Oculus Rift's head start into the consumer virtual reality space won't last too long.
Sony and HTC are priming themselves for the launch of their own VR platforms and headsets. As they say, two is company and three's a crowd, so at one point or another, the market is going to have to pick a leader.
Nonetheless, gaming will be VR's biggest draw as it slowly becomes more mainstream. With HTC combining its hardware prowess with Valve and Steam's gaming platform, the Vive should come out as a strong contender.
Expected shortly after the release of the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive will come out with 12 games at launch. Developed by Valve, some of these games we' already know about for quite some time and some are brand new. These are our Vive favorites so far.
Job Simulator: the 2050 Archives has always been one of our favorites as the game makes it easy to transition into a virtual reality world. The player is simply thrown into a kitchen where they're tasked by a robot to make stuff. Without explosions and 50 billion things happening around you at one time, this game is both simply fun and honestly funny.
At one point or another, players will want to deep dive into a virtual world where things do indeed blow up. Elite: Dangerous is the game for such an experience and it can get so immersive to a fault that it might just give players motion sickness. Be careful with this one on a full stomach.
Fans of Pilotwings on the Nintendo 64 are going to feel at home with Final Approach. In the game, players must manage an airport as airplanes literally fly in hot and it's up to the player to keep things in order. Of course, things go wrong and that's where strategy becomes an important gameplay element.
An integral part of the VR experience is using your hands, and Fantastic Contraption integrates that unique aspect of control in a puzzle environment surprisingly well. The game is bright, colorful, and smart. A puzzle game, the player builds, well, contraptions to achieve a certain objective in which physics takes over and things either go where they're supposed to go or everything just topples over.
Most of these games, however, actually haven't been completely developed yet. Nonetheless, we're sure Valve's teams behind them are working overtime to make the HTC Vive launch deadline. We've just gotta wait to see how much it will actually cost to get an HTC Vive on our heads.
