Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy arms race

Re:Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy a... by SeanBoocock on Monday May 23, 2016 @08:55PM (#11758200)

Oculus is funding game development through their publishing arm to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. I could sympathize with a desire to keep some of that software catalog exclusive to their hardware as a way of promoting the hardware and recouping that development investment. They might also feel this is a longer term, platform play and don't want to cede control of the VR store front experience (and revenue) to Valve.

I don't know that I agree with Oculus's move here but I think there are defensible reasons why Oculus might want to preserve hardware exclusivity on some or all of their titles.

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Re:Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy a... by serge2k on Monday May 23, 2016 @09:04PM (#11758250)

VR Doesn't need a special storefront or any of that bullshit. Just sell the god damn hardware.

I'm so sick of companies trying to carve out their walled gardens. Fuck them all.

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Re:Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy a... by SeanBoocock on Monday May 23, 2016 @09:20PM (#11758324)

I suspect the hardware is very low margin; Palmer Luckey has publicly said as much. I doubt that Facebook would have been interested in owning a low margin hardware business that at least for the first few years will sell to a (very) niche audience if there wasn't a plan for additional revenue channels. A storefront provides such a revenue source as well as a curated experience when and if VR breaks into the mainstream.

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Re:Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy a... by mixedCase on Monday May 23, 2016 @09:21PM (#11758329)

>Oculus is funding game development through their publishing arm to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

To build a walled garden that only hurts the user.

Fuck. Occulus.

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