There are early prototypes that Iribe has seen that he believes gamers would ”pay a lot to get that experience in virtual reality.” He notes pricing tends to shift over time.
Oculus Rift isn’t a platform by itself of course, but it does almost provide a whole new type of gaming experience and that’s what will be monetised by studios.
”It’s going to be up to the developers,” Iribe said. ”There will be some who make casual, simpler experiences - maybe bite sized. There are going to be indie developers that make bigger experiences. And there are going to be bigger teams that make really big experiences. … And some that we’ve seen early prototypes of… Well, we’ve seen some that, boy, would I pay a lot to get that experience in virtual reality.”
”VR is a fundamentally different experience,” he says. ”This is the next generation of computing in a very big way. … This is something that’s going to change so many things.”
”They’d better deliver if they’re going to charge more than $50 or $60 for a game,” he added.
The pricing of games can be rather fluid and we’ve seen the next-gen launch titles pushing the previous premium of $50 to $60 on the whole, but tablet games are super cheap by comparison.
”The whole concept of charging a premium is somewhat outdated,” said Oculus director of developer relations, Aaron Davies. ”It’s not to say it’s going to be upfront. It could be this is going to be an experience you get dialled into.”
”We’ll see how it monetizes. … If you create content or an experience that someone is passionate about, you’re creating a lifestyle for them. And they’ll pay for that.” The difficulty of charging a premium for VR games is that the actual headgear itself will be around the $200-300 mark and it’s an entirely untested way to game for 99% of people.
Former id Software founder John Carmack is currently leading first-party development for Oculus Rift.
