It was more than four years ago that Starbreeze revealed Storm, a "co-op sci-fi FPS" that the studio said "is our future." Unfortunately, nothing else was revealed, including platforms or when it might be released, and as far as I know that was pretty much the last we heard of it. Today, however, Starbreeze posted a "Storm Visionary Teaser" on YouTube, and while it's not exactly overloaded with detail, it does point toward some very ambitious plans for a virtual reality experience.
The headsets in the trailer look physically similar to the ones Starbreeze unveiled in June 2015, but with upgraded specs, including 5K resolution (5120x2880) instead of the previously-announced 5120x1440. But the full setup goes beyond just the headset, including "force feedback using the Epawn floor tracking technology" and multiple item and user tracking, all on a much larger scale than we've previously seen.
Starbreeze dug into some of its ideas for VR during a livestream earlier today, which included the "first vision" of Storm embedded above. "Storm’s an IP we’ve had in our portfolio for a long time and we provided a glimpse of the future where we aim to bring a product as both a PC co-op game and a VR large field competitive experience," the studio said in a statement. "We started to put the pieces together with a number of tech related acquisitions last year, but there’s still some advances in the field required to fully realize the vision. We have no timeline defined as of yet."
That "large field competitive experience" will presumably take place in the "Starcade" facilities that Starbreeze teased in early 2016. The first of them was supposed to debut in Los Angeles in the spring or summer of that year, although that ultimately didn't happen; instead, "the first pilot center of the IMAX VR Experience" based on the initial iteration of StarVR was opened in January, while plans to put a final-spec device into full production were set for later this year. As for Storm itself, Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson said during the livestream that there are still "years" of work ahead, so don't expect anything to happen anytime soon.
The full Starbreeze "Starstream" video can be seen below—the VR-related segment starts at the 3:00 mark.
Thanks, NeoGAF.
(Updated with Starbreeze statement and livestream.)
