Looking ahead to the end of 2016, we’ll soon have four major VR headsets to choose from. At the entry level you have the Samsung Gear VR. Some snobs may write this one off simply because it uses a Galaxy phone for a display, but it should be kept in mind that the HMD houses Oculus technology, and there are already many great games and apps available. In October we can look forward to PlayStation VR, a mid-level solution at $400, with premium software on the way. We wholly expect Sony to cater to its VR platform to make it worth the investment, and hopefully we’ll see some of the best VR games (instead of tech demos) here. Then you have the big boys, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, which weigh in as serious investments at $600 and $800, respectively.
With the exception of the Samsung Gear VR, all of these HMDs come across as really big purchases; they represent investments that one should make only after much thought and consideration. Obviously there’s the price to consider, which is still somewhat prohibitive, but now it also seems like we’ll need to take into account game exclusives – something I was really hoping wouldn’t be an issue. Oculus, however, is actively seeking out exclusives for the Rift, while Valve has repeatedly stated that it has no intentions to do the same with the HTC Vive.
Already we have games like Lucky’s Tale as a Rift exclusive, and third-party games are starting to emerge as well. Superhot VR is in development, and Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac is working on a trio of Rift exclusives. That doesn’t sound fair to me. These games aren’t running on an Oculus Rift, they’re running on expensive PCs. If I owned a $1000 PC and made the choice to commit to an $800 HTC Vive (arguably the superior HMD) early on, I’d be really upset that games from my favorite developers were being bought by Oculus to run exclusively for its hardware.
Is my anger justified, or am I just being too salty? Are these new VR HMDs simply peripherals for our computers, or should we look at them like we do platforms and consoles, worthy of their exclusives in every way? I understand that Oculus needs to make money, and exclusives drive sales, but this really rubs me the wrong way. What if this leads to the fracturing and dividing of the VR market, which still so young and fragile? What if, in order to boost sales of the new Xbox with Oculus Rift integration, Microsoft paid Activision a billion dollars to secure future Call of Duty games as Xbox and Oculus Rift exclusives? Would that be acceptable?
Now, I doubt that will happen, but it could, and Oculus software guru Jason Rubin thinks that’s the way it should be. According to Rubin, our disdain for Rift-exclusive games is ill-founded. “That’s a completely self-interested way of looking at the world,” he said in an interview with Forbes . “We live in a world where things cost money to make, and as a result of that, business decisions need to be made by various parties that sometimes lead to things coming out in one place and not another place.” Self-interested indeed. If I had one more pint in me, I’d like to look him right in the eye and say something sharp about how we also live in a world where capitalism favors the better product, and if he really believed in the Rift then these software exclusivity deals wouldn’t be necessary to secure sales.
It’s a reality we’ve dealt with for decades, though. Exclusives have been both sword and shield to companies since the days of the bitter Genesis vs. SNES showdown. The way I see it, if a third-party made a VR HMD that was compatible with the PS4 in the future, it would look very small of Sony to ensure that games only worked on the PlayStation VR. Why, then, should two people with the same PC configuration have access to some games and not others depending on which brand they gave their money to when buying their VR hardware? Someone straighten me out in the comments, because I don’t see the sense in it.