A lot of corporations out there have picked up the annoying habit of charging for their products. Thank goodness Oculus is here to buck that trend. This week, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company is announcing that yet another launch title for its highly anticipated Touch platform will be completely free of charge.
Quill is a VR art experience that is being designed and released by the award winning team at Oculus Story Studio (Henry, Lost). In a blog post, the group revealed that the “illustrative storytelling” tool will be available as a beta “for free when Touch launches December 6.”
This means that Quill is the latest to join a growing list of Touch experiences offered free with pre-orders, including highly anticipated titles such as Dead and Buried, VR Sports Challenge and The Unspoken.
By making this type of content, and releasing it free of charge, the young company is betting big on its software’s ability to drive people toward its hardware. The company announced at OC3 that it had spent $250 million to help fund content for its platforms and that it planned to spend at least that much again in the future.
Quill itself was created out of the need at Oculus Story Studio for in-VR art tools while making its newest production: Dear Angelica. According to the company:
“Quill was born out of the creative needs of Dear Angelica’s Writer/Director Saschka Unseld and Art Director Wesley Allsbrook. The unique style and story of Dear Angelica required it to be painted and shaped entirely inside of VR, something that has never been attempted.
In October of 2015, during one of our 48-hour hack-a-thons, Inigo—the lead engineer on Dear Angelica and a mad genius with code—created the first version of what would eventually become Quill.”
Oculus Touch releases on December 6 at $199.
