Today, at ChinaJoy 2019, HTC revealed Nostos is releasing in Q4 of 2019 and is confirmed for Viveport. The VR MMO is also coming to Steam.
Now to be clear, it’s coming to Steam as well with support for all major PC VR headsets including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows MR devices, and the Valve Index and as far as we can tell there is not going to be an exclusivity period with Viveport, but that could change by the time it comes out. Either way, it is coming to Steam too — the page has been live for months, it just doesn’t have a date there at the moment.
We got the news about Nostos coming to Viveport in Q4 of 2019 by way of a press release directly from HTC, which does imply a partnership of some kind. The press release states:
“Nostos, an open-world role-playing game (RPG) from the Chinese tech giant, NetEase, is going to launch on VIVEPORT in Q4 2019. It will have a massive world that allows multiple players to explore, fight, and build in an abundance of biomes, from open grasslands to mysterious coral seas.”
Nostos did have an Open Alpha period a few months ago, but other than that NetEase has been relatively tight-lopped about the upcoming open-world VR MMORPG. Additionally, NetEase continues to describe it as an “open-world online RPG” rather than an MMORPG, but from what we can tell all of the typical RPG features are included — albeit they may be on a smaller scale.
As of now OrbusVR is still the only real VR MMO on the market, other than perhaps social VR titles such as Rec Room, VRChat, and High Fidelity. But those are more focused on social hubs than delivering mass-scale gaming experiences. Zenith is a new one we’ve learned about recently, which will feature Beat Saber style slashing combat. No Man’s Sky VR, which is coming on August 14th, could arguably qualify as an MMO as well.
Let us know if you plan on jumping into Nostos when it releases later this year!
