– CCP Games CEO Hilmar Pétursson
This is the year that virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR start showing up on store shelves, leading some (including GameStop CEO Paul Raines) to hype up the potential for VR to become big business in 2016.
But others, including Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, have taken a more cautionary stance, and at the EVE Fanfest event in Iceland last month the leaders of both CCP Games and Aldin Dynamics told Polygon that developers should be careful about how they pour their time and money into the VR market right now.
“The reason we’re here now is we always assumed the worst could happen, and planned around that,” said Aldin Dynamics CEO Hrafn Thorisson. “It’s just that this is a really risky space, and everyone going into VR right now needs to understand that.”
Aldin Dynamics is one of many studios that have gone all in on developing VR games and experiences, but the studio isn’t putting all of its resources behind one platform or project. Instead, it’s involved with multiple types of VR projects, including games for different headsets (Twisted Realms, Trials of the Rift Drifter) and VR analytics tools, in an effort to be prepared for shifts in the VR industry.
Like Aldin, EVE Online developer CCP Games has been involved in VR game development for years (EVE: Valkyrie was one of the earliest Oculus Rift demos) and while company chief Hilmar Pétursson wouldn’t share Valkyrie player count with Polygon, he did echo Thorisson’s cautionary take on the VR game market.
“We have taken the view that the first five years are going to be very slow and they’re going to be very chaotic, and a lot of things are going to change and a lot of things are going to fail,” Pétursson told Polygon. “But in the second five years, then we’re going to see a rapid expansion like we’ve never seen before. But it’s going to take five years from this year to sort itself out.”
For more comments from both Pétursson and Thorissen, check out the full story over on Polygon.
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