Dec 9, 2016 | By Tess
Over the past couple days, attendees of VRX 2016 expo in San Francisco have been treated to a slew of new and exciting virtual reality innovations. Perhaps ones of the most exciting announcements there came from HTC, the maker of the HTC Vive VR viewer. HTC is proud to present Vive Studios, a new development and publishing studio for virtual reality content.
A subsidiary of HTC, Vive Studios will regularly release VR games and content developed both by HTC and third-party VR developers. Joel Breton, HTC Vive’s VP of VR content, will be in charge of the new initiative, which is evidently seeking to expand the uses and demand for the HTC Vive virtual reality headset, which itself was released earlier this year.
So far, Vive Studios has already released its first VR game: “Arcade Saga,” which was developed by an internal studio called 2 Bears. The game reportedly offers players a variety of arcade-inspired games, and an impressive 84 levels to play through. Breton has also hinted that other games and content for Vive Studios will be published within the next few weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out.
The aim of Vive Studios is to both generate and help proliferate 3D VR content for a variety of applications. These include gaming, education, design, social, sports, real estate, and cinematic applications, to name but a few. The new content platform is also hoping to offer VR solutions for healthcare, retail, media, and specifically, “location-based entertainment centers.”
According to HTC: “Vive Studios will use a publishing model similar to console games, where the label will produce first-party content through internal developers, such as 2 Bears, as well as partner with external developers. For external developers, Vive Studios is now a partner they can turn to for development funding as well as publishing and marketing support on VR content.” In other words, Vive Studios will not only release content, but will help external studios to fund their own VR content and projects.
Vive Studios is comparable to Oculus Studios, which has focused primarily on releasing VR content for gaming and cinematic experiences geared to the Oculus Rift VR headset. On paper, Vive Studio seems to be more ambitious in its scope (also including education, real-estate, and other areas of interest), but only time will tell whether it catches up with or even surpasses Oculus. Notably, there seems to be an indication that Vive Studio’s content will not strictly be tied to the HTC Vive. As Breton explained to UploadVR, “we believe content should be open and go wherever consumers want to access it…we don’t feel that they [Oculus] need to lose for us to win.”
Overall, it seems that Vive Studios is dedicated to the larger idea of advancing and expanding virtual reality technologies, making them accessible and interesting for more and more people.
Posted in 3D Technology
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