Oculus VR, makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, announced today that Eve: Valkyrie, a space dog-fighting game often used to demo the device , will be the first game Oculus will co-publish, and the first exclusive Oculus Rift launch title.
In December, we reported that David De Martini, formerly of Electronic Arts, joined Oculus to head the company's publishing initiative . This seems like the first result of that initiative. Good call, De Martini. As Oculus' announcement points out, PC Gamer thought it was the best game shown at E3 2013 . It was developed by a team within CCP that supported Oculus during its Kickstarter campaign.
We've been chomping at the bit for all things Oculus and VR for months now, following every little update, sorting out the relationship between Oculus Rift and Valve's VR solution , often lauding the potential of the technology. But we haven't talked as much about games, let alone exclusives.
We've heard developers from Jonathan Blow to DICE talk about adding "VR support" to games that would have existed otherwise, but we've yet to hear much about exclusives or launch titles. The Rift is going to need both of those if it hopes to catch on in a meaningful way. Could this be the Rift's "killer app?"
Oculus also announced that it's releasing the Oculus Latency Tester as open source hardware. You can order the device from Oculus or build your own, then download the necessary software for free. This, Oculus believes, will "accelerate and improve virtual reality technology for everyone."
Finally, we'll probably hear more about Oculus-published and developed games in the future, as the company said it's currently recruiting 3D artists, animators, and gameplay engineers to help build "next-gen VR content."
