Polygon staff, Justin McElroy and Griffin McElroy, sit down with Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, to talk about the state of the VR industry and creating consumer products with VR technology.
The interview reveals a number of interesting points about VR, about when the public could expect to start seeing consumer products and how innovation in virtual reality will be driven. There are no price ranges given yet, but the word "investment" was used by Luckey quite a bit and given that most development is using cutting edge hardware it is no surprise that it will be expensive, although it was specified that the PC hardware required to run a headset like Oculus Rift will be more expensive than the headset itself.
Luckey also revealed that Oculus Rift was looking to start taking pre-orders on their product later this year, and although they have been working on title developments so that the product releases with something to play, the ultimate goal of the company is not to create their own titles. In the long term, Oculus is focused on creating better and better hardware and helping publishers make their titles (current and future) VR compatible.
The interview is simulataneously awesome and a little disappointing depending on what side of the gaming industry you're on. While virtual reality is one of the most exciting developments in gaming at the moment, one of the factors that had made it exciting was the thought that VR would once again provide people with an experience that they couldn't get at home and help to revitalise the arcade industry across the globe. However, much of the development is focused on PC and console gaming (although there a few developers focusing on out-of-home entertainment, such as The Void, etc.). With so many developers, inlcuding Oculus, focused on console and PC gaming, it looks like the arms race to get a consumer VR product out will likely be won by a developer selling to the home market. But as Luckey pointed out many times, the VR game is still very much a wait-and-see one.
You can check out the full interview
here.
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