Today at Oculus Connect 4, the company’s Head of Content, Jason Rubin, announced that Oculus Studios will be publishing a Rift exclusive title made by Respawn Entertainment, the studio founded by ex-Call of Duty, and the creators of Titanfall.
On stage during the Oculus Connect opening keynote, Jason Rubin revealed a range of forthcoming Oculus content.
At the end, Rubin said that he constantly gets asked when the world’s leading developers will begin creating VR games. He remains steadfast that they will come, and asked for patience, but also said that he was ready to “made a down payment on that promise today.”
That was the lead up to the reveal that Oculus Studios will be publishing a Rift exclusive title, developed by Respawn Entertainment, coming in 2019. Little more has been revealed about the game, including a name, however, the 2019 release date suggests this will be a full VR title with a lengthy, AAA development period.
The companies release this teaser trailer:
In a post to Respawn Entertainment’s blog about the announcement, Game Director Peter Hirschmann offered just a bit more teasing:
There are so many cool parts to making a game in VR, but perhaps the most intense one is emotion. While you know you’re wearing a headset, your brain processes VR on an emotional level. Though you’re in a simulation, you feel like you’re there. It’s all kinds of awesome.
So as a developer, game assets you’ve seen a hundred times on a monitor suddenly become real when you put the headset on. The sense of scale, the sense of presence, there’s nothing else like it. It’s the difference between using your mouse to rotate an object in an editor and walking around it in real life. It is a true privilege to build a game in this kind of immersive world.
Hirschmann also revealed that the studio’s upcoming VR game is not a Titanfall VR or Star Wars VR game.
Respawn Entertainment is the studio behind Titanfall (2014) and Titanfall 2 (2016), both published by EA Games. The studio is made up of an undeniably talented group of game developers, and was founded by ex-Call of Duty developers from Infinity Ward.
Respawn’s forthcoming VR game is just one of “multiple” Rift exclusive titles which Oculus has confirmed are already in production for 2019.