SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facebook-owned Oculus wants game developers to buy into the future of virtual reality, but for some developers, creating content for a smaller audience is also a gamble.
Despite all the hype surrounding the technology, virtual reality headsets aren’t flying off the shelves as quickly as some analysts expected.
Oculus has been putting its money where its mouth is by funding developers ready to get into the game.
“Developers get so incredibly geeked out by technology that selling them on VR is the easiest part of my job. That leaves only the business,” Oculus’ Vice President of Content Jason Rubin said in an interview.
When the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset was released in March 2016, only 30 VR titles were available. Now more than 500 titles have been released.
In July, Oculus announced that “MARVEL Powers United VR” — a multiplayer game that allows users to step into the shoes of popular comic book characters, such as The Hulk and Captain Marvel — would be available in 2018. The tech firm also released “Echo Arena” and “Lone Echo,” games that let consumers experience movement in zero gravity.
Those games were fully funded by Oculus. Many developers, though, are willing to invest their own money to create these immersive environments and learn about the technology, Rubin said.
About 70 out of more than 500 titles have some Oculus funding, he said. About a third of the 70 titles are fully funded by Oculus.
“We’re putting money into it, and (developers) stand to make money and also to learn about VR,” Rubin said.
In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would commit another $250 million to fund VR content, bringing the total to $500 million.
“We feel really comfortable that now is the time to push VR into second gear and kind of reach a broader audience,” Rubin said.
Beyond funding, developing games in virtual reality also comes with design challenges.
Glen Egan, president and CEO of Sanzaru, which developed “MARVEL Powers United VR,” said that in a traditional game, “the camera and the way it communicates with the player can be constantly controlled.”
But with virtual reality putting the player in a first-person perspective, they have more freedom to look around, and designers need to take this into account.
In “MARVEL Powers United VR,” creating a system that maps a player’s motion onto an avatar of a superhero within the game isn’t as simple as it looks.
“This behavior is actually very complicated, and the challenge comes from having to map regular humans onto very different sized super heroes: Rocket Raccoon has a relatively small shoulder width, but Hulk’s shoulder width is immense,” he said.
Still, the amount of games available is smaller than what consumers are used to, and the cost of a headset and high-end computer are making people think twice about a purchase, analysts say.
Zuckerberg has said it could take five to 10 years before VR reaches the masses.
