The price of the Oculus Rift as well as the slate of games which will launch alongside it are still unknown, but there is hope something will be revealed Dec. 3 during The Game Awards.
A promo for the awards show teases “a special announcement from Oculus” during the stream, which starts at 6 p.m. PST. Footage of Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey is shown with the tease, suggesting he will be part of whatever is revealed. It’s hard to guess exactly what Oculus might reveal. Luckey was tapped to announce Minecraft is coming to both the Rift and Gear VR during the company’s developer conference in September.
Really cool announcement happening at The Game Awards! (Not preorders opening)
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) November 30, 2015
While many of the individual games being developed for VR are known, as well as rough release windows for the HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Rift, critical details that will allow prospective buyers to make informed decisions are being kept secret. HTC had promised a release of the Vive in limited quantities before the end of the year while Rift will ship early next year. PlayStation VR is slated to arrive during the first half of 2016.
The extent of social features to ship with each of the headsets is also still a mystery. VR can be a lonely place in single player mode but microphones and headphones can enable addictive multiplayer experiences in games like space-fighter EVE: Valkyrie. Yelling out to a friend half a world away to team up on an enemy fighter in a game like Valkyrie will be a powerful example of just how much fun VR can be in comparison to traditional gaming. With headphones and microphones coming standard with the Rift, that kind of multiplayer experience is likely to be fairly standard in top tier games, but it hasn’t been talked about much by Oculus. Facebook’s VR company is also co-developing a number of games.
We’ll have to wait till Thursday to see what Oculus has planned.
