During an event at the West Hollywood House of Blues last night, Starbreeze Studios unveiled StarVR, their new virtual reality headset, alongside a new Walking Dead game being developed by Overkill (developers of the Payday series.) StarVR joins an ever growing catalog of virtual reality devices.So how does Starbreeze hope to differentiate the device from Oculus Rift, Morpheus, and its other competitors?
Well, first, StarVR is angling to be a "high end" VR solution. And there's no debating the thing's power. StarVR's website is filled with comparison to "other" VR devices, and I'd be lying if I said that the headset's specs weren't impressive: 210 Vertical FOV, 130 Horizontal FOV, dual 5.5 inch LCD panels, 360 degree headtracking, and a massive 5120x1440 resolution. Now, I'm not sure that I'm in the right income bracket to be able to afford a computer that can actually run VR games at that resolution, but I know that there is a large demographic of PC users that pride themselves on having the most powerful hardware available, so I'm sure the StarVR is looking really attractive to them.
The second way that Starbreeze seeks to separate StarVR from its competitors is in terms of software:
Through the acquisition, Starbreeze becomes one of the first technology companies to publish and develop both the software and hardware components of VR, allowing for a holistic approach covering all the dimensions involved.
This isn't a bad point at all. It has been a common refrain that for VR to really catch on it's going to need games that convince consumers to drop money on expensive hardware. And, I admit, a VR sequel to Starbreeze's Syndicate could be incredible.
But Starbreeze turned to Payday developer Overkill to show off the capabilities of the new headset, demonstrating a new first person Walking Dead game. The game is an on-rail shooter (think House of the Dead), and yes, believe it or not, it does include a light gun. Over on Polygon, Phil Kollar shares his hands on impressions:
About halfway through the demo, I was handed a shotgun. Both in the game and in real life. In a moment that reminded me of the weird dual realities I was currently existing in, a Starbreeze rep places a plastic toy shotgun into my hands, just as a character handed me a virtual shotgun in the game. The "real" fake shotgun had special sensors attached to it so that the game could track it. As I aimed in the real world, I aimed in the game.
Which... Huh. The image of someone wearing a VR headset and holding a plastic shotgun sounds like something ripped out of a bad X-Files episode, but hey, maybe that works in our weird, dystopic present. It also makes a strange pairing with the high-power rhetoric of the rest of StarVR's announcement. I understand it: Making a good demo is hard enough, and making a VR demo must be even harder. But there feels like there's a disconnect here. All the power in the world, but I can't leave the rails.
Starbreeze's entry into the VR race was a bit of a surprise, but now that I've given it some thought, I suspect we'll see headsets from a lot of different companies in the coming years. If I'm being pessimistic, then it's easy to imagine VR as the new MMO or new motion controls: A pipe dream that floods the market with tons of mediocre products. But it is possible that the introduction of VR will be more like the debut of dedicated 3D graphics cards in the 90s: A real shift in the way people make and play games.
- Starbreeze Studios AB
- Virtual Reality
- The Walking Dead
- E3 2015
- E3 2015