The first wave of the Oculus Rift launch is over with the HMD and its first games now shipping, but some of the company’s “most exciting” content is apparently still to come.
Oculus co-founder and Rift creator Palmer Luckey teased as much on-stage at SVVR 2016 this week. In an interview with Cymatic Bruce, Luckey touched upon what he was most excited for in the Rift’s near future and, unsurprisingly, he turned his attention to its upcoming position tracked controllers, Oculus Touch. Luckey gave a moment’s pause, looking to the ceiling as he clearly tried to avoid the minefield of unrevealed information in his mind, then teased that he was “really excited” about some of the Touch content Oculus will be showing “in the summer”.
We could hazard a guess that “summer” might well mean E3 2016 from June 14th – 16th, but Oculus hasn’t yet confirmed its plans for the big event. Continuing on, Luckey noted that Oculus has actually been “holding back” on showcasing a lot of Touch content recently for obvious reasons, but would be showcasing more software built both internally and by third party partners in a few months’ time. Enticingly, some of that content is the “most exciting stuff” that the prolific designer is seeing being built right now.
Oculus Touch isn’t due to launch until the second half of the year, having been delayed from its original Q2 window a few months ago. It might be “holding back”, but Oculus VR has still exhibited plenty of content for the kit so far, including its own multiplayer shooter, Dead and Buried, along with Insomniac Games’ recently announced sorcery sim, The Unspoken. Last week at EVE Fanfest CCP Games even hosted the largest showcase for the controller yet with several stands for its VR sports game, Project Arena.
The thought that even more Touch content is on the way is certainly exciting, though VR fans that have been pulling on their HMDs and picking up an Xbox One controller for the past month will also be hungry for launch details. Could we also get those this summer? Either E3 or an unconfirmed Oculus Connect 3 seem like the ideal candidates to make such an announcement.
