The development cycles of Facebook’s own VR content, published under the Oculus Studios banner, are getting longer, and the company says you’ll see “bigger, more complex” games as a result.
Mike Doran, Director of Production at Oculus Studios, said as much on Reddit this week. Following up on comments he recently made about Studios’ content pipeline in the next three to seven years, Doran clarified that development cycles for these periods are starting to become longer than they previously might have been.
“As far as content goes, we’re working on games now (and have been for a while) that are launching in several years,” Doran said. “The average development cycle for Oculus Studios VR titles is getting longer and you’ll start to see bigger, more complex games as a result.”
Doran also assured that new Studios content will be coming within the next two years, not just over the course of the next three to seven.
It’s true that some Studios projects have seen tight turnarounds in VR’s early days. In 2017, for example, Facebook aimed to release one new VR game a month and, when the Oculus Rift released in 2016 Marvel’s Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games released three titles over the course of its first year. But the company has also already published some of these bigger titles; Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was first announced in 2017 and didn’t release until late 2020, whereas Ready at Dawn’s Lone Echo 2 has now been in the works for close to four years, having first been teased at Oculus Connect in 2017.
So expect to see perhaps fewer Studios releases as often as you used to but, hopefully these new titles will answer the call for deeper experiences that really capitalize on what’s possible with VR.
