Congratulations you made it! It is officially December 6. This means that today an army of holiday elves clad in brown UPS uniforms have begun delivering little bundles of joy to eager VR enthusiasts around the world. Inside those bundles is the highly-anticipated $199 peripheral designed for bringing hand-presence to the Oculus Rift at long, long last: Oculus Touch.
Touch is an incredible device that is receiving high praise from review outlets across the interwebs. The early adopting Rift fanbase is a group that suffered delays during the initial launch of the headset. This time around, some are being pleasantly surprised by early deliveries.
Yes indeed, Touch seems to be the beginning of a new era for Oculus and Facebook. But just how transformative will this new era be? Touch is still sold completely separately from the mainline headset itself and as such it’s not guaranteed that every Rift user will be Touch enabled anytime soon. How will Oculus balance satisfying their newly hand-powered user-base with new and interesting content, while also ensuring the non-Touch crowd isn’t left in the lurch? Content is King when it comes to any type of consumer electronics device, so how is Oculus going to handle content in their newly divided kingdom?
UploadVR recently had the chance to speak with Oculus’ head of content, Jason Rubin. Rubin founded the now-legendary video game studio Naughty Dog when he was just 15 years old. Now, he is focusing his considerable production prowess at Oculus on the ever-expanding library of the Rift.
With at least $500 million dollars of Facebook development money to play with, Rubin and Oculus have all the ammunition they need to make the Rift’s content incredible. But what does that look like in a post-Touch world? Check out his response in our brand new podcast: The Download.
The Download is a new, VR focused podcast that will be broken into two main sections: a general news roundup and discussion and one bigger discussion topic or outside interview. This week, Jason Rubin talks about Oculus Touch, his incredible, decades-long video game career, and what the future holds for VR’s most recognizable company. Interview begins at: [31:00]
New episodes will air every Tuesday. Join us next week when we will discuss the early days of VR development and platform exclusivity with Playful Corp, the creators of Lucky’s Tale.
