Magic Leap, the augmented reality headset manufacturer, has added another couple hundred million dollars to its Series D investment round, this time $461 million led by The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, Tech Crunch reports.
Starting this month, Bandai Namco is lowering its age restriction for its VR Zone Arcade in Shinjuku to 7 years old on many of its VR games. The information was released late last month in a press blurb on Bandai Namco’s website (Japanese). Before the change, all activities using a VR headset were restricted to 13 years or older.
As spring arrives and the swallows come back to Capistrano, so too is it time to endure another annual low-budget film featuring Nicolas Cage. This time, the crew behind Cage’s latest film The Humanity Bureau (2018) have thrown a 360 camera in the mix in an attempt to generate a VR app that launched on nearly every VR platform prior to the film’s April 6th theatrical release.
Golem, a forthcoming PSVR title that’s been in the works since 2015, resurfaced in late 2017 at Sony’s PSX event after staying out of the spotlight for some time. At the time the studio revealed that the game would ship on March 13th (having been delayed once prior). Now the studio has announced another delay as they put the finishing touches on the PSVR exclusive.
Based in an African mystical universe, Rangi (2017) today comes to PSVR. The game, which features a large space with puzzles, previously launched on Gear VR, Cardboard, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Last year marked HTC’s very first Vive Developer Awards (VDAs), which saw tens of thousands of dollars go to VR app developers across a number of categories. Now, HTC has announced the nominees for this year’s VDAs who will be in competition to win $50,000 in first place prize money.
Oculus has been hosting free access weekends for some time now, including Onward (2017), SPARC (2017), and From Other Suns (2017). Now, Oculus is tossing out free access to Insomniac Games‘ magic dueler The Unspoken (2016) this weekend for Rift players on Oculus Home.
It’s been more than a year and a half since I first stepped into Budget Cuts, an instantly promising VR title from indie developer Neat Corporation with a novel and efficient locomotion system that blends perfectly with the game’s throwing-knife stealth action gameplay. Though the studio has been largely silent since then, they’ve assured me that the game is being actively developed (“like, a lot”) and headed toward an early 2018 launch.
Filling something of a gap in Sony’s PSVR content lineup, Bravo Team is a cooperative title which aims to bring military shooter style first-person action to the platform. Will you revel in cooperative combat, or is this one bullet worth dodging?
Ahead of tomorrow’s launch on PSVR, there’s a new trailer for cooperative VR shooter Bravo Team, which preps players for the game’s strategic, cover-based gameplay and careful marksmanship.
This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) is nearly upon us, and now that talks for the week-long event are published on the GDC website, it appears Google will be taking the stage to introduce a number of new products and tools for game devs. While it’s not explicitly stated whether the talk will be primarily focused on AR/VR, Google’s product manager for AR/VR developer tools Nathan Martz will be speaking, making us think there might be something interesting around the corner.
Yahoo! Japan just updated their iOS-based Map application to include a new experimental AR mode which superimposes a blue pathway onto the physical world for you to follow to your final destination. The AR function, which is only intended for walking routes currently, is available starting today on Japan-based Apple devices running iOS 11.
Virtualitics, a big data visualization and analytics company, announced the successful close of a $7 million Series B round of equity funding led by investment group Centricus, and participated by existing investor the Venture Reality Fund (‘The VR Fund’) and other private investors. Virtualitics is developing a platform, called Virtualitics Immersive Platform, that melds AI and big data in virtual and augmented reality environments.
Owlchemy Labs, creators of Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017) tonight announced their latest VR title, Vacation Simulator.
Rose Colored by INVAR Studios & Adam Cosco won the award for best live-acton VR experience at the Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Awards on February 12th. I previously interviewed Cosco at VRLA last year, and I had a chance to talk with INVAR’s co-founder & chief creative officer Vincent Edwards & creative director Austin Conroy on their thoughts on the future of storytelling in VR at Kaleidoscope VR’s FIRST LOOK VR Market.
