain those games are getting Vive focus first and more than just the current number of Vive-to-Rift adopters.

            As for how many Vive games you can buy on Oculus, none as far as I know, at least not _yet_. I suspect in time once they feel that VR is rolling down the tracks well enough they will open it up.

          • DougP

            Re: “Steam is helping promote VR development I have a hard time believing they give Rift equal focus as they do Vive”
            Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter.
            Steam = a distribution platform. Valve makes money off of ALL games sold through it.
            Valve’s also been pushing for VR for quite some time, seeing that as the “next step” in PC-gaming evolution. They were right. However, they aren’t interested in hardware-locked exclusivity – that would equal LESS sales for them.

            A great example is that SteamVR is hardware agnostic. As well you’ll see all the Oculus games distributed on Steam. As well you’ll hear from the great many devs which Valve has supported & promoted who support both platforms – they’ve specifically said that Valve was clear they didn’t care who’s hardware they were developing “for” & never promoted one or another – particularly when it’s easy to dev using the likes of SteamVR / unity or unreal engines & make them work on multiple HMDs without much work.

            See OSVR working fine alongside Vive.

            Just because we know Facebook’s been doing this…don’t project those (incorrect) ideas on Valve & Steam model.

            If you want to make comparisons…you’re barking up the wrong tree with Valve & Steam – go ahead & compare Oculus with HTC (funding games for Vive) & the likes of Oculus store & Viveport – THAT *IS* comparable.
            But you’re wrong about Valve & Steam.

          • John Horn

            They just recently declared they are working on proper DS4 support – which made me happy, as that’s the only gamepad I have.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            It’s all done to get users to their platform, greenlight is done because it was taking too much resources to check it all themselves.. So yes, everything they do is done to get more games sold through steam..

          • Get Schwifty!

            Saying those game are never coming to Rift is the same problem; you bought into a platform either way… the result is the same if the controller integration isn’t equal. Saying a game “doesn’t support Rift” is tantamount to saying an Oculus exclusive “doesn’t support Vive”. Ultimately its the same outcome based in large part on your choices. All I really hear is Vive users want Oculus content on their systems, but when the shoe is on the other foot, well, you know, “those games are never coming to Rift’…. oh, really…

            And I understand your purchasing point on Steam, if that bothers you that much don’t use Oculus Home or forego the exclusives and buy only Steam games; you can do that all day with your Oculus and Steam if you prefer and you are covered. Oculus can create exclusives all day, your job is just to decide if you can live with that or not.

          • DougP

            Re: “why this desperation to make your purchases just from Steam”

            Why would you think Vives only run software distributed on Steam?
            I’ve got many titles from other sources: other game sale websites, direct company websites, etc.
            This is exactly what we want & expect on PC – NOT to be forced into a single distribution.
            Facebook tipped there hand with wanting to own/control distribution (& pricing) with the GearVR & Oculus Home. Effectively blocking people with Android & GearVR from running Google Cardboard.
            I experienced this myself. Quite annoying!

          • Get Schwifty!

            Well said… I personally believe probably 90% of all VR content will support both HTC Vive and Oculus over the next 10 years or so, but there will always likely be a slight difference in available content as a dev may decide to simply not support one or the other for various reason.

      • Hawk1290

        “Hopefully competition to Vive fails”. Newsflash bud- if Oculus fails then every outlet will deem VR as another clique and VR will take a huge hit.

        • DiGiCT Ltd

          No thats bullshit, as still googledaydream will hit much harder as all the others.
          Ocolus GearVR is already a fail, samsung already making a new model for google daydream and their flagship for gearVR burned to the ground so yeah good statement you got there, it let me laugh :D

          • Hawk1290

            Listen, I’m not wanting to argue I’m only making a point here. The truth is we don’t know how the population would react to a scenario of Oculus going under. What’s important is that competition stays. Like it or not- Oculus introduced some great additions to VR (Touch controllers with finger gestures and Asynchronous Space Warp). Steam later announced controllers with finger gestures and their lead Devs announced ATW (and eventual ASW) coming to Vive. Because of competition everyone wins. The same reason Oculus is seeing a push for roomscale experiences. Hoping a headset fails would likely lead to some missed opportunities.

    • Mane Vr

      If amd paid for the game to be made in see nothing wrong with this. U guys always seem to leave out the part where oculus is paying for these games to be made… smh

      • Get Schwifty!

        Yeah not sure about Wassoll’s use of the term “Masterrace” and “scum”, that betrays a weird world view IMHO.

        It’s very simple: Facebook/Oculus has a plan to be a major player in VR, social and otherwise, and leaving the success of VR access alone in the hands of Valve/HTC’s distribution platform, i.e. Steam is an absurdity.

        • LegoKnockingShop

          Not sure HTC has any links to Steam other than games for their HMD can be bought there. Viveport is HTC’s distribution platform.
          I’d prefer Oculus concentrate on improving the HOME front end rather than spending their energy building and managing the walls around it. The quality-of-service delta between Steam and Oculus Home is so enormous that it seems Oculus aren’t even going to try very hard to play catch up yet, and go for easier ways of retaining users in the short term. That’s not good for anyone.

          • Get Schwifty!

            BTW, as a fellow AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO), I sure hope LEGO puts out some cool VR content soon… the idea of being the size of a minifigure in a LEGO world with interactivity gives me goose bumps in all the right places ;)

      • G-man

        and the idea is to make as much profit as possible from a game, so you sell it for all the headsets, not arbitrarily limit yourself to one. even with oculus paying for the game to be made, they are more likely to get their investment back +a percentage if they can sell it to more people.

        • Will Cho

          Devs decided to take the other road so they figure opposite of what you think was better and went with it and to put it in a negative way(as you put it), more profit.

        • MasterElwood

          Most of the Oculus funded games are just TIME-exclusive. Don´t forget that.

          • G-man

            yes, and now on principal i cant buy any of those games. because i wont stand for timed exclusives.

          • TyrelUK

            So, you can’t ever play these games because you’re throwing your toys out the pram. Good for you.

          • G-man

            kingspray was a game that was completely finished for the vive, it was due to be released, then oculus came in, bought exclusivity of it for touch/oculus. You think that sort of behaviour should be rewarded by buying that game? i’ve spat no dummy, taking a stand on shady bs is what everyone should do rather than get walked all over by the people with the money who just want more money and dont care who they screw over. there is no reason for them to need exclusivity, if they want the vr market to do well they should fund a version for their touch controllers if they want and let everyone with a vr headset play the games.

          • TyrelUK

            Oculus are trying to compete in a market where their main competitor nearly has a monopoly, Steam has the vast majority of the marketplace in PC games distribution. If Oculus are going to have any chance building up their marketplace they need exclusives. The alternative is to have 1 big player and no competitor which is bad for the consumer in any business and why monopolies are illegal. It’s business, you can’t blame Oculus for trying to grow their brand.

            Kingspray may have been complete but from their point of view their future was still uncertain. They couldn’t know how well Kingspray would sell, if they would break even, let alone make enough to continue development after release and move on to a new project. The cash injection from Oculus assures Kingsprays success making it very likely they will develop more for VR, this is a win for the whole of VR, not just Oculus. Creating VR content is a very risky venture at this point, Oculus have removed that risk for this developer.

            – “You think that sort of behaviour should be rewarded by buying that game?”

            Yes, Oculus are investing heavily in VR and should be rewarded for doing so. Yes, they are asking for exclusives for their investment, they are a company so aren’t giving money away for the sake of it. But their investment is only good for VR as a whole.

            – “taking a stand on shady bs is what everyone should do rather than get walked all over by the people with the money who just want more money and don’t care who they screw over.”

            There is nothing shady about it, it is a legitimate business deal in an open market that both parties agreed to and both parties gain from. They aren’t doing anything to screw anyone over, they are businesses doing their best to grow their brands.

            – “there is no reason for them to need exclusivity”

            As I said above, they do need exclusivity to grow their brand against the juggernaut that is Steam. They are investing huge amounts of money in to VR which will help VR as a whole. Why should they not gain something themselves from their investment?

          • G-man

            they could just make their headset work on steam better than it does right now by encouraging devs to launch games on their platform and on steam and then they can make sales on hardware to people who only want to use steam. whereas i wouldn’t buy a rift because its too locked down to rift home.

            also you are forgetting that facebook owns occulus now. facebook has 100 times the amount of users as steam. nearly two billion active users. they need to make a better product for people to have no reason to not buy it, not a more locked down one.

        • Mane Vr

          no in the start of things the idea is to give people a reason to pick your hmd over the other in the long run the money will come

          • G-man

            pick yours over another? right now the issue is getting cheapskates to buy any vr headset at all. then if you make your all the hardware, which is easy because they are peripherals, then you can sell your game to more people than limiting to one piece of hardware. One of the headset companies wanting to force exclusives to a peripheral should not be encouraged.

          • DougP

            Re: “right now the issue is getting cheapskates to buy any vr headset at all”
            Exactly this!
            And…. by confusing PC gamers, who aren’t used to/don’t want/put up with this console-exclusivity BS, you’re putting people off from purchasing.
            A lot of people are now WAITING to purchase VR, to see which manufacturer *WINS* this unnecessary “VR War” Facebook started with exclusivity.

            It’s bad for VR, bad for everybody.

          • Mane Vr

            They r not forcing exclusives they r paying for exclusives to be made it’s more than a peripheral it’s a platform u guys problem is u see it as that like a new game pad or monitor but it’s more like a console piggyback onto the pc the example u guys keep using don’t fit. I own an oculus I am not batching about games I can’t play

          • G-man

            no, they have on several occasions now bought steamvr games that were complete or nearing completion and those devs have gone completely silent and are working on touch/oculus versions of the game and not releasing the finished steamvr versions. The serious sam devs made public oculus’ shadey methods, they aren’t funding games they are attempting to buy them

            a vr headset is in no way like a console, it is a screen like a monitor that you look at through lenses. there is absolutley zero reason for exclusivity in any way, all game working for all hardware is best for everyone except those companies with inferor hardware at the same price as the better hardware. oculus know this ad are taking to shady business practices. fuck them

          • Mane Vr

            so what that is the devs choice to do that they don’t have to take the money. and that not shady business it’s just business.

          • G-man

            and then we dont have to buy their games. thats just business.

          • Mane Vr

            correct we each get to choose what we send our money on whether someone who owns a vive gets to play the same games I do will have little to no bearing on if i’ll buy a game. locomotion is the top of my list as what to buy

          • G-man

            yes, by making yours the better headset, not by stealing away games that are completed for the competitions headset so they dont get released

          • Mane Vr

            how is it stealing away games they to offer to pay to get the games made… if the devs decide to take the money then I see nothing wrong with them being ask to bring it first to oculus home or even only to home

          • Will Cho

            Steal? Games require 2 to 3 years to make and most were invested 2 to 3 years ago.

          • G-man

            except for the ones that were bought when they were finished for the vive. except for those.

          • Will Cho

            Which ones? Only for Vive?

          • G-man

            kingspray (the worst example, since it was literally set to release on steam several months ago, release day came and went, no word what so ever from devs just complete silence, the date changed to september briefly and then to no date at all), giant cop, superhot, killing floor, they tried to buy serious sam and that the only reason we know what they have been doing. because they refused and told everyone what they tried to do.

            it seems the devs for i expect you to die have made other vr games for vive/oculus and yet i expect you to die is only has oculus listed. combine that with the obvious use of non-disclosure agreements they are making devs sign and who knows how many others they have just straight up bought.

          • Will Cho

            Thank you for the example but Kingspray is simultaneous debut and it was assumed to be bought out. I guess Oculus could have paid them to match release date. Serous Sam isn’t completed yet. Superhot wasn’t done either. Don’t know about Giant Cop and Killing Floor.

        • whitedragon101@gmail.com

          “they are more likely to get their investment back +a percentage if they can sell it to more people.”

          That is only the case if the install base is large enough that it outways the initial investment. At the moment the PC VR install base is quite small.

          For example if Oculus invest 2million for a $30 per copy game to be made, the developer would need to sell 95,239 copies just to equal the Oculus funding.

          This effect is compounded if the title is a timed exclusive.

    • PrymeFactor

      As far as I know, Oculus is funding these games, making It possible for those games to exist in the first place. Exclusivity demands as a result of this aren’t out of place.

      Ask yourself what the draw for Oculus is to fund games that will end up making far more money on other storefronts than on theirs?

      It does seem like some of you Folks believe in Santa Claus.

      • surt

        Kingspray was days away from release on Vive when Oculus bought their delay till Touch release.
        The extra time and Oculus money appears to have been put into new features, but certainly not all made possible by Oculus.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          So the problem lies with the developers of Kingspray, they choose not to release the game anyway but take the money… So you blame Oculus for developers taking money….

          • Graham J ⭐️

            So someone dangles a carrot in front of a donkey that’s standing in front of a cliff. Who’s to blame if it tumbles to its death?

        • TyrelUK

          Before Oculus’ cash injection to the developers of Kingspray they would have been unsure how well their product would do, if they would break even let alone make enough of a profit to warrant another project. Oculus paying them to delay has ensured that they will make enough money to further develop this title and, more than likely, move on to another project when they feel ready. It is good for VR as a whole.

        • bschuler

          So that’s what happened to Kingspray. I dunno, I think Kingspray devs made a huge mistake, instead of being one of the first titles, it will now come to the Vive in the middle of a ton of other like content. So fewer users = few fans = fewer lining up for your next VR product. Meh, They can’t complain much, at least they made some money before they disappeared into obscurity.

      • DougP

        Re: “Ask yourself what the draw for Oculus is to fund games ”
        Very simple really – just make money on the games.

        Devs & those who fund devs (for cut of profit) have been ….well….making games to make money for a long time.

        You do realize that by releasing on ONE instead of TWO VR HMDs you’re effectively ~halving your potential sales?!
        So it’s not about selling the software, it’s about coercing people into buying their hardware.

        No Santa Claus required.

        • Graham J ⭐️

          Facebook doesn’t give a crap about games. They are an ad network and everything they’re doing is designed to put ads in front of you and track your viewing of them.

          First they use their money to lock people to their own hardware, then push social VR on everyone which of course will be laden with sponsored “experiences”. No thanks.

          • Aaron Hillaker

            Ohhhh, that’s why they put $250,000,000 into the development of VR titles, and promises another $250,000,000 in the next few years. I gotcha. Facebook doesn’t care about VR or games.

          • Graham J ⭐️

            I didn’t say they don’t care about VR; obviously they do. Games are currently the reason people are buying headsets so they are investing in them in order to get people on their platform.

            But make no mistake: The reason they are interested in VR is that they believe it could the next social platform and they cannot afford to have their ad revenue disrupted by missing that boat. To ensure success they are trying to lock people to their hardware so they will use their social platform and see their ads. Games are a means to an end.

          • The Moose

            Facebook is a business. They are not even a hardware company. Them buying out Oculus a couple years ago was just their investors pressing the button. Today, if they DIDN’T push for a walled garden and this exclusivity shit, it would be financial suicide because they want their $2.5B back. No investor worth that caliber wants to play nicely holding hands with their competitors and share games. And if they can bare the burden of pissing off a the consumer base a little, why not do it?

            Also if they really cared about VR games, don’t you think they would be investing that $250,000,000 to developers of arbitrary platforms? But no. Only get a piece of the cheese if they work for them.

      • Graham J ⭐️

        The argument that these games would not exist without Facebook exclusivity money is bunk.

        The reason larger game makers have been waiting is that they are risk adverse and VR is fairly new so the market potential (ie how much money they can make off a game) is unknown. The ideal solution to this problem is increasing the size of the market – make products that work together so that a given piece of software can be sold to as many customers as possible.

        Instead Facebook’s has chosen buy out that risk at the expense of the overall market in order to lock customers to its own product, which is a total asshole move. No surprise coming from the guy who made a social network to creep college girls I guess.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      uhm, you have no idea if the Vive userbase is twice as big as the oculus userbase.. There still haven’t been any official numbers released.. But we do know one thing, the PSVR userbase in japan alone is 50k units..
      And as long as HTC doesn’t want to support the oculus platform then the problem lies with HTC not Oculus.. There are even Vive exclusives but no one seems to mind that, as they adore HTC/Valve…

      • J.C.

        Andrew, you clearly are a Rift owner in this, as you constantly ignore what people are ACTUALLY mad about here, and try to turn it into somehow being HTC’s fault.

        We are mad that there’s no direct support for the Vive in the oculus store. I’m not about to pay full price for a game that I have to rely on a third party hack to play. I’m willing to drop a maximum of $5 on that sort of reliance.

        You say this is the only way it works, but had Valve announced that Steam WOULD NOT WORK with the Rift AT ALL, do you think the rift would have stood a chance? No. but you’re a-ok with Oculus blocking Vive users from their store? Have you heard of this thing called a hypocrite?

        Rift owners aren’t blocked from anything on Steam, although several games are CURRENTLY unplayable due to Oculus dragging their feet on the Touch controllers for as long as they felt they could get away with. I mean, once they come out, they’re no longer the cheaper HMD, which is what they’ve been riding on. Now that PSVR is out, they might as well release their controllers, since they’re not the cheapest deal on the block anymore anyway. All of those roomscale-only games on steam will quickly add Touch support, will the Oculus store add Vive support to match?

        • Andrew Jakobs

          You actually do know valve had Rift support before it had vive support (and it was developed in conjunction with Oculus). And Oculus isn’t blocking anything, it’s just that there isn’t OculusSDK support for the HTC Vive. And yes you should blame HTC for that, not Oculus.. The fact Steam has Rift support is purely because it’s in the interest of Valve, which doesn’t sell the Vive, it’s HTC which sells the Vive..
          And you forget that a lot of Rift owners appearantly don’t even use Steam, so yes even without Steam Rift would have been where it is today. The reason Valve does what is does is purely for themselves, making sure they get more money off their steam platform, and that means they’ll sure have some resources for developing support for different devices. Oculus isn’t yet as big as valve, and propably just doesn’t have the resources for supporting the Vive (as they are still also developing for their own headset) (yes, having facebook as a parent company doesn’t mean they have the development resources to actually support the compettitor). Valve certainly will not write the support for Oculus platform for HTC as that will hinder their Steam platform, and I don’t know how much HTC has relied on Valve for their driver support).
          And I don’t own a CV1 nor do I own a Vive, I’ll sit this round out as I can do enough with my DK2 for now, and if I’m further along with my project I’ll buy both for testing purposes.
          And I do have a large collection of games on Steam (and GOG and UPlay and Origin), and ofcourse I’d rather have them all in one place, but I also don’t think there should be a monopoly with only one company. I’d rather see an universal library API client, so it doesn’t matter which store you buy from..

          • DougP

            Re: “You actually do know valve had Rift support before it had vive support ”
            You actually do know that Valve had their own prototype room-scale tracking back in early 2012 before Oculus even went to Kickstarter? That Palmer visited them & was inspired. The Valve helped, free-of-charge, to teach Oculus that they needed ext h/w to solve the position/tracking issues from DK1 days?
            You actually do know that Valve would’ve offered their (arguably) superior tracking solution to Oculus & was looking for a partner to develop room-scale+360-degree tracking VR solution?

            I don’t even get what you’re trying to say with that comment.
            Let’s also agree not try to re-invent history with Oculus & how their product came about when Valve was ahead of the game w/modern VR. Just because Palmer was a single (loud) outspoken proponent of VR, let’s not confuse that with innovation.

            Re: “you forget that a lot of Rift owners appearantly don’t even use Steam”

            Yes, because there are just so many hardcore gamers & VR early adopters who don’t “even use Steam”? Right.

            So all 5x of them would most likely decide to be on Steam when faced with excellent games from devs who might not want to release on Oculus Home due to their practices.

            Re: “I do have a large collection of games on Steam (and GOG and UPlay and Origin), and of course I’d rather have them all in one place”

            You do realize that you can add non-steam games to launch from Steam & they work just fine? Meanwhile the other capabilities (notifications/invites/friend status/etc) all still work concurrently.

            I’ve purchased/installed VR games from other sources & these work just fine w/Steam. You do realize that you can’t say the same thing for Oculus Home?

            Re: Oculus – “propably just doesn’t have the resources for supporting the Vive”
            Did you intend to put a /s at the end of that?
            If not…wow, just WOW!

            Yeah….if only poor little Oculus could only find some mega rich corporation to purchase & fund them they’d be able to acquire the resources. Seriously?!

            If realize you’re a Rift fan & quite possibly have some (unexplained, rational) reasons for hating Valve & Steam…but much of what your wrote is either wrong or completely misleading & possibly disingenuous.

        • Get Schwifty!

          Methinks you overestimate Steams influence (if you didn’t all the more reason Oculus needs a separate platform), but…. I believe plenty of people would still have opted for a Rift, if nothing else for the fact that they are producing professional content to go with it and it can use content outside of Steam or Oculus home.

          As you see, you backed into it: Oculus is doing something worthwhile after all, making a hedge against Steam cutting them out with Oculus Home and Exclusives which is what I keep saying – they are not going to risk the success of their play in the VR space by leaving their distribution up to Steam and vis-a-vis HTC, their primary hardware competitor.

    • Random Man

      Actually, GPUs are a pretty great comparison, because around the time 3d acceleration made them a thing you had a similar situation where games were being coded for specific brands. Eventually, APIs like OpenGL and Directx emerged as software layers that made it possible to code across hardware. The same thing will happen for VR at some point, but it’s really unfair to blame Oculus for this situation.

    • Armando Tavares

      The VR content market will revert to it’s more natural PC state once independent content makers come into play… and if it doesn’t, some one will write 300 lines or so worth of software that will trick games into thinking the right VR device is connected.

      The problem right now is that, it seems like those independent content makers are holding back a bit to be able to see what the market will look like when the dust settles.

      If you own a content driven company, you need to know how many potential buyers there are, before deciding the budget (money/man hours) you’ll assign to a project.

      The exclusive content is kinda natural for now. Oculus/Vive is funding said content. However I don’t know if, at this stage in VR, it wouldn’t be better if Oculus/Vive got together and agreed on a ‘no exclusives’ policy.

      This would increase content and draw more people into VR, because, ultimately that’s what will make people buy into VR: Content. Not whatever is written (Oculus/Vive/PSVR/etc) on some VR device.

      I think this is key at present time: Draw people in at all costs.

    • Rick

      I’m sick of this argument. PC is an open platform, but you’re not talking about PC, you are talking about Windows. In reality the majority of games on PC are exclusives. Thousands of indie games that only run on windows and not on Mac or Linux or Console. You only don’t notice because you USE WINDOWS. Exclusives have always been here, You can’t develop for everything.

      • DougP

        Re: “you’re not talking about PC, you are talking about Windows. ”
        Ummm….no.
        You’re talking about the OS, which is SOFTWARE.
        This is about hardware exclusivity, the likes of consoles / “console wars”.

        Question:
        Have you seriously never heard of dual boot?

        Heck, I run Windows concurrently to my host OS, in a VM on linux.

        So thought experiment (/analogy) – you have Windows/Linux as your OS…however, some software company releases a great new …. I don’t know…. Wordprocessor, for example.

        This software could run on Windows/Linux/MacOS….BUT – it’ll only work if you have a Microsoft Keyboard.

        • Rick

          Dual boot? whats that?

          ………………..

          That is not a good comparison. There is nothing locking hardware out, Valve has developed a way for Oculus headsets to work on Steam(I personally think the support sucks, but thats just me) While Oculus has not put resources for a way for the Vive to work on the Oculus store yet.

          Saying its a hardware lock is dumb, theres just no software support right now from oculus for the Vive, which is perfectly understandable considering IT IS NOT THEIR PRODUCT, they dont have to spend resources to support it. I don’t complain when my Logitech headset doesn’t work in Razer synapse, why should it bother me that my vive doesn’t work in oculus?

          Lets say the steam controller doesnt work on Origin, why is it origin’s job to support another company’s product? Steam should be the ones trying to make it work if they want their product to be popular.

          • DougP

            You don’t seem to understand what’s actually gone on w/Oculus. They’re specifically paying devs to ONLY support their hardware – hence the thought experiment relating: software that only runs on specific hardware, for no other reason that to promote the sale of the hardware (& what would otherwise be a detriment to the software devs).

            Re: “Dual boot? whats that?”
            You mentioned games that only run on Windows as being *exclusive*…. YET – my point about dual-boot demonstrates that you are not locked-in to a specific piece of hardware. Software only….demonstrated by the fact that you could “dual boot” (as I & many others do, including Linux/MacOS users) & have the software run on their machine.

            Re: “Saying its a hardware lock is dumb”
            What’s dumb is the mental gymnastics you went through to justify the lock-in Facebook’s promoted.
            Didn’t the original blocking of ReVive, i.e. BLOCKING Oculus games from running on Vive, with NO OTHER REASON, provide you with any information to understand their tactics.
            Guess what else – Valve & HTC have supported & funded VR dev for games which run on Rift…. & “IT’S NOT THEIR PRODUCT”. Perfectly understandable – they’re vested in VR succeeding & not only on locking people into their product & distribution.
            Re: ” Logitech headset doesn’t work in Razer synapse, why should it bother me that my vive doesn’t work in oculus?”
            That’s a poor analogy – Facebook has explicitly *prevented* interoperability: from blocking ReVive, to NOT allowing non-Rift games on their store (which I don’t have an issue with but explains they don’t want a “VR storefront” but a walled garden), to paying devs NOT to support both (when they would’ve otherwise/had planned to).
            So it’s not about them going out of their way “too support” it’s about them actively blocking it.

            Also….quit liking your OWN comments – you’re gonna go blind doing that! ;)

    • Hawk1290

      So many issues here:
      • Your numbers are likely based off Steam surveys and their 140k announcement. Oculus hasn’t released any sales figures yet.
      • You claim “Console (scum)” competition in the PC market should be avoided- then use comparisons between Intel and AMD.
      • “So Oculus is AMD and VIVE is INtel. ;)” Obviously trying to start arguements (you got one.)

      You want VR to succeed? Quit using shitty comparisons and false information- right now you’re throwing around vague headliners which doesn’t do anything other than make the VR community seem jaded. Also this “PC Masterrace” bullshit needs to be left out- there’s literally nothing gained from that statement other than an online circle jerk of like-minded people- in this case, people who are damaging the VR ecosystem.

      Seriously, support statements with factual information – you’re ruining it for everyone else.

  • Stu

    You don’t go “up against” AAA-sshole corporations by screwing over the little developers!

  • J.C.

    I’m not mad that Oculus has exclusive games to their platform. That’s how you launch a platform, and unlike Steam, Oculus is 100% VR focused.
    Where his argument falls flat is the hardware exclusivity. Revive proves that it’s not really difficult to get those games working on the Vive, and they make more money from the games than the hardware. Why not add in support for the Vive and be able to sell those games to at least twice as many customers as they have when locked to one headset?
    I imagine once the playing field is “level” (once Touch is actually out), they will announce Vive support on their store. As it currently stands, TODAY, the Vive hardware offers a better experience, and Oculus knows it. Once they can both do roomscale, they won’t have to pretend there isn’t another VR setup out there.

    • MasterElwood

      Oculus said they would consider opening their store for the Vive if HTC would use the Oculus SDK. But HTC refused. So…

    • Get Schwifty!

      I believe you are correct, but that is probably 3-4 years down the road for Vive support in Oculus home. They don’t pretend there isn’t another VR setup out there, they simply chose a different path and on getting it out there. Today amounts to about six more weeks. In two years no one will even remember this silly comparison about “room scale” any more, the fact its even brought up still is kind of absurd given all the evidence and announcements.

  • wheeler

    As other have said, the argument falls flat when you consider that they are exclusives to the hardware and not just their distribution platform. Just more bullshit from Oculus. The fact is that they are trying to corner the market.

    • Get Schwifty!

      Not really. Establishing a beach-head is probably more accurate against the near monopoly that Valve and HTC have with Steam priority as a distribution system. Don’t fall into the “good company, bad company” nonsense, they are all three companies that are into it for the bottom line.

      • peteo

        Wait so the only way to install a program on a PC is through steam? When did this happen?

        • Get Schwifty!

          No one said it was the only way, but seriously, they are the main distribution service at this time. There are a few others, but I doubt anyone on here with a Vive uses more than one more at all. I said after all, “near monopoly” :)

          • peteo

            Sorry that’s not the same as having to have hardware from only one manufacturer to play the game on your computer. When you buy a computer that is not expectation. Especially when it’s a display device and when there are other options out there. That’s why OpenVR exists and should be supported by HMD manufacturers, developers and users.

          • ✨EnkrowX✨

            That isn’t why OpenVR exists. OpenVR exists for Valve to get more control over the VR space as a whole. It’s “open” in name only.

            The true “open” platform is OSVR (Open Source Virtual Reality), which is not affiliated with Valve or Oculus.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            But the vive and rift aren’t JUST display devices, and as display devices they both work without steam/oculusstore.
            OpenVR isn’t as ‘open’ as you think…

          • Get Schwifty!

            There’s nothing written in stone that exclusives can’t exist on the PC, in fact history has a lot of similar examples with exclusives bought from different vendors… all kinds of unique in-game crap you can only get from buying at say Gamestop, or Wal-mart for instance. OpenVR as a concept is great, but as we see a lot of open-source stuff is just downright janky and substandard because the people doing a lot of it don’t care about polish and execution in a bigger picture. This is why Oculus is pushing this way, to create a bed of quality content instead of waiting for some neck-beard with a Linux penguin sticker on his car to decide to do something. If you invested 2 Billion dollars, I think you would not take that risk either.

          • Get Schwifty!

            I support the basic idea of OpenVR as a standard, however, I do not agree with waiting around for a bunch of part time devs producing typical open source janky content to decide the fate of VR. Open source would never have gone to the moon until the tech was so advanced it was almost a moot point. This is the same view I think Oculus supports personally.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Well since Steam is almost number one distribution platform, most games can only be gotten through Steam.. There aren’t many (commercial) VR-games that aren’t sold through Steam or the Oculusstore..

      • wheeler

        OK, so where does hardware exclusivity fit into that? Distribution platform exclusivity is what will “establish a beachead” against Steam–something which is absolutely fine, but hardware exclusivity works against that as it dramatically reduces the number of people on Oculus Home. So right back at you with the “good company bad company nonsense”–you are too trusting of Oculus: Oculus is doing this because they want to corner the market (hardware, standards, and software), not because it is necessary in order to compete with a dominant player.

        And while Steam may dominate most of the game distribution market (though it is not a true monopoly as there are other significant players), they are not intentionally creating barriers to entry for other players like Oculus are despite having many opportunities to do so.

        • peteo

          I think people keep forget that oculus is Facebook and somehow forgotten all the crappy things that they have done. VR/AR/MR will be a gold mind for collecting information. People who control the core run time (HMD middle ware) will have the ability to know every thing you look at and say. I just do not trust Facebook with that responsibility. The can spin exclusively any way they want. Their goal is to own the PC/ mobile VR market. Exclusively is the way to make people want to by their HMD (and runtime) I mean if I can buy the rift and play everything on oculus home and steam then why by another HMD even if currently their hardware is incomplete. It is not good for VR over all. An open standard is good for consumers, that’s what we need.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            You do know valve also collects a lot of data (for commercial use).. And the problem of the vive not supporting the Oculus platform lies with HTC, they choose not to support it.
            OpenVR is not an open standard…

          • peteo

            Collection of data can be opted out and again you do not need to buy an application through steam, its not a requirement to be be exclusive to it and there are VR applications that work with OpenVR that are not sold on steam.

            “Vive not supporting the Oculus platform lies with HTC”
            This statement is 100% FALSE” Oculus could easily build a wrapper. This is what Revive does. They only want their exclusives to only work on their hardware. They want to lock in people to their hardware.

            If they truly wanted for VR to succeeded regardless of hardware as this article suggests, they would publish these titles for other hardware and make money off them. They would not be exclusive to just Oculus hardware.

          • whitedragon101@gmail.com

            What he means by:
            “OpenVR is not an open standard”
            is not that you have to buy these games on steam, but that the OpenVR standard is created and managed by Valve. Thats why Oculus insist on games on Oculus home using the Oculus SDK because they don’t want the future of their platform in the hands of their competitor.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Yes, Oculus could write a wrapper (if they have the resources) but IMHO that should be HTC’s job, it’s their headset.. Microsoft isn’t responsible for writing videodrivers, it’s NVidia and amd that do it. Just like printers and a lot of other chipsets..

            And they are not exclusive to just Oculus hardware, they are exclusive to the Oculus Platform, and at the moment there are only 2 devices which support the Oculus platform officially (Rift and GearVR). If HTC wrote ‘a wrapper’ that would work perfectly with the Oculus Platform, then it too would work, as you yourself point out with ‘revive’..

          • peteo

            AH Ok I got it. I’ll get on the phone with Vive to let them know to stop all work on OpenVR support for the rift. I’m sure the Rift owners will be ECSTATIC and jumping for joy about the new way valve is expanding VR to every one. Less apps for each HDM is the best way for VR to succeed

          • Andrew Jakobs

            You’re a moron, HTC doesn’t have anything to do with OpenVR. And as I said, Valve will support it as much as possible, as it will give them more revenue… Please stop thinking the Vive is Valve, it’s not, It’s HTC’s..

          • peteo

            Great to see you have to resort to insults to make you feel superior. I meant valve not vive. Oculus titles are exclusive to their hardware (platform is a cop out). They can not be played with out it. Again oculus want to lock people into there hardware and runtime. If they wanted to get could either publish games that work on both vive & rift. Or let Devs that they give money to release on the same day. This exclusive crap does not expand VR in any bit and is designed to try and lock people in.

        • Get Schwifty!

          Hmmm… I didn’t say it was a guarantee of success, only that I understand the reasoning of FB/Oculus in this regard. I don’t “trust” FB/Oculus, but I do appreciate the situation they have and why they’re taking the steps they are, which I believe to be a bit more complicated than just “cornering the market”. They are not idiots, they know that an antitrust lawsuit would be very easy to put out there if they ever got that far, no company in it’s right mind ever proceeds with a monopolizing goal. Dominance, certainly, and FB/Oculus would like to have a dominant position, just like Valve/HTC. I think your view that its all about cornering the market is simply not accounting for all the facets of the situation.

          The problem is one of entrenchment having an effect on the industry, and one of favoritism in place. Is Steam officially “open”? Sure, but with the clear relationship Valve and HTC have Oculus, seeing more than just the application of VR in games (but that games are an important part of the evolution process) are taking steps to build a place in an industry that to a large extent has become somewhat ossified, with Steam the major distributor currently. As you pointed out Steam HAS the opportunity to create barriers, so why should Oculus take that chance during the embryonic period? Better in their book to take what steps they can (like funded exclusives) to get the show going and not risk getting cut out or underplayed under the table by Steam/HTC.

          What I hear in this argument amounts to this: we should all have an open software “field” where any vendor can pony up and offer a VR solution. I don’t disagree with this fundamentally, but I agree with FB/Oculus (and this is the point I think you are forgetting) that for the time being, until the VR industry matures enough, creating exclusives makes sense (and they are not true exclusives, everyone knows that is only a limited time and easily bypassed if you try in most cases with Revive) to bring the quality of content up and create enough to help spur demand. In effect, they are not trusting quality control to Steam who is mainly a distributor but has a clear interest in HTC/Vive.

          I can’t make it any simpler, but its more than just a corner the market move.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      No, they are exclusive to their Oculus platform, and it’s HTC that’s not supporting the Oculus Platform, hence the Vive does not work directly with the Oculus platform specific games, just like a lot of VR-games on Steam don’t really work with the Rift due to forced vive-controller support..

      • DiGiCT Ltd

        Your wrong on that, as oculus SDK does not support any other devices, where steamVR does, even OSVR SDK work works with many devices.
        The only SDK that doesn not work with other devices is exactly oculus, so dont blame others if the truth is in front of you, thanks.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          bullcrap, OSVR and SteamVR only supports devices that have ‘drivers’ written for them, they don’t support any headset out of the box. And that’s the same with OculusSDK.. Just like SteamVR for the Rift isn’t actually native, it’s using the Oculus SDK.

  • Mike McLin

    Didn’t even need to read the article. It’s what I’ve been saying about Oculus for a while now. Facebook didn’t buy Oculus for $2 billion to “win” a console war where selling 150k units is a milestone. Oculus could own 100% of today’s and next years market, and it could still be deemed a huge failure. Oculus cares about one thing…growing the market. The best way for Oculus to do that is to invest money (which they have) into VR. The only logical way to do that is via exclusives. How else do you invest in the VR ecosystem? It’s so easy to see these exclusives and get emotional, but in the end, it really is what is best for VR.

    Here is the kicker… I think Oculus would like nothing more than for the Vive to thrive. What is good for VR is good for Oculus (and ultimately Facebook, who is obviously aligning their social platform with VR). I think Oculus is more concerned with other companies giving half ass VR experiences and potentially casting doubt on the VR industry in the minds of consumers.

    • Get Schwifty!

      Finally, someone else gets it. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better. FB/Oculus, like them or not, are ultimately doing more with a structured plan to further VR adoption than anyone else. Exclusives are just one small element of their long term plans to help push VR out there, and the point of exclusives are for the most part to maintain quality, something Steam really isn’t into, they will resell anything to make a buck through their delivery service. People think that FB/Oculus are interested in making money off hardware sales are sadly mistaken, that is Steam/HTC’s play.

      And you are so right about the fact they ultimately want to see Vive thrive as it ultimately means most Vive users are likely to be social media users. Too many people in these forums are just looking at it from a VR-PC gaming perspective instead of a larger play. The point is they aren’t going to leave the success of VR-adoption up to Valve/HTC as they are interested mainly in gaming hardware sales.

      The naysayers almost always decided to move on Vive to get room scale play, nothing wrong with that, but they did it also knowing in most cases Oculus was planning on exclusives and Touch, and certainly “room scale” was coming. Now they want access into a platform they opted out of, with “Open PC” being the banner when the reality is all they really care about is getting as much content as they can when they want it. I strongly suspect most of them don’t ever consider that people who opted for Oculus may not ever get support for Touch controllers in some games, effectively making them “exclusives”, but that doesn’t seem to matter, as Valve/Steam and it’s sold games are “open” and “good” so in their minds Oculus buyers just need to suffer for their selfish, foolish decision to not buy a Vive ;)

      The truth is you give something up with every decision you make, I appreciate the “VR-enthusiasm” people have, but the constant whining about exclusives particularly is grating when people knew they opted for a different platform than the one that had exclusives. If Valve/HTC is doing so well with Vive then it simply won’t matter, but I suspect many fear the “what-if”, that Oculus will succeed in the long run and perhaps Vive will wither, and trying to force the issue on exclusives is a hedge against that possibility.

    • Pistol Pete

      Couple things wrong with your statement. If Oculus truely wanted to just “help grow the VR market” then they would do as Valve is doing: invest in VR developers and not claim exclusivity. That pushes more software and in-turn more hardware for the entire VR market. Instead Oculus decided to make exclusives so you will buy their headset. Just because the Vive is seen as the superior VR set by nearly all professional reviewers, Oculus needs an incentive to sell headsets.

      • Mike McLin

        You keep looking at today’s market. It doesn’t matter. How much impact did the iPhone 3G vs the first Android have on landscape of today’s mobile marketshare? None. Most of us have bounced back and forth between both platforms over the years (even with their closed ecosystem app stores). The important thing was that they were changing consumers perceptions of smartphones, which were previously thought of as complex, unintuitive business machines. Both companies grew the market astronomically and benefitted financially (Apple ultimately losing the marketshare lead and becoming the biggest company in the world while doing so).

        Also “Invest in VR developers” means own part of the company. Not sure why we look at that as a gold standard. I think it is because we as consumers benefit because there are no exclusives. But, did the devs really benefit by giving up a portion of their company? Facebook/HTC/Valve all have invested a ton into VR, and they all have their own methods for doing so. Each method has it’s pluses and minuses, but at the end of the day they are all trying to grow VR and shouldn’t be condemned for doing so.

      • MasterElwood
        • DougP

          Re: “VALVE does NOTHING!”
          And…by “NOTHING” you mean that likes of:
          1) prototyping their own in-house room-scale / 360-degree VR tracking system, back in early 2012 – BEFORE Oculus had even hit Kickstarter
          2) invited Palmer in, taught him & Oculus that they needed ext h/w for positional/tracking reasons (the problems they’d hit w/prototypes)
          3) offered free h/w & software & time & money to get devs up-and-running w/VR
          4) developed the best “fully immersive VR” system, room-scale/360-degree tracking & basically “gave away” the idea/design to h/w partner, whereby they’re not making money on the h/w

          Yeah…. THAT kind’a NOTHING we could all use a LOT more of.

    • Cl

      How does making a game exclusive to a specific headset grow the market? Id understand if it was exclusive to the oculus store and all HMD users can buy it from there.

      • MasterElwood

        Most of the games are just TIME-exclusive. The WILL come to steam later…

        • Get Schwifty!

          Yes, this is why the crying over exclusives is a sad waste of time and energy….

      • Channonbom

        Spurs competition, spurs growth. If it was just HTC alone, you’ll only be getting half assed games for a very long time because they have no one to compete against. Much like how Sony has a bunch of badass exclusives and Microsoft has to respond by making badass exclusives also. Ever heard of The Last of Us or Halo, you can probably find them bundled with a consolse somewhere. If Valve ever gave developers a few cool million bucks, I’m sure they’d get an exclusive out of it too.

        • Cl

          Well, the money is in selling software yes? If they make these exclusives only available in oculus store, but allow other headsets, valve wont be making money off these games either way and they would sell more right? Only oculus will make the money. According to them they make nothing off the headset sales. So valve would need to compete to get sales on their storefront.

          Still waiting for legit reasoning.

          • Channonbom

            Of course steam wants Oculus to sell on their store. Steam has a near monopoly on digital sales. Considering how many people bought the rift vs how many Steam subscribers there are, Oculus barely has a following of about 1% of the market. Valve takes a huge cut of any game sold on Steam. Now if Oculus pays millions to make a game, then has to pay Valve 30% of each copy sold… you do the math. Bad business for OR, good business for Valve because they have no loss, no investment yet reap a whopping 30%.

          • Cl

            I was explaining how by making it exclusive in their store and allowing vive users in there too still spurs competition. So, storefront exclusive instead of hardware. I understand oculus not selling it on steam since they paid for it.

      • Mike McLin

        Making it exclusive doesn’t grow the market. Giving a game dev money helps grow the market. With more money a dev can hire more/better help. With more money a game dev might be able to add extra polish to a game instead of having to worry about releasing too soon because they’re worried about collecting revenue asap to keep their doors open. I could go on and on. More money doesn’t necessarily make better games, but it really can help. Better games equals more consumers interested in VR. Not to mention that all of the experience and tooling that was developed for the game carries over to the game devs next games.

  • Pistol Pete

    That’s a a

  • Cl

    That’s cool and all, but why dont you officially allow vive users to buy games from the oculus store then? I thought most of your money comes from game sales on the store and not the headset.

    You say one thing like jumpstart the market, but then you try to fragment the market. I see a lot of contradiction when I see articles from oculus.

    Sell your HMD by making the better headset. Put those exclusive games only on the oculus store, but let other HMD users buy from there too.

    • Will Cho

      You can though.

      • Cl

        Through a 3rd party program that they attempted to block?

        • Will Cho

          Revive? yeah. You got to do what you got to do. Not much choice.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Because the Vive doesn’t officially support the Oculus platform.. So if it did, there would be no problem for vive owners to buy and play stuff from the oculus store..
      People CAN actually buy games from the Oculus store, but you won’t be able to play it without a HMD which supports the Oculus platform..

      • Cl

        Well, valve made it so steam works with oculus, its up to the developers of the game to support it and nothing stops them from doing so.

  • Ghosty

    Caugh caugh “bullshit” caugh

  • James Johnson

    I’m perfectly fine purchasing exclusives with my Rift. Why I went Rift was because of these exclusives, and also that room-scale and touch were on the horizon. I am happy with the decision, even though I wanted the Vive as well. It came down to preferences and ultimately, any platform you purchase now, no matter it being Vive, Rift or PSVR…you are contributing to the VR industry as a whole. So make your choice and get a VR headset and let’s push this thing forward for the betterment of mankind!

  • DiGiCT Ltd

    For those (mostly oculus rift owners) just to make it very clear.
    Steam IS NOT THE MAIN STORE FOR HTC VIVE,!
    The vive comes with a store called Vive Portal.
    It is not needed to use steam at all for using the htc vive !
    SteamVR sdk is just an SDK that lets devs be able to let the Vive work and so it also works with the rift and OSVR, The same goes for OSVR sdk it also supports many devices.
    However the oculus SDK ONLY WORKS with oculus VR and does not support any other 3rd party devices.

    Comparing Steam with oculus home is not accurate, as steam is an open platform for many devices, where oculus home is just as the vive portal bound to a specific device.

    Like or dislike steam has nothing to do with VR and therefor you can only compare oculus home with vive portal !

    The investments into VR come from HTC and not from Valve so you guys are wrong about that part too, google for ViveX programm and you will know more about it.

    I feel it needs to be made very clear to you unknown or non devs talking about steam without knowing how the situation really is.
    Don’t give false information or wrong statements all the time about this, as it is all just nonsense talk.

    Want to compare this article investment story with HTC vive you should look into the ViveX program and you will see the differences.

    Be smart and read about it, they both approach the VR different.
    Valve however is independent, and they support the Steam VR part and it is not bound to HTC vive at all.
    Hope this will settle down this issue once and for all.

    Thank you.

  • MasterElwood

    After reading all the comments here – looks like there is just ONE big thing: People are pissed they choose the VIVE (but of course would never admit it). Nice…

    • Get Schwifty!

      Well… as someone who opted for Oculus there are some good points here about feeling locked in if you switch to Vive, or the questions surrounding the Oculus SDK not supporting other devices. Not sure they are so much “pissed” as clinging to this idea of the “open PC” that is just not always true, but worse not seeing the problem for Facebook/Oculus of trusting Valve/HTC with ensuring that they get a fair shake and is more of a hindrance to Facebook/Oculus plans (like them or not) in the long run than a help.

      I also do agree there is a bit of envy however, that they made a decision on Vive and patted themselves on the back and now that some good content may come about and they can’t get access to it they find that decisions are something you have to put on your big boy pants for and stand by whether you like it or not, and sometimes it means getting one thing (current room scale) vs. giving something up (Oculus exclusives). Whats funny is they simply don’t care if Oculus users may not get full device support on Steam based games, but are incensed if they cant get access to everything ever created for VR…. despite knowing they were opting for a platform that was outside that exclusives offering.

    • DougP

      Re: “After reading all the comments here” – “pissed they choose the VIVE
      If that’s your interpretation of people who don’t buy this BS “exclusivity” (lower game sales) is good for VR….. then I’d seriously question your reading comprehension abilities.
      At a minimum you’ve passed everything through a Facebook-fanboi/apologist filter to come up with THAT absolutely asinine conclusion.

  • Ian N Karen O

    investment
    ɪnˈvɛs(t)m(ə)nt/
    noun
    1.
    the action or process of investing money for profit.

    If you invest in something to make it happen in the first place, that does not usually mean your investing millions so competitors can have access to your investment also.

    Haha, its pretty simple stuff.

    • Ryth

      So they make more profit if I dont buy a few games a week from their store because I have a vive? Odd, here I thought they could make more profit if they could sell games to all users of VR no matter the headset but I have never been that great at math.

      • Mr. New Vegas

        You look at it from top-down instead you need to look Bottom-up: You are not their target demographics: VR market is young and they do exclusive games so NEW Users choose THEIR HMD and not any other based on Exclusive games that they have.
        Most people research before buying,their future exclusives and promise for more, their announcement of half billion dollars going into VR video games was enough for me to choose Rift over vive (and the Thumb Sticks on Oculos Touch of course, thats no less important.)

      • Ian N Karen O

        I can’t say I work in their accounting department to agree or disagree on how they can sell the most software and hardware. However it would seem the point of exclusives, is usually to get you to buy their hardware over the other competitors in the first place. I don’t pay too much attention to the gamer market but I’m fairly certain Xbox and Sony have been doing this kind of marketing with software for years. I do recall plenty of people buying Xbox just to play Halo. $$

      • Ian N Karen O

        I thought I had replied, but it doesn’t appear to be here.

        I feel, if you only look at the game sale profit for exclusive content, its a relatively shallow way of looking at the grand scheme of things… I think many people miss the reason behind exclusive content.

        your not just selling the game, your selling the hardware, the extras, the controllers, the cameras, the loyal customer, the micro transactions, the continued exclusive content, the next model and so on…. Its a lot more then investing millions in a piece of software so a vive user can use all his hardware to enjoy it. Create a reason to buy Oculus, and give rewards for doing so…

        I dare say they have done the math, and its exactly why Microsoft made Halo for the Xbox, I don’t see how this is any different to what consoles have done. I don’t feel exclusive content is going to destroy VR like many people are upset about, its probably going to force the competition to invest even more of their profit to keep up. = aside from the obvious downside in some respects, it could also be good for VR.

        I could all be wrong, but like I say, businesses, TV channels, the world has made exclusive content before. And that’s why people shift platforms. That’s business. As I said, if your going to invest millions, you want the maximum return.

        They obviously feel this is the way to do it, for the good or bad of the end user.

  • Ryth

    I would have no problem if oculus just wanted to do store exclusives but if they want to do headset exclusive then I will not think twice about pirating those games and using revive. Ill be damned if im going to pay for a game that I have to use a 3rd party hack to make work. So far they haven’t had a single game I have even been interested in though but that will probably change when oculus become real vr with roomscale.

    • whitedragon101@gmail.com

      That should read “I’ll be damed if I’m going to play a game that…..”

      If you don’t like what they are doing don’t buy the games and don’t play them. But don’t pirate them. Two wrongs and all that.

  • RipVoid

    I do appreciate that Oculus is pouring millions into VR to jump start the market. That is definitely good for VR but hopefully their business model breaks down as the market matures. They are adopting the worst aspects of both Apple (over priced walled garden) and Google (hoarding user data) and I hope this isn’t the future of VR.

  • Channonbom

    Alot of people who complain about lack of cross compatibility probably didn’t watch OC3, the part where Zuck said FB investing 500 million into VR.

    Also, you forget the Vive wand and Oculus Touch are nothing alike. It’s like asking why my flight stick won’t work with that driving game like the other guys driving wheel. If Oculus gave money to developers to make a game for the Rift, I don’t they will be telling their investors “But that won’t work on the Vive.” boohooo

  • Well, I don’t like at all Oculus exclusives, but he’s right: without paying developers, they wouldn’t have got such beautiful games. For a small studios betting in VR is a high risk, that’s why money from HMD vendors are very important.

  • cefizelj gnom

    While agree VR needs a jump start, I disagree it needs exclusivity. There should be another way. You’re just segmenting the market.

    • Mr. New Vegas

      Its not their problem, they Invest money into these games, they dont throw money around just because they nice, they do it to grow their business.

      Its the same with console exclusives, why some people prefer one console over another? Some like Halo, others like Uncharted, people that work buy both consoles.

      • DougP

        Re: “Its the same with console exclusives,”

        Thank you – you just provided the reason why PC gamers don’t want this console crap mentality bleeding into their marketplace.
        A vast number of PC gamers actually GAME of PCs because they DON’T want to have to buy a specific piece of hardware (/multiple near duplicate pieces of hardware) to run certain software.

  • From the standpoint of selling games, being on every platform is the best idea for reaching the masses. But that’s a luxury everyone can’t afford. For example I don’t see a lot of Steam/htc vive titles on the Oculus store, which should make sense right? But you have to take into account porting your game over, approvals and re-working game mechanics for controller and platform limitations. Maybe developer’s don’t have the time because updates/oatches or they already moved on to another project.

    Now because steam is open i’ll be able to play all the HTC vive titles with touch, but it won’t be a optimal experience. I’ll have to persist through any room scale and controller facing issues. I would rather have the same game optimized for my platform and in the Oculus store because to me the home experience is better while in headset.

    If the game is locked away it’s something the developer agreed to and you really need to yell at them. I don’t know why, maybe the idea of cash now was appealing instead of hoping for sales from a new market. I don’t want to say exclusivity deals are a good thing, they’re anti-consumer, but I would hope during that time window the developer, if able would start porting for different platforms,so when the exclusivity ends, the other headsets will have a good/tuned experience.

    Also I hate to recall the pain that’s bayonetta 2, which is locked to a platform that i’ll never own because Nintendo was the only entity to pay for it’s development. Also all the PSVR content, which looks like fun, but its locked to a single headset/platform.

    • DiGiCT Ltd

      Yes, I agree and understand your point.
      We will put all our games on steam by using steam VR.
      Ofcourse we need to rethink about the rift’s touch controlers being different, but it does not take a way they cant be used as good as the vive ones.
      It tkaes for a dev less efford to make the controllers being used for a rift fitting their game rather then moving over to a oculus sdk instread.
      many stores are also an option , but believe me for a devloper its no fun at all, mostly you target the largest platform as most gamers are there.
      As an example i can tell you that China has over 200 android shops as google is blocked, can you imagine how time consuming it is to upload all the stuff to each shop and all the rest of work you still have after releasing your game with each update ?

      I agree the steam portal is not that good in VR yet, but eventually it will be as it still has a huge part of design in there for non VR users, which are still the most of them for a while anyhow.
      The luck vive owners have is that what you bought in steam will also link to your viveport, which is imo more VR friendly but on the other hand more bugged.

      I am not sure oculus allows you to start aps directly without using home, but with steam it is no problem, i can just launch them with desktop icons if i want and play it in VR immediately.

      • Yes, being on the biggest store is a plus. Almost every developer strives to get a Steam release because of the visibility and sales potential. I have a modest iOS VR media player app and I would love for it to be on Android, but I built everything custom and without licensing concerns. Just straight c++ and Obj-c, so porting to another platform after coding specifically for iOS isn’t that easy, but it’s fast, tailored and efficient. Porting to another platform is starting over for me.

        I think the main issue here is we the consumer don’t want content that’s locked to a single platform. Being a PC player the only limitation stopping me from playing any flat content is hardware and maybe DRM issues. Every game will probably work with any monitor, mouse, keyboard and possibly a joypad. For VR we have new expensive toys and we want content to play, but some of it is locked behind a specific store front and sdk.

        Now these issue could probably be solved if Oculus adopted OpenVR and just sold software for all headsets which would be pro consumer and probably net them more sales. But right now Oculus is still in control of their software stack and they’re making improvements and adding new features and Oculus specific services.

        And the same needs to be said for HTC Viveport, all content should work with all headsets. If it’s coded with OpenVR, I would assume it should, but I haven’t verified or heard any news about it, but they do have exclusive content.

        At minimal Oculus removed the headset check from their SDK, so Vive users should be able to play with an appropriate driver injector, which isn’t that great, but it’s something. I would expect the free content to just show up in the store and you can click to install, so you can jump through a few hoops to play, which is what I do for Steam content already, startup steam vr to intercept Oculus signals and convert them to something useful for their platform. Now issue may come into play if hand gestures were used for gameplay since the current Vive wand doesn’t support that tech.

        Now on another point, I think Bethesda will attempt to lock out Oculus users from their VR offerings. over the issues with Oculus and $$$. I can only hope, if that content ends up on steam, Valve steps in and forces them to not limit access to a single platform.

        I’m thinking in the end all these issue right now are growing pains and in a few years we should have hopefully resolved them. Like when Origin came out, it was garbage and we all wanted steam releases. Or when Half-Life 2 required Steam and it was garbage.

  • Mr. New Vegas

    And thats why im going to by Rift as my second VR platform on top of PSVR+PS4Pro combo.

    1. Unlike Vive, Oculus sees itself as platform and respects their clients, they help publish games and fund games, so far I haven’t heard of single AAA game HTC funded but I already want 2 future Oculus games, Arktikka and Lone Echo.

    2. Unlike Vive, Oculus knows that not every game wants to use gimmick movement controls, that not everyone gets sick and so they included a pair of old and proven Thumb Sticks.

    3. Strong back: Youll be surprised by im near my 40s and I dont have a facebook account, I hate this social BS and i dont want my personal info out there, but I know that Facebook is LOADED with money.

    4: See number 3, They can hire all the who-and-who of video games, Carmack, Rubin and many other ‘Brand Names’ of gaming.

    5. Looks like they have a healthy relationship with MS and if the rumor is true next Xbox Scorpio will be able to work with Oculus.

    6. Steam is a web shop, they make money selling games, so everything that Vive gets from steam, Oculus gets too.

    7 (well kind of). Knowing that Palemr is not another SJW/Safe Roomer/Feminazi/P.C. Police is a nice bonus.

    • ummm…

      i dont ever want to see you using room scale, EVER. you say now it is useless, and I’m not sure you left any room for a change of mind.

  • Ian N Karen O

    Microsoft Xbox invested millions to produce Halo… So people would buy their hardware. Is this not the same marketing? Is this not the intention of “exclusive”?

    Sure they could sell Halo to all platforms and make some dough, however they obviously figure they can make more by getting people to buy their headsets and controllers, consoles, battery’s, microphones and other game titles too, and the next generation of console, their Xbox store content. Skins. Micro transactions here we come.

    This investment means they can make more money to hopefully reinvest in bigger better titles. It seems to me like people miss the real intentions of an exclusive media.

    As such if they are the ones spending the money, they get to decide how to market it. And the consumer gets to decide who’s product to buy. Xbox or Sony, vive or oculus. I don’t think us consumers can do much about that.

  • Torben Bojer Christensen

    Aggressively funding VR alongside or together with and maybe even in alliance with Vive and/or even PSVR, now THAT would grow the PC-VR market in comparison to also choosing to exasperate and confuse users by making them unsure on buying PC-VR, by making them wonder if and when games will be available for their particular VR unit or not. That last part is certainly NOT helping to grow or sell PC-VR units overall, and not even all of the most sly and crafty rhetoric in the world can change that fact.

    Yes, funding might be an answer to grow VR faster, but the exclusivity part is just and ONLY an excuse to grow your own platform. So get lost Rubin, with your deceitful rhetoric about “the only viable way”, when there is an even better and more assuring way to jumpstart and grow the PC-VR market as a whole. Do not try to fool us, as if we were idiots. Get real! …It just takes some will, and a little selflessness.

    We, the PC-VR users needs and wants a strong, integral and healthy PC-VR landscape, not one contaminated in its infancy; split by one particular company’s selfishness!

  • DougP

    Re: “it’s the only viable way to jumpstart the market”
    TRANSLATION:
    “it’s the only viable way to compete because we feel without exclusives people will buy our competition’s product”

    Seriously, this is such BS.

    Do they think that people are really that **stupid that they’d buy this line?

    Hey Facebook – here’s an idea…. invest in software dev that’s NOT exclusive & you’ll make your money back off the profit, by the software being sold to at least TWICE AS MANY users.
    Oh yeah, and you might’ve received some “good will credit” from users, already angered by your blocking Rift games (ReVive fiasco), whilst “jumpstarting” VR.

    [ **Note: Maybe they know their target demographic best & people really are that stupid? ]

  • OgreTactics

    Can’t believe the bullshit I’m reading “hey here’s our TV that doesn’t even sport basic capacities it should have in 2016, but hey, you can’t play your PS4 or Xbox One on it, only our few apps”.

    Maybe the only way to jumpstart the VR market is…making good Virtual Headsets?

  • The real VR is where the picture is in your head eyes mind. It’s inside you. I have experience with this tech and exists this day and has for a long time. You can read some of my experience with this matrix vr tech here: http://www.darcylee.com/search/label/Terrorists THE REAL VR.