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Virtual Reality Could Be The Toughest Fight Of Mark Zuckerberg's Life


Virtual Reality Could Be The Toughest Fight Of Mark Zuckerberg s Life BuzzFeed News

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattlynley/mark-...

The Rift faces the tech industry’s perennial technology chicken-and-egg scenario: To get software developers on board, you need your devices in the hands of a critical mass of consumers — and consumers gravitate toward devices that have the best software. Facebook has many things going for it: near limitless cash, a visionary leader, a deep pool of technical talent. But it has no experience building or publishing games, which in the early days will be the killer app of virtual reality headsets.

A representative from Oculus VR declined an interview request for co-founders Iribe and Palmer Luckey.

The Rift needs hit games, and fast. Words With Friends creator Paul Bettner’s studio, Playful Corp, is one of the first publishers Facebook is working with to build those critical launch titles. Independent developers are still encouraged to develop for the kit through platforms like Unity, but with the competition racing to define the market, Facebook has rapidly begun working on developing its own software.

“I’ve been a huge advocate within Oculus pushing for a solution to that chicken-and-egg problem,” Bettner told BuzzFeed News. “It depends on who you talk to; my sense is that gamers and video games are the Trojan horse required to get virtual reality off the ground. From my standpoint the way you solve that, it becomes like any other console launch.”

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Really it just needs one killer game. Like with Wii it was the sports pack that had bowling and tennis.

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