'EVE: Valkyrie' Developer CCP Games is Pulling Out of the VR Space

[Guest]

The "Eve Online" creator announced that it will cease the development of future VR titles and restructuring specific studio locations around the world.


'EVE: Valkyrie' Developer CCP Games is Pulling Out of the VR Space : Read more

 

[jasonelmore]

This is bad news for VR.. The new tetherless VR Headsets can't get here soon enough. That will be when VR truly takes off.

 

[bit_user]

Can anyone comment on the extent to which motion sickness was an issue, for EVE: Valkyrie? Flight & driving sims seem like a fraught area, for this reason.

 

[-Fran-]

They will be back when Microsoft release Excel for VR.

Cheers! 😛

 

[cryoburner]

This is bad news for VR.. The new tetherless VR Headsets can't get here soon enough. That will be when VR truly takes off.

Eve: Valkyrie was designed as a seated game, so it might not directly benefit much from wireless headsets.

From the sound of user reviews, it just wasn't a particularly great game. I see lots of reviews mentioning major issues with the user interface and controls, repetitive gameplay and other problems. The developers appear to have been addressing some of these things, but a lot of the reports I'm seeing are things that probably should have been fixed before the game's launch.

Of course, the slow uptake of PC VR probably hasn't helped, and there would have likely been a more established market for VR games like this if the Rift and Vive had each launched for a couple hundred dollars less. The initial pricing of the Rift was higher than most people expected, the release came a year or so later than expected, and slow production created a lengthy delay to actually get the headsets, all of which dulled a lot of the initial hype. The pricing might be better now, but I think many people may still be hesitant to drop several hundred dollars or more on one of the current headsets, when the next generation of consumer hardware is on the horizon, potentially with things like higher resolution, eye tracking, and wireless connectivity.

...it hasn’t made much of a dent recently, attracting only 13 players in the last 24 hours on Steam.

I don't think that's an entirely accurate metric to judge the player base by. For one thing, I imagine you are looking at the most concurrent players, and naturally not everyone is going to play at the same time, so there were undoubtedly more players than that on Steam in the last 24 hours, just not all at once. I believe the game also features cross-platform play between the PS4, Steam and the Oculus store as well, so the actual player numbers are probably a fair amount healthier than that. I'm sure they haven't lived up to the developer's expectations though.

 

[dominicmoloney]

It's the price of vr helmets that is holding it back from the success of it could have. I like many have have had goes on the vive and rift and want one but the prices for decent headsets are too high and not worth the money for the technology in them.

 

[bigdragon]

My problem with VR is that it doesn't have that "killer app" yet. A lot of companies have tried, but I don't think anyone has gotten there yet. VR needs something equivalent to Zelda or Halo or similar.

 

[sinaptic]

Smart move. No doubt VR will become the norm someday, I get it. However, I just don't think that time is now due to the myriad of issues... Maybe now half the news feed on here can stop being about this.

 

[DavidC1]

First, I've heard the game was a disappointment. The trailers were the best thing, not so much for the game. I think they needed to be more ambitious to make it work. Perhaps being able to work with EVE Online would have been a better idea. Take your ships and fly it in VR!

Then there was the problem with most content not being available until you paid more for it. DLCs on PC games are wrong.

To get into PC VR also costs a ton. Not only you ideally want a video card that cost $600 or more, the rest of the system has to be top notch too. Don't forget the $500+ headset you have to buy!

If they thought EVE Valkyrie was going to do it they had to nail it. Be as good as the trailers told you. Being able to convince people that would otherwise not spend $2000 on a computer + headset requires some near perfect execution and amazing ideas. Such things happen once in a decade.

 

[Altherix]

Game was boring and repetitive, period. VR suffers because there hasn't been a must have best seller title yet.

As of yet, when someone asks me about VR and what I would recommend for a game to play, there's really nothing to point at that would WOW the person.

Eve: Valkyrie, would be at the bottom of the barrel I would recommend someone just getting into VR. Unless I wanted to bore them and turn them off completely from VR.

 

[thomasrwitt]

Can anyone comment on the extent to which motion sickness was an issue, for EVE: Valkyrie? Flight & driving sims seem like a fraught area, for this reason.

These are seated experiences with a cockpit so actually there is little motion sickness or issue. The cockpits make a huge difference. I spent only an hour here and mostly flew in Elite: Dangerous because pvp didn't interest me and I am bad at videogames, but it's relatively minor in either. I heard some people had issues near big ships but docking in elite was just enough to feel a bit like a slow rollercoaster to me - fun but not too upsetting - at its worst..

I am not strongly affected, admittedly. I found that, for example, in minecraft all I had to do was click to tv mode when it bothered me and after an hour of switching I could use smooth movement non-stop (snap turning though). (Minecraft's click for TV mode is an amazing innovation more games should do - it lets you virtually take off the headset to rest but keep playing).

 

[anders009]

I love this game, sorry to see it hasn't taken off, but glad to see the developer is going to continue on and support - I'm a FAN and been waiting for this since the days of FreeSpace 2!!!