‘We want it to be right’ for consumers, says CEO
While the company’s virtual-reality headsets have been out in the wild for developers, it’s going to be some time yet before consumer-grade builds are ready. Oculus Rift CEO Brendan Iribe tells Edge that “Consumer release-wise we haven’t set a date yet — it’s not going to be this year but we would love it to be next year — we want it to be right.
“We don’t want to announce any dates because frankly we just don’t know when it’s going to be really ready for the consumer market where everything is tied together — you have the form factor, HD, motion blur eliminated … so we don’t know how long that will take, but it’s close — we have internal prototypes which have a lot of each thing solved and it’s such a magical experience when you see it all together.”
Looking ahead, Iribe commented that his team isn’t focusing on applying the Oculus tech to game consoles. “I love consoles but internally we’re a lot more excited about where mobile’s going to go, and being able to plug it right into a next gen cellphone,” he explained.
“It’s the innovation, and how fast cellphones are now improving — where we’ll be with the next Galaxy or the next iPhone compared to where consoles are. Those things are almost doubling every year, compared to a console that’s just stuck it out for eight years — it just makes us very excited.” As much as I’d like to see the promise of VR come true on all platforms, I think he’s correct in thinking that consoles should not be the priority right now.
Oculus Rift aiming for 2014 release, CEO touts potential on ‘next gen cellphones’ [Edge]
