Today VentureBeat announced a series of panels on November 11th at 10AM PT in partnership with Facebook’s Oculus. Next week’s debut panel, ‘The Next Generation of Games’ will include an analyst from NPD, product officer at Survios, and co-creator of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon, who is VP and Creative Director at NetherRealm Studios.
Each panel is designed specifically to be viewed in VR using the Venues app from Oculus.
‘Next Generation’ VR Games
The fact that Oculus and VentureBeat are hosting a series of panels together isn’t very surprising, but the inclusion of Ed Boon on the debut panel about the next generation of games, presumably VR games in particular, is quite surprising. We had no idea Boon was interested in the VR industry, let alone that he might be working on VR projects.
When you consider Boon’s work is primarily in the fighting game realm as co-creator of Mortal Kombat and Injustice, it’s extremely intriguing to imagine what he might work on in the wheel house of VR games. Perhaps there is a novel and effective way to translate the gameplay concepts and gore of Mortal Kombat over to VR?
Interestingly the Chief Product Officer from Survios will also be on the panel. Survios released Creed: Rise to Glory, which is one of the best VR boxing games around. Perhaps they’ve joined forces in some way to develop a Mortal Kombat VR game?
The collection of panels will consist of individually livestreamed events on select Wednesdays once per month starting this November until mid February, 2021. The other panels include one on mental health for December 9th, one on virtual beings for January 27th, and one on sci-fi tech in games on February 17th.
