Oculus has a strong line-up of Rift exclusive games for 2017, promising at least one new Oculus Studios title a month from now until December. It’s Facebook’s way of kick starting the VR ecosystem and incentivising consumers to pick up its products, but it may not take that approach forever.
That is according to Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, he said that he doesn’t expect Facebook to be making VR content forever. He stated that, if the Oculus ecosystem ever got to a “healthy” point where developers made money then Facebook might say: “‘Jason, thank you. You’re done. Now that the ecosystem is set up, let independent developers, let small developers, large developers, publishers like EA, that’s their business, let them do it.'”
Rubin continued, explaining that actually making content like might not be the “long-term” plan for the social network, especially as it becomes more closely integrated with that platform. He used Apple’s own self-sustaining ecosystem, iOS, as an example, noting that the company doesn’t spend money to make games to promote the platform as developers themselves are already doing that and making money off of it.
But gamers won’t have to think about that future for a while yet. “We understand right now my job is incredibly important,” Rubin said.
Still, that long-term possibility does have short-term ramifications. You’ve likely noticed that, while Oculus will happily fund games from third-party developers, it hasn’t really started its own internal development studios or acquired others. Rubin explained that this was very much intentional.
“That’s why we’re going to third parties; to get them educated, to set them up to succeed on their own, we want the development community to be the ones driving what happens in the future,” he said.
For now, there’s plenty of Oculus Studios content in the future to look forward to. As the Rift continues to grow, however, that may not be the case forever. Facebook is working on its own VR content of course, but it’s focused on the social element of the tech.
