MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – A partnership with one of the Seattle region’s major players in gaming will be a key component in bringing a highly anticipated virtual reality experience to the masses.
Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus VR, said today that a collaboration between Oculus and Bellevue-based Valve has been invaluable to creating a solid user experience.
“Working together, we really have come an incredible ways,” Iribe said today at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat conference. “The market will be pretty blown away how good the consumer product feels.”
In addition, the partnership with Oculus may be a boon to Valve. With its closeness to the Oculus development team, Valve may have a head start on creating the best experience possible when Oculus’s consumer-grade hardware launches, especially since Iribe said that just porting content from a PC isn’t good enough.
“But the really magical content, the content that’s going to define the platform, will be made for VR,” he said.
The consumer version of the Oculus Rift, due out next year, will use head-tracking technology and wrap-around goggles to provide an immersive virtual reality experience. Valve, which operates the popular Steam gaming platform, has been prototyping a variety of new interfaces and setting its sights on the living room.