There were a lot of VR games announced over the past two days at E3 by AAA game publishers. I watched all of the press conferences from Sony, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, and Oculus’ appearance at the PC Gaming Show in order to capture audio highlights of all of the VR news that was presented. I distilled over 8 hours worth of content down to 41 minutes of the most interesting audio highlights and analysis in today’s episode of The Voices of VR podcast. You can listen to all of the major announcements in their own words, and find all of the new VR game trailers down below.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Here’s the video the Sony PlayStation E3 conference:
Sony PlayStation VR will launch on October 13th and have at least 50 games by the end of 2016, and below are the new trailers that were just released
Resident Evil 7 biohazard will be released in 2017
A new horror game Here They Lie
Some portion of Final Fantasy XV will be in VR
Batman: Arkham VR
Farpoint is a sci-fi VR thriller that uses a new PSVR Aim controller
Starwars: Battlefront X-Wing VR Experience from EA. More details from Criterion Games Producer James Svensson here, and more details on EA’s Frostbite Labs here.
Bound is an amazing-looking game that just got a new trailer:
Here’s a list of the 29 games that PlayStation VR will be showing at E3.
Here’s the archive of Ubisoft’s E3 Press Conference
Palmer Luckey and the Oculus team beat the Ubisoft developers in a game of capture the flag in Eagle Flight.
Here’s the trailer for the social game Star Trek: Bridge Crew
Oculus’ Anna Sweet announced a SUPERHOT VR and Killing Floor: Incursion at the PC Gaming Show
SUPERHOT VR
Killing Floor: Incursion
Giant Cop
Wilson’s Heart
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
Oculus posted a blog post with 30 different launch titles for the Oculus Touch.
Here’s a list of Oculus Touch Launch titles named in the blog:
- Luna by Funomena
- Unspoken by Insomniac
- Dead & Buried by Oculus Studios
- Rock Band VR by Harmonix
- VR Sports Challenge by Sanzaru
- The Climb (now Touch enabled) Crytek
- Pro Fishing Challenge VR by Opus
- I Expect You to Die by Schell Games
- Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs
- Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games
- Giant Cop by Other Ocean
- Oculus Medium will also ship with Touch
Bethesda Softworks E3 Conference where they announced Fallout 4 & Doom on VR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_1mzhRQSsM
Microsoft E3 press conference is currently archived here.
Here’s a portion of the Minecraft update
Here’s Microsoft’s VR-ready console named Project Scorpio launching during the holidays of 2017
Donate to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreon
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Support Voices of VR
- Subscribe on iTunes
- Donate to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreon
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
SOUNDBITE
Ports?
Locomotion schemes?
SOUNDBITE
Bethesda – Fallout Four mods
DOOM – Snapmap
SOUNDBITE
PC Gamer
Tribute to the Mouse & Keyboard
E3
No mention of any VR
Fostering competition and eSports communities – Farm league
Funding of
SOUNDBITE
AMD said the RX 480 can run VR on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. It supports DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics standards, enabling high-end graphics effects. The Radeon RX series supports new monitor technologies and supports HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 standards. It has accelerated h.265 encoding and decoding for better video streaming at 4K resolutions at 60 frames per second.
Virtual reality brings us one step closer to realizing this amazing dream of piloting an X-wing in space. With this incredible new platform, you will be instantaneously transported from the comforts of your living room to an X-Wing cockpit in space. And with the artists at Criterion and DICE meticulously crafting every authentic detail, the experience feels more real than you can imagine.
Once you look outside your ship, you’ll start to take in and appreciate the sheer magnitude of the environment in which you’re sitting. Sure, you may think you know that a Blockade Runner or a Star Destroyer are big, but once you’re firing at Imperial forces alongside their hulls as you maneuver around their defenses, then you’ll truly comprehend the enormity of these starships. It’s intensely exciting!
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. On today's episode, I'm going to feature highlights from the six different press conferences that happened at E3 over the last couple of days. So I'm going to be airing excerpts from the press conferences from Sony, Ubisoft, Oculus, Bethesda, Microsoft, as well as EA. And I'll be featuring the different parts within these press conferences where they talked about virtual reality explicitly, as well as making different game announcements, as well as other announcements that are kind of of interest to the general virtual reality community. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Unity. Unity is the lingua franca of immersive technologies. You can write it once in Unity and ensure that you have the best performance in all the different augmented and virtual reality platforms. Over 90% of the virtual reality applications that are released so far use Unity. And I just wanted to send a personal thank you to Unity for helping to enable this virtual reality revolution. And to learn more information, be sure to check out Unity3D.com. So these press conferences happened on June 12th and 13th in Los Angeles, leading up to the E3 conference. And I'm just going to start with this excerpt from Sony talking about virtual reality. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:39.434] SPEAKER_08: 2016 is a seminal moment in virtual reality. The time has finally come for everyone to enjoy VR in their own homes. And at PlayStation, we have a combination of the necessary processing and graphics power already built inside 40 million PS4s that have been sold worldwide. We have the display technology, which can realize these images at a high fidelity. We have the production expertise to create a headset that is designed for the gamer. And because PlayStation 4 is a fixed platform, developers can fine-tune their games for the system to deliver the same transformative experience for all PlayStation VR owners. I'm happy to announce here that on October 13th, PlayStation VR will make its debut in the United States. Currently, more than 50 games will be available from launch until the end of this year.
[00:02:30.943] Kent Bye: So Sony did mention that there will be 50 games by the end of the year, not necessarily by the launch on October 13th. But some of the big names that they did announce during the press conference include Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, as well as Here They Lie, which are both horror experiences Final Fantasy 15 is something that they'll be putting on for VR as well and it's a little unclear as to how much of that experience is going to be specific to VR and you know, it looks like mostly it's going to be a 2d game and some either entire experience or subsection of that experience is going to be ported over to have a VR component and And then there's Batman Arkham VR, as well as Farpoint, which is a sci-fi VR thriller that is using a new PSVR aim controller, which is a new peripheral for the PSVR, which is going to be used for some of these first-person shooter games. So another big game that was announced there was the Star Wars Battlefront X-Wing VR experience which is put out by EA and there wasn't a lot of footage that was shown but there was a write-up on the PlayStation blog with a little bit more information So EA didn't actually mention virtual reality at all during their press conference and you know considering that they're like the biggest game publisher it was a little disappointing not to see them feature VR much at all in their press conference but they're taking a pretty conservative approach you know they've got a lot of irons in the fire they've been working on a lot of Star Wars games that they're gonna be coming out and GameSpot wrote up an article on this Frostbite Labs division within EA which is Kind of like their VR incubator and so some of the titles that have that Frostbite logo on it means that they're using the technology that could very easily be turned into a VR experience if it works out from a comfort level and kind of makes sense. You know, a trend that I kind of saw within some of these titles is that some games you can tell if they're designed from the ground up for VR, and then some of them you can tell is just a port from the 2D game. So unfortunately, I think some of these games that we are seeing from these big AAA game studios of kind of adding virtual reality as an afterthought to a game that they're already kind of designing from a 2D perspective. So that's just something that I noticed. So Sony is going to be showing a total of 29 different VR games at E3 and a couple of them that jumped out at me as looking interesting and different were called Bound and as well as Volume Coda. So looking forward to see how those turn out. So let's move on to Ubisoft because I wanted to feature them next because I feel like some of the games that they're working on with the different social multiplayer type of angles that they have, they're really on to something where they're actually are trying to build a VR experience from the ground up. And so let's start with Eagle Flight, which was first announced at GDC. And so this is just a clip with Palmer Lucky from Oculus coming in and setting up a three-on-three match of capture the flag within Eagle Flight.
[00:05:32.803] SPEAKER_18: For Ubisoft, VR is the perfect technology for making gaming more accessible. And Ubisoft Montreal's Funhaus team built a game that just about everyone is going to know how to play the minute they put on their headsets. So here to take us into the world of Eagle Flight, please welcome creative director Charles Houteau, along with two huge fans of the game, Paul Merlucki, inventor and founder of Oculus, and Jason Holtman, head of publishing at Oculus VR.
[00:05:57.932] SPEAKER_15: I am very excited to show you the game today, and even more excited to have you guys to play with us.
[00:06:03.795] SPEAKER_13: Thanks for having us. We're huge fans of Eagle Flight. It's a very, very intuitive game, and the flight mechanic is super innovative, and it gives you that real freedom of flying in VR. But most of all, it's just super fun, and by super fun, I mean, I can beat Palmer almost every time I play.
[00:06:20.837] SPEAKER_12: That's not true. We've been playing this game for months at Oculus, and we've been getting pretty good at it. So this is a really good chance for us to come and show everybody that we can beat you guys at your own game.
[00:06:32.269] SPEAKER_15: Let's see what you've got, Palmer.
[00:06:33.951] SPEAKER_13: Let's play. Let's go.
[00:06:36.289] Kent Bye: So Palmer Luckey and the Oculus team actually did end up beating the Ubisoft developers in this Eagle Flight game. It's sometimes hard to tell with some of these E3 press conferences how much is pre-scripted like a wrestling match and you know whether they had decided that this was going to be the outcome. but they did end up at the very end winning. And the thing that took away from just even watching Pomerolke play different VR games at the Oculus Game Days at GDC is that he is super competitive and takes his VR gaming very seriously. I mean, if he wasn't working at Oculus making VR technologies, then I'm sure that he would want to be a professional esports athlete within VR because he's just totally into the competitive nature of gaming. And so, It's kind of fun to hear him be very defensive when someone was kind of joking that he was always beating him at the game. So anyway, let's move on to what I think is probably the best trailer that I saw at E3 so far about a VR game. Mostly because it was such a great reaction video from different people playing this experience of Star Trek Bridge Crew.
[00:07:47.809] SPEAKER_14: At Ubisoft, VR is about more than just technology. It's about creating games that just weren't possible before, and exploring new worlds with friends without ever having to leave your living room. It's about fully immersing yourself in these worlds, and going places, and becoming people, and doing things that you otherwise could not do. Today, VR is all about opening up the final frontier.
[00:08:20.750] SPEAKER_07: We've gathered some of the most decorated officers in the Federation to test her limits and to prove her place among Starfleet's finest ships.
[00:08:29.455] SPEAKER_06: This is amazing.
[00:08:30.896] SPEAKER_16: Wow. Absolutely astonishing.
[00:08:33.757] SPEAKER_06: When I walked in, I really wasn't sure what I was actually walking into. This is very cool. If I could have imagined what I would have wanted the Star Trek VR game to be, this is it. This is what we've been waiting for.
[00:08:52.500] SPEAKER_17: Holy crap, this is amazing.
[00:08:54.382] SPEAKER_16: I mean, it's really is breathtaking. That was an extraordinary experience to be fully encompassed in a world.
[00:09:02.808] SPEAKER_11: Whoa, not into that. You're interacting with each other, and you're talking to each other, and you're taking orders from the captain.
[00:09:08.752] SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really cool.
[00:09:10.814] SPEAKER_14: All right, shields up. Prepare warp. Take us out.
[00:09:15.897] Kent Bye: Yes, Captain.
[00:09:23.048] SPEAKER_18: Yes! Guys, Ubisoft is bringing you the first ever Star Trek VR game. As you can see, it's amazing.
[00:09:31.314] Kent Bye: So I really like the different social components that they're emphasizing here within this VR experience and it starts to feel like this is the type of experience that really wouldn't work as well within a 2D game because you're essentially stationary at just a cockpit and It's so much more about being immersed in a space, and the virtual reality will give you that, but it's also the social component that is there, that they're really trying to create this experience where you have to really collaborate with your other crew on the Star Trek enterprise. Now, the other game that Ubisoft announced at GDC that wasn't mentioned at the press conference at all was called Werewolves Within, which is another social VR game, which is, I think, something that is really targeting this very specific social dynamic games, where there's villagers and there's wolves and you're basically lying and trying to say that you're not a wolf, even if you are. And so it's like this game where you're basically lying in VR, trying to pretend that you are a villager or trying to figure out who is lying. And so you could lynch them at the end of each round. And so at the end of the game, either the wolves win or the villagers win. And so it's something that I think is going to be a pretty interesting game to look out for when it actually comes out. But it's not getting a lot of attention or press right now from at least the press conference perspective. So we'll see if they make any other pushes with werewolves within at E3. So, next up is Oculus. Now, Oculus did not have their own press conference at E3. I think at this point they have a lot of different games that they've already announced or previewed, and there's a few new games that they have revealed that they're going to be launching with Oculus Touch. But they put out a video today announcing that there was going to be 30 different full games when the Oculus Touch launches later in the fall. They didn't give a specific date, but it's probably likely near the end of October sometime. So Oculus did participate in the PC gaming show with InnaSweet coming on to announce a couple of VR games that we're going to be launching here in the fall. So let's hear her announcements.
[00:11:47.445] SPEAKER_00: Well, I've known the team at TripWire for a long time, so I'm really excited to be here today to help them announce a new game called Killing Floor Incursion. If you think the Killing Floor universe is intense, wait until you check it out in VR with Oculus Touch. It's pretty incredible.
[00:11:59.631] SPEAKER_11: Yeah, and I understand this is not a translation of the current Killing Floor 2. Instead, it is an entirely new experience in VR. Let's take a look at Killing Floor in VR.
[00:12:11.938] SPEAKER_06: Oh, John.
[00:12:13.168] SPEAKER_11: John, I don't know if I'm going to be able to play this game. That looks so scary, man. It's scary. And I'm curious, Anna, you work with a lot of different developers in VR. How do these sort of lessons translate to other titles?
[00:12:25.775] SPEAKER_00: You know, it's really exciting. This is sort of a complete ability to rewrite every genre and remake all the rules, and we just see developers doing incredible things. It wasn't that long ago we didn't even know if first-person shooters would work in virtual reality, and now you have a team like Tripwire who's just redefining the genre. So, it's a great time for gaming.
[00:12:43.446] SPEAKER_11: Well, Anna, I understand that there is an additional title that you wanted to talk about in the VR experience.
[00:12:49.690] SPEAKER_00: That's true. So I'm not sure if you'd call it a first-person shooter or maybe more of a ballet, but the team at Superhot has been hard at work creating a new experience that really drops gamers into a Matrix-like encounter. So we're really excited to announce that Superhot will be coming as well for Oculus Touch, and I think we have a new trailer.
[00:13:09.203] Kent Bye: So Superhot and Killing Floor Incursion are two games that are going to be coming out for Oculus Touch. Another game that had a trailer on the PC Gaming Show was Giant Cop, which previously was going to be released for both the Vive and Oculus Touch. But it looks like the developers decided to go with an Oculus exclusive and revoke their initial support for the HTC Vive. So this news actually kind of ruffled some feathers within the wider virtual reality community. And I'll be talking a little bit about this kind of console war mindset with the exclusive titles within virtual reality versus having non-exclusivity and having cross-platform compatibility with VR titles. a couple more thoughts about that later but let's just go through some of the other games that oculus announced including wilson's heart which is a psychological thriller as well as then their blog posts they listed a number of different games including serious sam vr the last hope luna unspoken dead and buried rock band vr the vr sports challenge the climb which is adding Touch Support, Pro Fishing Challenge VR, I Expect You to Die, Job Simulator, Fantastic Extraction, and Oculus Medium. So a number of those titles will be familiar for a lot of people who have been using the Vive or have gone to different GDC events and seen some write-ups. So there's a couple of them that are new. The other ones near the bottom are all ones that have been previously announced. So let's move on to Bethesda because there's a couple of surprise VR announcements that came out of Bethesda that I don't think a lot of people were expecting. So let's go ahead and listen to that reveal.
[00:14:51.855] SPEAKER_03: Now we have another treat for you over there as well. A chance to experience the latest in virtual reality from Bethesda. Ooh. Weren't expecting that, were you? Now, the first time anyone experienced modern VR was at E3 2012, and if you were there and lucky enough, you may remember getting to play Doom 3 BFG in our booth. Now, at the time, we had solved some of the toughest technology challenges posed by VR, and people were amazed. Since then, we've quietly continued our pioneering work in VR, and tonight, we want you to see and experience what you feel when you put on a headset and play the latest AAA games in the industry. And we have two games for you to experience. The first is the just-released Doom. You can take a virtual tour of hell and get a totally unique look at the very latest in graphics and true next-gen rendering from our id Tech 6 engine. In addition, we think the greatest promise of VR is its ability to immerse players completely into virtual worlds, and that the best games for that experience will be first-person open-world RPGs. So we have Fallout 4 for you to play as well. Wander the wasteland, check out the iconic Red Rocket tri-combat. I'm telling you, with a Pip-Boy on your arm, a dog by your side, a gun in your hand, it's pretty incredible. Tonight we're pleased to announce that Fallout 4 will be released in 2017 on the HTC Vive platform. And if you thought survival mode was an intense way to experience Fallout, you ain't seen nothing yet. We want to give you a glimpse into where we're headed with VR, where you can expect us to remain a leader, offering our games on the very best platforms you choose. So be sure to check it out.
[00:16:45.274] Kent Bye: So Fallout 4 and Doom are both first-person shooters, and it sounds like it'll be really interesting to see how they work with different VR locomotion issues. I think that whenever you're taking a 2D game and porting it over, there's other implications for some people who go in who have different motion sickness when they start to run around. You know, if it's a game that wasn't really designed with VR in mind, then it'll be interesting to see how Bethesda is able to pull off these ports from these previous titles into these open world explorations. Also, I just wanted to note that it's a little odd for publishers to just name HTC Vive. I mean, unless it's a room-scale experience where the Oculus couldn't handle, but these are not necessarily room-scale per se. They're very much a sit-down and user gamepad controller. But just to point out that Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax, has some pending litigation against Oculus, because if you remember, John Carmack was still working at it, which is also under ZeniMax. You notice the way that this Bethesda representative kind of represented what had happened as the innovations that were coming from within, because that's part of the pending litigation, is that Oculus somehow took some of these secrets from ZeniMax, illegally. So anyway there's some pending litigation and I'm not trying to litigate it here but just noticing that there's differing perspectives and those differing perspectives may cause some games like Fallout 4 and Doom to not ever end up appearing on Oculus because of this kind of conflict that they have. So perhaps if they settle litigation and are able to come to some sort of agreement then things might change but at this point I vive and valve are not really in a position to claim to want to even do any exclusive so it's just kind of interesting to see a little that political dimension going on there in that subtext So let's move on to Microsoft because Microsoft's in actually a pretty interesting position in the fact that they have the Xbox console but they also do Windows 10 and so you know they kind of have one foot in each world of the console market but also the PC gaming world and so They made some announcements trying to close that rift of the consoles versus PC gamers and this battle around exclusive titles. So let's hear about some of Microsoft's initial announcements around trying to break down some of these borders.
[00:19:25.597] SPEAKER_05: Today, we will show you how we are creating more choice in your gaming experience than ever before. More exciting hardware, more innovation on Xbox Live, and of course, more exclusive games. So let's kick things off with one of our most acclaimed game franchises in history. Please welcome from The Coalition, Rod Ferguson.
[00:19:51.983] SPEAKER_04: Thanks, Phil. Gears 4 will also be one of the first titles in the new Xbox program, Xbox Play Anywhere. This icon means when you buy the game digitally, you get to own it and play it on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. And that's with your progress and your achievements saved on Xbox Live and shared across both platforms, all at no additional cost to you.
[00:20:20.853] Kent Bye: I love how they're kind of moving towards this openness towards bridging the gap and then they immediately go into the language of exclusive games again. So I think this is kind of an interesting dynamic that's happening in the VR world right now. And just to kind of take a step back, I think that, you know, in order for VR to succeed, we have needed to have three pegs to happen. First of all, they needed to have the hardware, the technology. Second of all, they need to have the content. And third of all, they need to have the audiences. So now that the headsets have been launched, they're pretty much worthless if there's no content on them. And if it's such a new platform, there's a high risk for independent game developers to develop for something that is largely unproven. it makes a lot of sense for, at least in the beginning, for these different companies to fund a lot of these projects that wouldn't otherwise exist at all. So I can definitely see the arguments to both sides of this. But now that audiences are going to have an opportunity to get these different experiences, then perhaps the ecosystem will evolve to the point where you can have kind of this happy medium where there's enough content for everybody that they're happy. You know, it's a little bit like at the beginning here, you almost have to be tempted to buy each of the different VR platforms from the Oculus Rift to HTC Vive to PlayStation VR in order to play all the VR that you would want to actually play, which for most people is totally not feasible. So I can sense why there's a lot of frustration with some of these exclusivity versus non-exclusive battles that are happening within the gaming community. So let's take a listen to some of Microsoft's future plans with virtual reality because they're going to be creating a new console in the holidays of 2017. So let's hear what they have to say.
[00:22:19.877] SPEAKER_05: Fifteen years ago, Microsoft launched the original Xbox with the goal of pushing console gaming forward. We offered innovative new game franchises on a powerful box with the built-in ability to connect gamers together. And that same spirit of invention, connection, and fun inspires us to this day. Now, we see a whole new gaming landscape. One being driven by an unprecedented pace of innovation, transformation, and creativity. You are leading this shift with the way you play today. While the console ecosystem is stronger than ever, most of us play games on more than one device, and it's shifting the way we think about gaming. At Xbox, we want to deliver a world where you have more freedom and choice to play the games you want, with the people you want on the devices you want. A world where you can play without boundaries. A world beyond generations. At Team Xbox, we believe you should have a diverse and expansive library of games. So today, we announced our biggest lineup of games for Xbox One and Windows 10, along with the Xbox Play Anywhere program that enables you to buy a game once and play it on Xbox One and Windows 10. We believe in uniting gaming communities where you can play, compete, and connect with friends wherever they are. So today, we showed you how Xbox Live is available for developers to use across Xbox, Windows 10, VR, and mobile. We believe in gaming for everyone, where all gamers are welcome, respected, and supported. So today we announce new Xbox Live features to help you build your network and play your way. And we believe in hardware innovation without sacrificing compatibility. Today we announce the Xbox One S, the new addition to the Xbox One family. and share that all Xbox One games and accessories will continue to work across all members of the Xbox One family. But that's just the beginning. We see exciting opportunities on the horizon, opportunities to unlock new innovation for both gamers and developers alike. The next step change for gamers and developers must deliver true 4K gaming and high-fidelity VR. So we've been talking to our friends and asking them what they want to see from us. I'm really excited to share what we've been working on. Project Scorpio will be the next addition to the Xbox One family, and it is ultimately the next step in delivering our vision for the future of gaming beyond generations. When it ships next year, we believe it will be the most powerful console ever built. With six teraflops of power, this is hardware built specifically to lead the console industry into true 4K gaming and high-fidelity VR.
[00:25:31.366] Kent Bye: Now there's a little bit of a frustrating lack of details in terms of what Microsoft's specific plans are in terms of what VR headsets are they talking about. Are they talking about the Oculus Rift because they have existing relationships with Oculus? Or are they talking about HTC Vive? Or are they talking about their own VR headset that they haven't announced yet? So it's kind of this interesting tension here because you know you look at iPhones and the smartphone market they've been updating it pretty regularly almost every year and it's kind of plateauing out in terms of there's not a lot of new things that are coming out so you can skip every year every second or third year but With VR, it's probably going to be a little bit, maybe a year or two, maybe two years for each headset, but yet there's going to be new specifications and new requirements for each new headset. So I think that the PC gaming side is going to have the advantage of being able to easily upgrade their system to be able to grow over time, but yet The other side is that there are 40 million of those VR-ready PlayStation 4 consoles out there. So we'll see how that plays out in terms of, you know, over the long run, whether or not it actually makes more sense to just invest into a PC and kind of slowly, incrementally upgrade it over time, or to just buy an entirely new system, kind of like how people just buy entirely new phones every couple of years once they're ready to upgrade. So, we'll see. And, you know, a lot of the announcements that were happening at a lot of these different press conferences were way out in the future, but Microsoft actually made an announcement about Minecraft that was effective immediately, which I think is kind of a big deal if you think about how many people are using Minecraft as well as its connection to VR. Because what they essentially did was add the ability to add textures and do other modifications in order to create all sorts of different types of experiences within Minecraft beyond the templates that they give you out of the box. So I think it's going to actually introduce a huge amount of new creativity with being able to create voxel-based art within something that you start to classify as the metaverse with all this cross-platform compatibility that they're starting to have with Minecraft. So I just wanted to play this clip keeping that in mind that Minecraft could be the future of one metaverse that is out there.
[00:28:03.008] SPEAKER_15: And all of this works with the new Gear VR version of Minecraft on Oculus. We've got just the perfect friend here to show us that. Mind if I join in? Please welcome from the Oculus team, John Carmack.
[00:28:17.196] SPEAKER_02: John, how does it feel to be in Gear VR?
[00:28:19.965] SPEAKER_19: It feels like you're living and breathing in a Minecraft world. I've said that Minecraft was my grail for VR, and this was the most important gaming application that I could be involved with. The ability to spin around, take in everything, and have the freedom to explore an endless world is what I thought the core of VR was intended to be. So Lydia, what do you have to show me in your realm?
[00:28:39.750] SPEAKER_02: Check out what we started building.
[00:28:41.890] SPEAKER_19: All right, here we go. Minecart rides in VR are spectacular. Oh, that dragon looks really awesome. I think I'm going to stay down here. This looks like a good spot to start construction on my mad scientist lair.
[00:28:54.351] SPEAKER_02: Thanks, John. It's awesome seeing all of these devices playing together. Xbox Live and Realms are available today and are the first step in our journey to unite Minecraft players on all platforms. But before we go, we wanted to show you something else we've been working on. Today we're also releasing Texture Packs to Pocket Edition in Windows 10. This modern landscape was built using the City Texture Pack. Texture Packs let you change how any block or character looks in the game.
[00:29:26.639] SPEAKER_15: We want to let players remix anything in Minecraft. And to make that happen, we're bringing add-ons.
[00:29:32.553] SPEAKER_02: Add-ons let players change mobs and animals into something completely new. The aliens on the rooftop used to be zombies, but we modified them and gave them a fireball ability, making them much tougher.
[00:29:44.940] SPEAKER_15: To balance the fight, we've changed the villagers too.
[00:29:48.442] SPEAKER_02: Giving them extra style with sunglasses and suits, and we tweaked their AI so they're brave enough to fight aliens with us.
[00:29:56.068] SPEAKER_15: We hope you enjoyed this early look into how you'll be able to change your game. It's just a first step towards a fully moddable future for Minecraft. Add-ons will come to Minecraft, Windows 10, iOS and Android and other mobile editions this fall.
[00:30:09.175] SPEAKER_02: We're also working hard to bring add-ons and realms to Xbox and consoles next year. Until then, download the friendly update with Realms and Xbox Live.
[00:30:20.134] Kent Bye: I was really struck when I was watching this video with how much it just gave me a window into the future in terms of one direction that the metaverse is going. So something that probably a lot of people in the VR community didn't really pick up on or write about just because, you know, Minecraft was announced at GDC. So there wasn't something that was that new with the VR component. I mean, John Carmack was on stage using it, but there wasn't any specific VR news. But just in that ecosystem with Minecraft and the cross compatibility with it, I think it's pretty interesting to keep an eye on. So we'll see how Minecraft develops over time. But it's essentially Microsoft's biggest platform that they're going to have in VR moving forward. So I wanted to play this little clip that I heard in the PC gaming show. It was almost like this surreal tribute to the mouse and keyboard. The reason why it really struck out to me was because I was on this eSports radio show for IGN, and they were asking me different questions about eSports. And one of the things I told them was that Oculus has actually been de-emphasizing the mouse and keyboard. When I talked to Jesse Schell, you know, the I Expect You to Die game on Oculus Share for a long time was one of the top ranked games and it used a mouse and keyboard in a way that, you know, most VR games weren't at the time. And so you don't see a lot of VR games that are using the mouse and keyboard. And so keep that in mind as you're listening to this kind of tribute for how great the mouse and keyboard has been for PC gaming, as well as the role of the mouse and keyboard when it comes to esports.
[00:32:01.392] SPEAKER_11: It's time for us to take a look at a video that celebrates the mouse and keyboard.
[00:32:06.635] SPEAKER_09: What makes PC gaming different? It's the mouse and keyboard.
[00:32:10.697] SPEAKER_10: I mean, they're really part of the reason why we even have point-and-click adventures, RTSs, action RPGs, I mean, even FPSs. The mouse is our eyes and our aim.
[00:32:22.691] SPEAKER_09: It's an extension of our reflexes. It's all about freedom and customization.
[00:32:27.933] SPEAKER_10: PC gamers care about what's under the hood. They care about how it all works.
[00:32:32.935] SPEAKER_09: You've got people who are passionate about the type of mechanical key switches they use.
[00:32:39.597] SPEAKER_04: My favorite key? The tilde, hands down.
[00:32:43.899] SPEAKER_09: Just imagine PC gaming without a mouse and keyboard.
[00:32:47.980] SPEAKER_10: When I'm playing Bastion in Overwatch and raffle stomping newbies, I need the precision that only a mouse can give me. If I had to pick one word to describe a mouse and keyboard, total control. Speed. Maybe just total. Letters. Clicking.
[00:33:20.983] Kent Bye: so as i still don't know whether or not this was a serious tribute to the mouse and keyboard or if it was somewhat of a parody it seemed pretty serious but it just is edited and it's worth watching because it's just kind of surreal and funny But it did make me really think about, like, wow, like, you know, the mouse and keyboard are kind of going the way of the Dodo when you think about VR. Or are they? Because what are esports going to look like? Is it actually going to be a physical, athletic thing with room-scale VR? Or are we going to actually have, like, desktop VR where you're sitting on an Oculus Rift with a mouse and keyboard? doing some sort of like high reaction type of game mechanic that utilizes the mouse and keyboard that that was leveraging a whole Generations of experience when it comes to playing these highly competitive eSport games, so I don't know we'll see but it really jumped out at me as something that is kind of relevant to the VR community that I just wanted to share and Now, EA didn't have any specific VR announcements or anything in their press conference, but they did announce something called EA Originals, which I, after watching pretty much every press conference at E3 over the last couple of days, you get this sense of, like, there's not a lot of new IP that comes out of the AAA games. It's basically kind of a recycling of the same characters in slightly different contexts, but essentially, like, sequel after sequel after sequel. So it was kind of refreshing to hear EA announce this initiative called EA Originals, which is trying to get more independent developers to get within their publishing ecosystem to be able to promote and get new ideas out there. So let's just listen to that with that in mind, especially considering that EA is not kind of the most innovative when it comes to VR. So they may actually be looking for these independent VR creators to come to them with these ideas that they really want to have a larger platform for getting out there. So let's have a listen.
[00:35:26.100] SPEAKER_17: So about this time last year, we surprised you with something unexpected. With Unravel, you met Yarny, a tiny little character with a huge heart going on an epic adventure. You also met Martin Salin, a passionate and creative game maker from the Cold War studio that brought Yarny to life. We knew Unravel would steal your hearts because it stole ours. But it also showed us something profound. When we first saw Unravel, we saw a game that we knew deserved the world's attention. It deserved to be played. We also know that there are more out there, more studios like Coldwood, more games like Unravel. Passionate developers telling amazing stories, creating spectacular games. We are committed to working with small developers, finding these great new games, and giving all of you a chance to discover their magic. So today, we are very excited to announce EA Originals. Our EA Originals program is about three things. Firstly, it's about taking first-time experiences that are unique, gorgeous, innovative and memorable and bringing them to the world. Secondly, it's about supporting small developers and helping them make the most of their games. Now, we'll seek out a few projects each year for e-originals and partner with them through the whole process from development to marketing to publishing. And lastly, it's about funding and offering a level of security. Now, making games is hard. It's a hard business. And these small developers have risked themselves to develop a new IP and created great games that deserve to be played. Now, check this out. With EA Originals, we want all the profit from these games to go back into the hands of the developers, so they can keep innovating and creating into the future. Now, we've already begun with EA Originals, so please welcome to our stage Klaus Lyngeled from Zoink Games in Gothenburg. He's here to take you into the beautiful world of our first EA Originals game called F.E.A.R.
[00:37:29.397] Kent Bye: So there wasn't a lot of other details that were announced or linked off to within this press conference, but it sounded like it was a little bit of like, you kind of have to be within their inner circle and not sure if they have an open application process, but, uh, get in touch with EA. If you think you have a really innovative and interesting VR game that you want to get a little bit more attention to as we move forward into this experiential age. So I just wanted to wrap up with the actual beginning of the Sony press conference, because, you know, with the Orlando shooting that happened, it was pretty surreal to be sitting and watching all these different video games and, and violence, knowing that, you know, there had just been this horrible massacre happen in Orlando. And, you know, I realized that these are zombies and fantasy worlds. But, you know, just overall in virtual reality, I'm not sure that this type of violence that is in a lot of these AAA games is going to necessarily translate all that well into being a comfortable or enjoyable virtual reality experience. It's one thing to see violence on a 2D screen, but it's also a whole other experience to actually be immersed in it within virtual reality. So, With that said, I just wanted to kind of note how surreal it was to be watching a lot of the gameplay, knowing that this had just happened in Orlando. And there was just a few different companies that kind of explicitly mentioned it and tried to bring it into the awareness. But I thought that Sony did a particularly good job at it. I just wanted to play what their host had to say.
[00:39:18.836] SPEAKER_08: Before we go any further, though, I think it's important that we take a moment to to address the heartbreaking tragedies of Orlando this past weekend. A horrific event like that, carried out by a madman, really underscores our need for greater love, tolerance, and respect of people of all kinds. On behalf of the PlayStation community, I just want to say that our thoughts are with the victims and the families and the community of Orlando. We stand foursquare with them. And we hope that in this week of perhaps our gaming celebrations, the diversity of our gaming community, we can find some strength, some comfort, and some solace. The PlayStation community stands foursquare with our friends and fans in the LGBT community as well. And I know they're all in the hearts of everyone tonight.
[00:40:23.854] Kent Bye: So I just wanted to thank you for going on this journey of listening to all the different highlights from E3. I just wanted to kind of experiment with a new type of coverage because I'm not actually at E3, but I still wanted to really immerse myself in all the news and be able to share it to the podcast community here. So if you enjoyed it, then let me know and come hang out with me in AltSpace on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Pacific. I'm gonna be having a virtual meetup and be sure to sign up on my email list to get more information about upcoming events. yeah I'm planning on doing a lot of travel over the next couple months and you know if you enjoy this podcast and want to help support it then it actually really helps out a lot with a lot of these different travel expenses as well as living expenses when some of these months so please consider becoming a contributor to my patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR
