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Virtual reality sales must top 1m to be viable dev platform, suggest Ubisoft exec

Virtual reality device sales will need to top 1 million before it can be considered a viable development platform, suggests Ubisoft.

Lionel Raynaud, Vice President of Creative at Ubisoft, said that virtual reality will need to attract substantial consumer interest before third party developers will jump on board.

“VR would need to sell at least one million units to be viable for development”, said Raynaud at a GDC 2014 round table event.

The statement comes in the wake of Sony’s official unveiling of its ‘Project Morpheus’ virtual reality headset that works with the PS4 and the PlayStation Camera during GDC in San Francisco.

Both Sony and Oculus, who is responsible for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, will have to create enough software to drive early sales of their respective VR tech before other devs will start supporting the headsets.

Also at GDC, Oculus announced that the Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 (DK2) is now available to pre-order ahead of an expected July release date.

The DK2 builds on the improvements introduced to the VR tech with the Crystal Cove prototype debuted at CES 2014.

Sony’s Project Morpheus is also only a prototype at this stage, but has been in top secret development for three years. The headset already has four playable demos, which are being showcased at GDC, including Square Enix’s Thief.

Oculus’ Chief Technology Officer, John Carmack, is working on first party projects for the Oculus Rift. This is to help build consumer interest for the Oculus Rift as an overall platform.

Read more: Oculus Rift vs Project Morpheus – VR tech compared

Via: GameSpot

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