Today Bethesda finally announced the official release dates for all three of its upcoming VR titles. You’ll be able to enjoy them all before the year’s over. Going into the year we knew about Fallout 4 VR already after playing it at E3 2016, but this year they announced both DOOM VFR and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR for the very first time.
Here’s when you can play each of Bethesda’s upcoming VR games:
- Skyrim VR: November 17th for PSVR (No mention of Rift, Vive release presumably next year)
- DOOM VFR: December 1st for PSVR and HTC Vive (No mention of Rift)
- Fallout 4 VR: December 12th for HTC Vive (No mention of Rift, PSVR release presumably next year — it’s simply coming first to Vive. Refer to the Update at the end of the article for more details.)
You’ll notice that none of the games have Rift dates and that’s likely due to the ongoing legal issues between Bethesda parent company ZeniMax and Facebook-owned Oculus VR. When we talked to a Bethesda spokesperson at E3 about Rift support for any of the three titles they simply explained that they wanted to see their games on as many platforms as possible. My gut tells me this will be in the form of potential Rift support on Steam VR but not a release on Oculus Home. If it works on Vive then there’s really no reason it can’t launch on a Rift too. Even Google Earth VR had a workaround when the Rift was initially blocked. The reality of how this plays out remains to be seen for a few more months, however.
For our direct hands-on impressions of each game you can read more about what we thought of the latest Fallout 4 VR demo here, the Skyrim VR demo here, and the DOOM VFR demo both here and here. Let us know what you think of the games and how they’re shaping up down in the comments below!
Update 2: HTC backtracked on its “exclusively” tweet, instead explaining that Bethesda controls which platforms Fallout 4 VR will release on. You can read more about that in this follow-up story. I’d wager that Fallout 4 VR will come to PSVR at some point, probably next year.
Update 1: A tweet from the official HTC Vive Twitter account mentions Fallout 4 VR is coming “exclusively” to the HTC Vive:
Just announced: @bethesda‘s @Fallout 4 VR will be released exclusively on the $599 @htcvive on Dec 12th – Read more https://t.co/Esv1CdsLmS pic.twitter.com/VHRY3wLAS8
— HTC VIVE (@htcvive) August 22, 2017
We’ve reached out to both Bethesda and HTC to ask about Steam VR compatibility on other headsets, such as the Oculus Rift.
