Today Facebook brought two of its categories of VR headsets a little closer together. The Oculus Quest standalone headset and the newly-announced Rift S PC VR device both sport inside out tracking. They’re also both due to launch this spring. With the two devices so closely aligned, it looks like Oculus is ushering in a new era of content parity too.
VP of Product Nate Mitchell confirmed as much to UploadVR at GDC this week. Mitchell said that Oculus is now asking Oculus Studios developers to make titles for both Quest and Rift S. Studios developers are those making Oculus-published titles like Turtle Rock Studios and Coatsink.
“If it’s a Studios title, we’re asking all developers to build for Quest and Rift,” Mitchell said. “Now there could be some delays based on developers saying “Hey, we’ve tuned and optimized for Quest, we want to do more stuff for Rift so we’re going to delay that release a little bit out.” And there probably will be one or two titles that, on the launch day of Quest, won’t be immediately on the Rift store. But those will be the exceptions but not the norm.”
While this means that Studios Quest games will appear on Rift, it’s not necessarily true of the other way round. Oculus is making Rift exclusives like Asgard’s Wrath, Lone Echo II and Respawn’s untitled shooter. These are expected to be appearing on Rift only. These titles are likely too processor-intensive to ever end up on Quest.
But games that do appear on both will enjoy other benefits. Oculus will implement both cross-buy and play on Rift S/Quest. That means you can buy a title on one platform and have it on the other. You’ll also be able to play multiplayer across Rift and Quest games.
What we don’t know is if Oculus will continue to make high-end Rift exclusives once these titles are out the door. We’ll just have to wait and see.
