The GDC machine is in full force. We’re about a month away from the show at this point and things are starting to heat up in my inbox. Yesterday, Oculus reached out to UploadVR with details about a pre-GDC press-only demo event in which they will feature a number of new Rift and Oculus Quest demos. We were granted permission to share the following details.
Specifically, the email indicates many of the demos will be for “not-yet-announced” games, in addition to a brand new demo for Stormland and the first-ever hands-on opportunity with Asgard’s Wrath.
We already knew Quest would have a big presence at GDC this year. Back at OC5 Facebook confirmed the standalone headset is due out in Spring, which means it must be releasing in just a few short months. At that same event Mark Zuckerberg said it would launch with 50+ games and we only know about maybe 10 of them so far and have only tried four. That leaves a lot of question marks — but we have some ideas.
Hopefully we get confirmation of popular existing titles like Rec Room and Beat Saber coming to Quest, as those would surely help sell headsets, but more than anything what we’d like to see are actual brand-new experiences made for Quest rather than just ports. That’s where the real quality is going to come from.
The pre-GDC event is happening on Monday, March 18th and is embargoed for that following Wednesday, March 20th so you’ll have to wait until then to see what we think of the demos. We will also have the chance to conduct updated interviews with Jason Rubin, VP of AR/VR Content and Partnerships and Nate Mitchell, Head of VR Product.
Let us know your thoughts on the details of this event and if you have any questions that we should keep in mind leading up to the show down in the comments below!
