Virtuix, the company behind the VR treadmill Virtuix Omni, debuted their previously announced VR eSports attraction ‘Omniverse VR Arena’ at the Dave & Buster’s location in Austin, Texas this past week.
Job Simulator (2016), the popular simulator parody game from Owlchemy Labs, served up a sequel on PC VR headsets back in April—its more laid-back cousin Vacation Simulator (2019). Starting today, users on PSVR can get into fun too, and just in time for the summer vacation season.
A year ago, in response to Sony consistently delivering high-quality exclusives for PS4, Microsoft made a commitment to rejuvenating its first-party game development efforts and went on a shopping spree, acquiring a handful of respected studios to bolster its first-party game development talent under the Xbox Game Studios banner. Whether purposeful or not, almost half of the studios now belonging to Xbox Game Studios have had a hand in VR development.
After the Fall is an upcoming co-op VR zombie shooter that promises to let groups of up to four players battle for survival within a zombie infested landscape. Revealed last week at E3 2019, the game’s first demo offered visual polish underscored by bland gameplay that isn’t playing to VR’s strengths.
Survios just released its music-making platform Electronauts (2018) on Quest, letting you build, drop, and remix tracks using the DJ app’s clever VR-native controls. What’s more, if you already own Electronauts on Rift (purchased through the Oculus Store), you’ll be able to jam for free on Quest.
Developer Beat Games last week revealed a new ‘360 mode’ for their VR hit Beat Saber. Notes can now come from all around the player instead of just straight ahead. While it feels like a fun new way to play, it makes beat mapping considerably more complex. It’ll take innovative and creative mapping to really make 360 mode great, and for that, Beat Games should turn to its community.
Backed by Oculus Studios, Sanzaru Games’ next big title for Rift, Asgard’s Wrath, doesn’t have a release date yet, although at E3 this week I got a chance to try out the latest demo, which reveals more of the game’s story, dungeon crawling, light puzzles, and magical beast companions.
Against Gravity, the studio behind the popular social VR game Rec Room, has raised an addition $24 million in venture capital across two investment rounds.
The developer of Virtual Desktop, a Quest app which allows users to stream their PC desktop to the headset for use in VR, says that after the recent addition of a feature which allowed SteamVR games to be played on Quest, Oculus is forcing him to remove the feature.
This week at E3 2019, Oculus is showing their first ever demo of Lone Echo II, the anticipated followup to 2017’s Lone Echo. While the first game was an achievement in VR locomotion, interaction, and storytelling, Lone Echo II aims to up the ante with more dynamic gameplay, which starts with a new enemy that’s a more dynamic threat than anything seen in the original game.
Neat Corporation, the studio behind stealth VR game Budget Cuts (2018), unveiled a new VR project late last month called Garden of the Sea. The game, which puts you on a magical island where you tend to your garden, gather resources, and raise local fauna, is out now in Early Access.
LOW-FI is an upcoming VR game from the veteran indie VR developer behind TECHNOLUST (2016). The game presents a dark but plausible future where most of the population lives in a VR simulation, while at the same time the city’s poor inhabitants live unseen on the streets of the real-world. They are the ‘low-fi’.
At E3 today, Rebellion unveiled some fresh gameplay footage and revealed more details behind Sniper Elite VR, the critically acclaimed shooter’s first VR game. The studio also confirmed that PS Aim support is definitely coming to the PSVR version of the game in addition to support for PC VR headsets.
You may have noticed Oculus Quest is sold out practically everywhere, and while it’s not certain whether the company’s standalone 6DOF headset is selling famously, or is simply the result of artificially limited quantities to generate hype à la Nintendo, one thing is clear: Oculus has sold $5 million worth of Quest content in the first two weeks since its May 21st launch.
At E3 2019 this week, I got a chance to go hands-on with Phantom: Covert Ops, an Oculus Studios exclusive in development by nDreams. The game plays out over the course of a single night, and follows a special operative as they infiltrate a facility in a tactical kayak. While the kayak part sounds just a little ridiculous, it’s actually a genius bit of VR design which affords the game an immersive locomotion and interaction system that has huge potential.
