The Oculus Rift has grown into a formidable technological force, even before it's publicly released, now that it's been acquired by Facebook. It will probably be a direct competitor to Sony's recently announced 'Project Morpheus' VR system, and you would think the whole scenario could turn into a PlayStation vs. Xbox battle, complete with flamewars, fanboys and public sniping.
But for now? VR is so new, these companies see themselves more as friends than enemies. Sony's Shuhei Yoshida spoke to Engadget about this philosophy.
'I woke up that morning and saw the announcement and I was like, yeah!' Yoshida said. 'For me, it was a validation for VR... We meant to validate Oculus by announcing Morpheus, and the Oculus guys knew what we were working on. I think they were waiting for us to make the announcement, so it would be Sony and Oculus together, but now Oculus being acquired by Facebook is helping to validate our efforts. '
It's a long parade of backscratching because right now, any big company doing anything with VR further proves that it's not just some new fad, it really will be the next big thing. For example, we didn't see this kind of thing happen with motion control. Nintendo never came out to rejoice that Sony had embraced their technology with the Move , or Microsoft was trying to build on it with Kinect. VR is a different game.
It's too early to tell if Morpheus and Oculus really will even be direct competitors. That may sound silly given how few entries there are in the field, but it's possible depending what each potentially focuses on. Facebook very well could steer the Rift away from purely gaming, allowing the Morpheus to slide in and try to be games- only while the Rift would be a mix of both. The opposite being true seems unlikely, given the interests of the parent companies, but I suppose it's possible.
And Facebook's Rift and Sony's Morpheus will likely not be the only gunslingers in town. If both of these companies are doing their part to 'validate' VR, there's no telling who will be the next major player to saddle up. The obvious choices are Microsoft, Google and Apple, and if none of those three announce a VR device in the next few years, I will print out this article and eat it.
This 'circle of helpfulness' philosophy is refreshing in an age of grotesque console fanboy wars and (admittedly hilarious) corporate feuding. For example, Yoshida's statements are a far cry from Sony directly mocking Microsoft at E3 this past year with their cheaper, not-always-on, used-game-playing PS4.
Right now, everyone's VR devices have common hurdles to overcome. Better responsiveness, more vivid displays, elimination of nausea, and so on. At this stage in the process, when one party solves one of the problems, the answer will likely be adopted by everyone else, and the medium as a whole moves forward as a unit, as Yoshida explains:
'We need to share knowledge,' he said. 'We can't just make the hardware; it's the game applications that need to be designed well. We need time for developers to experiment and find the killer application and, at the same time, we need to learn how VR applications should be designed.'
Eventually, this sort of 'for the good of all' collaboration may not exist as competition becomes more fierce and the scene becomes more established, but for now, it's all sunshine and rainbows. And that's rather nice to see.
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