Where are the Oculus virtual reality games

Five years after working with Oculus and Facebook, Jason Rubin has overseen more than $ 500 million worth of virtual reality games. It has funded some of the world's most prestigious development studios, witnessed a multi-billion dollar acquisition and witnessed the launch of more than 1,300 titles.

And now, he says, the virtual reality industry feels ready to begin.

It's an interesting marketing line that promotes Oculus' latest products and eliminates slowdowns, such as slow headphone use and the lack of great software. Yet this is also what Rubin has always said, and indicates a future in which the virtual reality game market – and Oculus's approach to it – is changing.

With the release of the Oculus Quest wireless headset in May, the company is trying to take aggressive steps to integrate virtual reality games into everyday life. Thanks to powerful and early word of mouth, many studios are adapting their plans to focus on them, devoting more effort to games that do not require high-end visuals, or to games that use more demographics. large.

Meanwhile, the publishing group Oculus Studios is moving from what Rubin once called a "sender" who would "give money to anyone who has an idea and see what would remain" in an organization that takes big bets and that is more cautious, similar to a traditional console or PC editor. (Although he adds that Oculus "is not supposed to have the last dollar" in the same way as a public company.)

Combine a "top-level global IP" targeting strategy, a plan to sign ever larger projects that will eventually reach AAA console game budgets, a focus on mixed-reality streaming, and new types of games. social experiences, and Oculus sees way to get more customers in the door. But a new PlayStation, a new Xbox and Google's stadiums will compete for attention next year, and many players still feel a general resistance to virtual reality.

Last week, I sat down with Mike Verdu, VR / VR content manager at Oculus, to discuss the state of virtual reality games and future perspectives.

According to Verdu, a new generation of Oculus games is coming, and we'll see the first example later this week.

The current range of studios

The publishing group of Oculus Studios is in transition. Five years ago, on his first day as group manager, Rubin stated that he had gone to work and discovered that he had 60 days to prepare a software package. for the Samsung Gear VR, one of the first helmets of the company.

"You can not do quality control in 60 days," says Rubin.

Today, Oculus's list is filled with larger projects and multi-year development cycles. He had critically acclaimed titles, such as the Space Adventure Lone Echo, and games in a mix of genres, from dance to driving to horror.

What is missing are group titles, games that attract new players in virtual reality. Part of Oculus's plan to create them is to sign a high-end IP address – a statement claiming that Ubisoft was offering Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed VR games – and a part of it consisting of Deliver the kind of fantasies that gamers have been asking for in VR, mimicking experiences that have been popular outside the format.

For now, the upcoming announced range of Oculus Studios is filled with these, addressing the genre of action in the first person from almost every angle. It includes stealth action with Phantom: Secret Operations, action-RPG Anger of Asgard, action-adventure games Stormland and Lone Echo 2, post-apocalyptic shooter After the falland a military shooter from Respawn Entertainment.

Jason, you've been at Oculus for about five years. And at that time, there were some very good games, but there were not as many that were successful and that were successful audiences – those who win big prizes or those who bring people outside VR communities to start talking about it. You know, a ton of money has been spent. Have you ever spent time thinking, "It takes a little longer or has been a bit harder than I thought five years ago?

Jason Rubin: So it certainly takes a lot of time, but not longer than expected. We always expected that. It takes a while to find a new medium with a whole new language. And one of the most humbling aspects of virtual reality work for everyone, including developers, is that AAA developers become, like B & C developers [for] their first game, because all the rules they have taught themselves over the years, they do not work. You do not just translate a shooter directly into VR. You do not just take Fallout, for example, and you wear it. When you do that, it does not really work very well, just as it did not work to take console games and insert them into a mobile phone. […]

We have been successful in unit sales for many of our products. In other words, if we had 100 million units, like the PS4, our titles would be, you know, tens of millions of sellers. We used the products well considering the installed base. What has been a challenge is to enlarge the installation base and to attract the interest of people outside the installation base. I think a lot of that was waiting for Quest's form factor.

I played a few games from Oculus last week.[[[[Phantom: Secret Operations, Stormland, and Anger of Asgard]and when I played, I continued to have two reactions. The first is that they have come a long way from what we saw for the first time a few years ago. You can see all these little tricks that make them much more comfortable, much more exciting. The other is that I could not stop myself from seeing the limits. They try to do so much that you tend to see more flaws than in something smaller like Beat Saber. Do you feel this struggle where you are trying to do what has been done in a new way but it is not quite there yet?

Insist on: I would suggest that this is not the genre as such, as big as these games are, they are not part of the Uncharted budget. I know what Uncharted [cost, at least a couple of games ago]. I do not know what's next, but I know what the budgets are. It's not these budgets. The size of the team is a quarter the size of the Uncharted and we do not outsource as much as they do. If you think maybe of a subway or a title like this, which worked very well but is not Call of Duty, you probably see the same flaws. And this is largely due to the size of the team and the amount of time and energy that she can devote to different tasks. In addition, there is currently a huge gap between the activities of the small teams and the AAA teams in the console and PC sectors. There is simply no in-between, and we pass them as we slowly get longer products with larger teams to reach the size of the ones you see.

And I think what you see is that we are still learning. So they are trying to figure out the VR version of what they would have done in the game, and they may not have succeeded. So, there is probably some of that. Three years later, in five years, we will have mastered the language of virtual reality.

And then, part of it is simply that they can not repeat something 100 times and throw it 99 times to get to the last one, which achieves perfection in a game nowadays. It's an exhausting, extremely costly and time-consuming process. We play massive games but they are not super massive, like six years later. [of development]. If you think of GTA 5it was a six-year project. It was longer than I was working in virtual reality and I was at the very beginning of our content pipeline. We could not have created this VR game for the moment. So, this comparison, we will still be a bit short. In five years? I do not think so.

Mike Verdu: Yes, and to support the point about the size of the team and the level of investment, these games were unencrypted years ago. I think that in successive generations of games, you will see us getting closer and closer to this brand. I would also say in a game like Anger of Asgardit's a big leap in different ways. The whole body [inverse kinematics] This system allows you to feel like a character in the game, unlike many virtual reality games. Melee combat? Incredibly difficult to obtain.

When the player has total freedom – the level of difficulty of adjustment is one thing, but the feeling that you are fighting and that you are immersed in this fight and that you do not feel like an unfair fight – that is a lot of work. get that balance right. And then locomotion in a big world is a huge challenge. The kind of fundamentals that this team has put in place to deliver an experience that even comes to the point of being compared, using virtual reality language and grammar, is quite an achievement and it's 39 is a concept that has emerged. together a few years ago. So we're moving pretty fast, and I think we're very excited to see the next titles coming.

Insist on: Yes, in fact, this specific example that Mike has just given is excellent because it really explains the difference between things. When you make a hacked title, I'm just going to call Anger of Asgard a hack-and-slash – you have swords and you crush. In 2D, you can deceive everything. If I want to cut the guy's neck, [the game] Just move my arm to the right place, move it forward so that his neck is exactly where he strikes, and the neck will cut perfectly every time and it will just look great. When he hits me, all you want to do with the camera is a fair game, because I'm sitting in my chair and it just does what he does to the camera.

It is extremely difficult to really understand these two things in virtual reality, because I do not have control of your hand and I can not adapt to the head of your interlocutor. It's weird if I can see the whole character and everything, and adjust the character. And if you can not quite get the perfect one. They did an incredible job, giving you the impression of creating links. You never expect to feel the resistance of hitting something on a 2D screen. You just get the sound effect, and it's pretty good because it's a 2D screen. The lack of resistance, because you can not stop your hand from moving, is a problem we had to deal with in virtual reality. […] So, the things you say that are not one hundred percent landing, it's shocking that they're so close to reaching it, that you'd say they're doing the best.

Verdu: At least we are in the realm where you can compare.

Insist on: Yeah.

I guess my question is: why try to compare when you will inevitably fail in some ways?

Insist on: Because the idea that you would say "I've got a virtual world, and I'm not going to do The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not going out and hitting orcs," is insane. You must solve that. We must. Swords must be solved for virtual reality because people want to do it, right? And yes, you can take the sword and have blocks coming to you and, you know, Beat SaberIs an amazing game. But people will also want to slash the orcs. We must solve these problems. This is the wish that realizes virtual reality and we will never be able to get the holodeck. We all know it's a kind of scientific fantasy, but we're going, right? And everything is a step. So, yes, maybe the connection with the skeleton when you're knocking her head right now seems a little odd, but give us a few years of iteration. It is going much better.

Verdu: It's almost as if these convergent paths of evolution were unfolding. I mean, in one, Beat Saber makes no assumptions, and this only builds on what the platform does and does it perfectly. As you said, it is simply brilliant and perfect and everything works. And that's sort of the construction of what the platform is capable of.

And then you have people's expectations for a virtual reality game – that I'm going to be in an immersive world, and that I'm going to inhabit an interesting character, and that character is going to interact with other characters from there. a world, and you will be able to do interesting things, with the added promise of: the interaction is incredibly rich. I mean, think about the difference between a standard controller and a 2D screen and being able to move your arms, to exist and to move in space. This promises a dimension of interactivity that we have never seen before. And trying to keep that promise is an admirable thing. It is a laudable goal. It's glorious in itself and we should try to do it. And it will take time and many attempts, but I think the destination is worth it. And you see gleams of brilliance. You see there flickers of real potential. […] Anger of Asgard and Stormlandthey are fun games. They may have their flaws, but they are really fun experiences. The fact that we are so advanced in this journey is very encouraging for me.

Japanese developer support

While Oculus has won support from studios around the world, Japan is a country that has been slow to adapt, with players in Japan complaining that too little software has been located and international customers wonder when they can play. made by familiar Japanese studios.

Meanwhile, Sony has cornered the market by offering famous Japanese games such as Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Resident Evil 7, and Tetris effect on PlayStation VR.

At this year's Tokyo Game Show, Oculus announced that all documentation for developers was being translated into Japanese. This puts the years behind other territories, yet with the introduction of Quest, Rubin and Verdu say they expect to see more support from Japanese teams soon.

When I look at the Oculus store, it seems like there are not many Japanese team games – or at least some very prominent Japanese teams. Why do you think that's it?

Verdu: Thus, the headset has a lot of attraction in Japan, but we have not located many games or products for this market. I think that with time, we will see us roll out at the regional level, but the footprint in Japan is not quite at the rendezvous yet.

I'm thinking more of the games created by Japanese studios that could be marketed internationally. It sounds like a gap when you compare it – you know, obviously, Nintendo and Sony have very strong things. Even Microsoft. People are making fun of Microsoft because it does not have great Japanese support, but it is already far from Oculus.

Insist on: We'll get there. It takes time. There are many reasons. Most of the time, developers wanted to create the first or two generations of software, and PCs are just not as prevalent in Japan. Thus, PC-hacked computer developers do not do what they do in Japan. There are, but there are not many. Some of our early titles were Japanese, you know, but we did not really launch this hacker community.

As Mike has said, if you look at Quest, the adoption rate in Japan is huge. What they tell us is, "Where are our software?". This should lead Japanese developers to say, "Wait, there is a local user base here. We should do things. "

We must locate. We need to talk more directly and clearly about the Japanese market. We are. It will happen. […]

I feel like people are creating their own games, but that's what you're funding as well. Oculus Studios has not yet produced big game in Japanese. Is it coming soon? Are there things we will see in the next two years of [the Studios lineup] Is it the equivalent of an insomniac or a Respawn? Do you like a PlatinumGames, a programming software or a team like that?

Verdu: Nothing to talk about yet.

D & # 39; AGREEMENT. Yes, I mean, it just seems to be a gap at the moment.

Verdu: We are fully aware.

Insist on: Plus, every developer cares about his home market, right? There are very few developers who are developing here for something good there. Perhaps more than other Eastern Europeans, but even these build for their own market, and then part of the production is international. With a lack of PC desire, and the [Gear VR] smartphone being a South Korean smartphone that was rather popular in Japan but not a huge brand in Japan at the time, they never really pushed Gear VR as heavily. Virtual reality was not yet set to be massive in Japan. Quest has changed that and they are now looking very seriously at the issue, so things will change.

Verdu: The dynamic it describes is valid for major studios and publishers around the world. Quest has really changed the game and people have seen it, but this kind of "oh!" Initial – it's the same reaction I got. It's like, Oh shit. This is actually here now, not in five years. I can actually be able to do business on this device. It takes a while for this wave of bow to become products that take full advantage of the platform on the road. But it's quite clear that the Quest is considered a major evolutionary step, beyond PCs and the generation of virtual reality products for mobile phones.

Is there any idea that Sony is so well established – because they help fund some of these teams and the virtual reality ecosystem – that these teams may not need it so much? from you?

Insist on: I do not think we really see it this way. I think maybe another way of looking at things besides the fact that, as I said, we were a PC product [and] they do not really have a PC: they have a lot of PlayStation. As, of course, that existed. Five years ago, when I created Studios, we had no international presence. Sony had that, and they had it in the 90s when I worked with them, right? So remember, we built this division as we build the hardware. This is neither a Samsung, nor a Sony, nor even a Microsoft, a group that had implemented several hardware iterations over generations and had an international team. We have built this from scratch over the past five years, and so when you look at hyper-localized markets with very specific needs and desires – not a Switzerland, which looks a lot like France or the United States. Germany on each side, You know, Japan, which is a unique culture with a unique language and desire – it is difficult for a new organization to be there very quickly.

But now that we have a product that resonates with them, we need to get there quickly and, fortunately, Facebook is the kind of company that can grow quickly. We are no longer a start-up and we are not even a small American company that examines every penny of its development by developing into a new market. We have Facebook staff on the ground in Japan, so we have Japanese communications with the developers when they need them, and so on, so you'll see it happen.

Vader Immortal: Episode I

At the launch of Oculus Quest in May, one of its flagship titles was Vader Immortal: Episode I, the first of three planned episodes based on the story in the universe of Star Wars.

Arrive about 40 minutes, Episode I gave a preview of what a Star Wars action game might look like in VR, while retaining its best gameplay in a side mode called Lightsaber Dojo. This left me wondering if the team developing it was short of time. Or maybe I just misunderstood what I was playing?

Let's talk about Vader Immortal. Obviously, this is an episodic series. Has any of this decision been made to make it available for the launch of Quest?

Insist on: Part of that was that. It was also – and you should really talk to ILMxLAB, because in terms of creative control, they have absolute creative control – but I think they wanted to tell a story by parts. I think that they really felt comfortable with that. They wanted to give you a taste and make you come back and do more. Bulimia attacks are excellent, and you could lose three or four. For example, a player could, no? Then you probably do not look at it with the same memory, because you did it in one day, three, five or seven years, instead of waiting until the next day. And you really should talk to ILMxLAB because they have creative control, but I think there was a bit of, We want to explain this in parts, and we want people to think of them as separate pieces of history, instead of simply putting them together.

It's hard. For me, this game is painful because I see so much potential. You know, we've been hearing for years that lightsabers should be good on Wii and Kinect. And they have never been. And now, finally, we know that they can be great with Touch. You can see it in Beat Saber or the Vader Immortal Dojo with lightsaber. But you go into the story and it's just a tutorial. It's not a good game. And I'm curious if they just do not have the time.

Verdu: So, they made a very conscious decision to explore interactive storytelling. I think that from the beginning of the project, they put the emphasis on the narrative aspect and the character-oriented aspect. And so I think you see some of that.

Insist on: At one point, there could easily be a game based on the lightsaber. But the purpose of Vader Immortal was to tell a story. And what we discovered at the beginning was: Pure story, if you look at some of the stuff in Story Studio – Henry, or things like that – you can only really give it a lot of time before you say, Why am I sitting in this space both interactive and non-interactive? It's very weird. You are not part of the action. So, to advance the genre of storytelling in virtual reality, we had to give you the agency. We had to give you control of things. We had to put you there, but we also wanted to tell a story. So, what I think you're reacting to is that you like it, the story is great, but when will we get to the game? And this is not the purpose of this product. […]

In the future, you could certainly do a hell of a sword. And the lightsabers have the advantage that unlike an ax with which one hits somebody Anger of Asgard – You expect him to cross them directly. […] The challenge is that you can do the same for the walls and all the rest, and what's going on? But whatever.

Verdu: I embarked on this business to partly try to understand the interactive story, and the first company I co-founded was actually an adventure game company. And if you remember, adventure games consisted of solving puzzles around a story [at the time]. But some of these old textual adventures have put you in touch with characters and places in a way that even some current games do not allow. And people are still playing because there is reminiscence of nostalgia. I think it's a very good narrative design and memorable characters, and I think you see some of these compulsions manifesting themselves in Vader, putting less emphasis on the riddles you hit your head against the wall to understand. Who, you know, you can say [you can] Just make the puzzles more difficult and expand the story, but I think what ILMxLAB wanted was something that had the right pace.

I really liked the short length. Personally, I have the feeling that the episodic ones are perfectly suited to virtual reality, because I'm not one to want to play 30 hours. Anger of Asgard. I want to play a few hours and move on. Do you think you have more episodic things?

Verdu: I think you'll see more, and we'll continue to experiment with this form of interactive narration. It is a very convincing experience and a way to live this unique world. So I think the result is excellent. I would certainly wait to see more.

Insist on: I think we will need both. In the end, some people would say no – "stop with these things from two o'clock, four o'clock; I want to dive 30 hours into something. Consumers tell us. So we have to respond to everyone's needs and, as you know, as virtual reality evolves and more and more people join and more and more developers publish content, we will determine what's right. It will probably be a combination, in the end.

Verdu: Yes, there is no reason not to continue experimenting. What if you had an hour and a half of really incredible narration, then a game element that was close to your heart, and that you carried the emotion of the narrative experience into an interaction even to multiple players? And I do not necessarily mean Star Wars, but other IPs and other worlds. But I think this form deserves to be explored further.

The Respawn partnership

In 2017, Oculus announced one of its most prestigious publishing contracts to date – a partnership with Respawn, the studio run by some of the staff who created the Call of Duty and Titanfall series, in order to to create a game for his Oculus Rift helmet. In a trailer promoting the partnership at the time, Respawn staff called the game "realistic" and "authentic" military shooter, but since then, Oculus and Respawn have remained silent.

Oculus plans to publicly release the game, dubbed Project Rocket, Wednesday at its annual Oculus Connect conference.

Let's talk about Respawn. We know you're going to unveil the game next week, but what can you say about it now?

Verdu: Thus, the fact that one of the best developers in the world has chosen virtual reality to make it a gaming experience is a turning point. It's amazing. We were talking earlier about how teams that learn the language and grammar of virtual reality are also working very hard to be sort of AAA in all dimensions. And when you compare these experiences to refined console and PC experiences that have 25, 30 years of evolution to succeed, you have a developer who has these standards and sensibilities and the desire to explore this new world and do it with The big team is incredibly exciting. Et je pense que c’est un signe avant-coureur de choses à venir et que ce sera un tournant décisif lorsqu’il sortira.

Insister sur: Sans entrer dans les détails, la plupart des grands développeurs avec lesquels nous travaillons – et même des plus grands que nous n’avons pas encore annoncés – ont toujours été intéressés lorsque nous avons appelé et nous avons dit: «Hé, la RV vous intéresse-t-il? Ils sont très intéressés. Il y a des gens parmi leur personnel qui l'ont chez eux. Ils veulent, mais est-ce le bon moment pour le faire? Est-ce juste pour nous? Et c'était un exemple parfait il y a des années. Ce projet est annoncé depuis quelques années. Vous savez, cela fait longtemps que l'on se prépare […]

Il y a un ADN dans cette entreprise. Il y a un gène qui essayait de s'exprimer depuis le tout premier jeu qu'ils ont créé, et ils reviennent sans cesse pour essayer de faire ce qu'ils veulent faire de manière concluante. Ils veulent bien faire les choses et continuent à le faire mieux, mais ils [haven’t gotten] 100% juste et ils peuvent ne jamais l'obtenir à 100%. Mais à la minute où ils sont entrés dans la réalité virtuelle et ont regardé, ils ont dit: Cela gratte la démangeaison. Ceci est la prochaine étape de cette chose. C’est quelque chose que nous devons faire parce que cela fait partie de notre parcours depuis le début.

Et c’est ce qui s’est passé avec beaucoup d’entreprises auxquelles nous avons envoyé des kits, mais ce que vous allez voir, je pense que vous aurez l’idée: Ah d'accord. Je comprends maintenant. Je comprends pourquoi cela a tout de suite été comme, vous savez, c’est une nouvelle façon d’exprimer cette chose que nous voulions exprimer. Parce que, vous savez, les développeurs sont des artistes, fondamentalement. Par exemple, il n’ya pas beaucoup de développeurs qui s’adressent à eux pour dire: «Oh, nous voulons un jeu de course.» «OK, d’accord. Nous ferons de vous un jeu de course. »Ceux-ci ne sont généralement pas les meilleurs développeurs. Meilleurs développeurs? «Oh, je ne suis pas intéressé par un jeu de course. Ce que je veux faire, c’est ce que je pense », et c’est ce qu’ils fabriquent.

De la façon dont vous parlez de ce jeu et de la façon dont j’ai entendu les autres en parler, il semble qu’Oculus ait beaucoup à dire sur ce jeu. Est-ce que ce genre de chose est la grande chose à laquelle tout a été conduit?

Verdu: Je pense que c’est le premier d’une nouvelle génération. Ce n’est pas comme si un studio de cinéma pariait son année sur un produit. Nous sommes simplement ravis d’avoir ce que nous pensons être en quelque sorte le premier du genre, et c’est super excitant. Par exemple, l’un des meilleurs développeurs au monde, ils ont une sensibilité et un standard pour ce qui est bon, et ils acquièrent les compétences nécessaires pour donner vie à cela en réalité virtuelle. Et vous savez, ils sont ravis de ce qu’ils fabriquent et nous sommes ravis de le voir. Il y a beaucoup d’émotion autour de ça et c’est vraiment très cool. Mais, vous savez, à cheval dessus? Probablement un peu le mauvais cadrage. Mais enthousiasmé par le fait qu’il soit le premier d’une nouvelle génération? Enfer ouais.

Est-ce le plus gros investissement d'Oculus dans un jeu?

Insister sur: Ish.

Proche?

Insister sur: Je veux dire, beaucoup d'entre eux sont arrivés à peu près au même.

Quel serait le niveau supérieur de ceux-ci?

Insister sur: Good, Asgard [[[[Colère]a été très long [process]. Stormland Ce projet a été très long. Les titres que vous voyez actuellement sur PC sont très longs et ont commencé il y a longtemps. La prochaine vague de ceux-ci sera Quest et PC et / ou PC, et ils ne sont pas annoncés. Mais ce sont les plus gros titres du moment. Et nous avons pris ces engagements [a while back]. Je veux dire, nous avons annoncé Respawn il y a deux ans à [Oculus Connect], droite?

Verdu: OC4, oui.

Insister sur: Cela fait donc deux ans que nous l’avons annoncé. Vous savez, ce sont donc des titres longs. Certainement Stormland est, comme, trois ou quatre ans dans la fabrication maintenant. Ce sont de gros titres longs.

Quand Oculus a annoncé le partenariat Respawn il y a quelques années, il a mis une date 2019 sur la remorque, ce qui semblait très confiant à l'époque. Les gens couvrent généralement un peu plus leurs paris en cas de retard. Vous souvenez-vous de la logique avec ce coup de fil?

Insister sur: Oui, un très bon développeur. Qui est vraiment bon pour livrer à temps, et nous avons cru en eux. Ils ont dit: «C'est le produit que nous voulons fabriquer. C’est le temps que cela va prendre. Voici le budget dont nous avons besoin et nous allons le faire. »Et nous étions à peu près sûrs qu’ils allaient le faire parce que c’est ce qu’ils sont. Si Insomniac vous le dit – vous savez, si Naughty Dog, le jour où je me trouvais là-bas, vous a dit: «Nous allons sortir pour Noël», vous pouvez parier que le livre sortira pour Noël. C’est le genre de développeur qu’ils sont. Et c'était le projet qu'ils voulaient faire. Vous savez, il existe d'autres développeurs qui ont des méthodologies différentes. Some developers say, “We don’t know when we’re even going to go into production on this. We’re going to experiment until we get there.” That wasn’t their style. They were like, “We know what game we’re making. We know how long it’s going to take.”

We only have a few months left in 2019. Is it still coming this year?

Rubin: We believed heavily it would come out at the end of ’19, or thereabouts, and so we were willing to put that line in the sand, and the developer is going to come close to hitting their target.

So you’ve got the Respawn game, which you say is the first of a new generation, and you have Quest, which you say is the first thing you’ve seen “radically over deliver” in VR, but they don’t go together, at least as of today.

Rubin: Remember, these were long productions. These titles started before Quest was a product that was going to get made.

That doesn’t mean you couldn’t announce it now and have it come out in two years.

Verdu: That bow wave that I talked about. That bow wave that I talked about applies internally.

The future

When Rubin and Verdu talk about Oculus, they rarely talk about short-term plans. They often speak in decades, saying that at a point down the road, everything will be perfect. And it’s hard to argue with a hypothetical.

To close out the interview, I asked them about their plans for the near future — specifically next year, when the game industry will be taking some big steps forward from some of its biggest players. Somehow they ended up talking about the PlayStation 6.

Broadly speaking, what do you see the next big trends being with VR games? We’ve seen a lot of improvements in action games. We’ve seen a lot of experiments. That’s kind of been the first phase. What’s the next phase going to be?

Verdu: I’m very excited about the intersection of VR and streaming, and I think what goes with that is an evolution in social. I think the promise of interaction with other people in this new medium is incredibly exciting, and we’ve just barely scratched the surface of that. And that doesn’t necessarily mean Ready Player One, you’re synchronously in the same space with somebody. Just imagine a world that you can affect that other people come into and can affect as well, and that you’ve got this shared creation over time and a communication that happens asynchronously. And the gameplay that can happen around streamers who may be playing with each other and interacting with their followers presents this asymmetric form of social that could be very, very compelling. […]

And then I don’t think we’ve figured out all the cool things that you can do with this platform yet, and it’s not like you can call the ball on it at this point. You can look at some of the directions people are going, and user-generated content in a virtual space is potentially a very exciting direction as well.

Rubin: Yeah, we haven’t even seen a lot of the genres that are going to end up [defining VR games in the long term]. Beat Saber is probably the first genre, if you will, but there will be more. A lot more.

Next year is going to be pretty busy for Sony, Microsoft, and Google. Oculus has some nice buzz right now with Quest, but it’s going to be harder to compete for people’s attention next year. Do you feel a need to kind of counterprogram against those announcements?

Verdu: So, the experiences we’re offering are really unique and different, so I think we’re not quite going head-to-head with those consoles. We’re offering something that’s interesting and new and unique and different, and the promise of experiences that you can’t have anywhere else. And, you know, the story in the console world is one of convergence, where you have games that are now played on phones, PCs, and consoles. And throw streaming in there for good measure. It’s kind of a furball. There’s this really interesting disruption and everybody’s struggling to differentiate, and we have this very natural differentiation, and all of these projects in the pipeline that highlight the ways in which VR is interesting and different and new. I think it naturally counterprograms. It’s not even that we have to do it.

Rubin: It also might be complementary. I mean, a lot of what you’re seeing right now is […] streaming actual games in the cloud. And that’s happening. It’s going to succeed. It’ll take time. It’ll have its flaws. But as that succeeds and you need less hardware locally and you can play on whatever you’re playing on, the best screen might just be your VR headset, because how big do you want your TV to be? Or do you want to be sitting? Do you want multiplayer stats over here, the ability to play HBO over here, your text messages over here — whatever you want outside of the screen, do you want that room? Good. […]

And then, oh, on top of Stadia or Xbox streaming or PlayStation streaming, there’s this store here. What’s this Beat Saber thing? Or, I love Star Wars, or whatever thing we’re talking about in a few years. Yeah, actually, I’m also a VR gamer and just, like, the whole “I’m a mobile gamer, I’m a PC gamer” — it’s kind of like, you’re both. I think you’re just going to end up being all of the above.

I feel like next year, it’s going to be a little harder.

Rubin: Next year, that’s less likely to happen.

Quest, you know, is just taking off.

Rubin: Yeah, you know, next year, game streaming isn’t going to be a major thing. But three years from now, four years from now? And three years, four years from now, Quest will look very different physically. The resolution of the screens will be different. All this stuff.

Do you think we’ll see a new version of Quest? Something with the Quest name but another evolution?

Rubin: Quite possibly. I can tell you the technology underlying these things is moving incredibly quickly, right? So the question is, when do you actually launch something? The screen resolution is going up regardless of when we launch. The weight that we would build these things at is going down whether or not we launch. Setting up another factory line, launching another product, to a certain extent, is a separate question from the technology. It’s a question about when do you want to mark that line in the sand? When do you want to run an advertising campaign? When do you want to do all of the new things you do? But the technology is going to move so invariably.

This is the dodge that console makers have been making [that] you guys don’t even listen to anymore. Is there going to be a PlayStation 6? Actually, this time, for the first time, that may be a decent question. But with PlayStation 4, is there going to be a PlayStation 5? “Oh, who knows?” Of course there is, right? When — that’s the question. So, these technologies are going to keep happening.

I think there will be a PS6, too.

Verdu: Do you think there will be a PlayStation 6?

Yeah, probably.

Verdu: Ouais. Video streaming has been the thing that I think is sort of underrated in the seismic effects it’s having on the industry. Game streaming may do that, but it’s years away.

Rubin: Yeah, it’s a few years away.

I feel like a lot of these things seem like they’re moving really fast, but in terms of the actual products you get, end up moving pretty slowly.

Rubin: Consumers adopt a lot slower than technology moves. There’s no question about that. That’s a consistent, and that’s true everywhere. It’s just that in hindsight, we ignore the beginning of the curve. Like, we ignore the Newton period. We ignore the BlackBerry period. We think of the iPhone now, but there was actually a pretty decent mobile gaming curve that came before [Apple] opened its store and things started really taking off.

And we’re kind of coming out of that right now with Quest and Rift S, and you’ll look back and you’re not going to say, well, Gear VR. We just won’t, you know?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.