Ready At Dawn Studios is the latest VR developer to be acquired by Oculus maker Facebook.
The social networking giant purchased the California-based studio for an undisclosed amount. Ready at Dawn will join Facebook’s roster of first-party game development studios working on VR titles under the Oculus Studios banner.
Ready at Dawn got its start making spin-off titles of popular PlayStation franchises for Sony’s PlayStation Portable system, including Daxter and God of War: Ghost of Sparta. In 2015, the company released a Sony-published PlayStation 4 exclusive named The Order: 1886. That same year, at Facebook’s first reveal event for the original Oculus Rift, the company confirmed it was making an exclusive game for the headset.
Lone Echo And Echo Arena
That game turned out to be two projects; 2017’s single-player adventure, Lone Echo, and a separate multiplayer game called Echo Arena. Each game utilizes a zero gravity locomotion mechanic in which players can float through the air, propelling themselves by pushing off the walls. In Lone Echo, players control a robot named Jack that assists Captain Olivia Rhodes on a dangerous mission in deep space, whereas Echo Arena offers futuristic esports. Both titles were critical successes; Lone Echo was, at least for a time, Facebook’s fastest Rift game to reach $1 million in revenue, and Echo Arena spawned an expansion in Echo Combat.
Currently, Ready at Dawn is working on a port of Echo Arena, now named Echo VR, for Oculus Quest. That’s now free to play in public beta testing, whereas Lone Echo 2 is set to release on Oculus Rift later this year. Facebook isn’t announcing any additional projects for the studio today.
Ready at Dawn is the third VR developer acquired by Facebook. In late 2019, the company bought Beat Saber developer Beat Games and then in February of this year announced the acquisition of the Asgard’s Wrath team, Sanzaru Games.
