HTC/Valve Vive
The HTC Vive became available for pre-order at the end of February for $800. The unit which, unlike the Oculus Rift, currently comes with VR motion controllers included, is due to ship at the beginning of April, just a few days after the Rift. The Vive is currently backordered to May.
Emphasis on Room-scale VR
Valve has given us a pretty good indication thus far of what we’ll see from them and the Vive at GDC 2016. Firstly, the company will be hosting 36 SteamVR games at their booth. Here’s the full list:
| Developer | Title |
| Owlchemy Labs | Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives |
| Northway Games & Radial Games | Fantastic Contraption |
| Tilt Brush | |
| Epic | Unreal Editor |
| Lionsgate & Starbreeze | John Wick: The Impossible Task |
| Stress Level Zero | Hover Junkers |
| Cloudhead Games | The Gallery |
| Neat Corporation | Budget Cuts |
| Indimo Labs | Vanishing Realms |
| VRUnicorns | #SelfieTennis |
| VIRZOOM | Virzoom |
| Futuretown.io | Cloudlands Minigolf |
| I-Illusions | Space Pirate Trainer |
| Vertigo Games | Arizona Sunshine |
| Phosphor Games | Brookhaven |
| Alientrap | Modbox |
| Solfar | Everest |
| Aldin Dynamics | Waltz of the Wizard |
| Survios | Raw Data |
| Dylan Fitterer | Audioshield |
| Penrose Studios | The Rose and I |
| InnerspaceVR | La Peri |
| Triangular Pixels | Unseen Diplomacy |
| Schell Games | Water Bears |
| Phaserlock | Final Approach |
| Innervision VR | Thunderbird |
| Other Ocean | GiantCop |
| Lightning Rock | Marble Mountain |
| WaveVR | TheWave |
| Frontier Development | Elite: Dangerous |
| Cartoon Network Games & Turbo Button | Adventure Time |
| Envelop | E.V.E. |
| AltVR | Altspace |
| Minority Media | Time Machine |
| Giant Army | Universe Sandbox ² |
| Cherrypop Games | Pool Nation |
The vast majority are room-scale titles, though HTC and Valve maintain that the Vive works well for seated VR as well (as we’ve tried on a few occasions).
We’ll be going hands-on with a number of these Vive titles throughout the week.
New VR Content from Valve
Valve will also be showing off two new pieces of its own never-before-seen content.
The first is The Lab which the company says is a “compilation of new VR experiments,” which is set in the Portal universe. We expect this to be linked to the much-loved Aperture Science Robot Repair experience which the company debuted back when the Vive was first revealed during GDC 2015.
The second new thing we’ll see from Valve at GDC 2016 is the SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode (heretofore: SDTM) which the company today confirmed was in beta. SDTM will allow VR users to play non-VR games inside of a virtual reality home-theater space.
Leveraging Steam
Look for Valve to leverage the established Steam platform as a major selling point for the HTC Vive. For many non-VR PC gamers, Steam is the platform of choice, and already houses the majority of users’ game library and online friends.
Valve has taken a first stab at translating the Steam experience into a ‘Shell’ interface which is an in-VR hub that provides access to SteamVR titles and the usual Steam features like the store, friends, and a web browser. SteamVR’s interface is still early and we hope to see big usability improvements as time goes on.
Although playing existing games on a virtual screen isn’t the most exciting use-case for VR, the new SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode will likely prove a salient bullet-point for Steam gamers who are on the fence about trying the new-fangled technology. Knowing that they can at least do something with their non-VR games means they don’t have to feel like they’re dropping $800 on a product that is wasted on the investment they’ve already put into their game library.
And after all that… this is only be the tip of the iceberg for VR at GDC 2016. We’re on the ground all week to bring you the latest. Stay tuned.