Right on the heels of a number of major hires from other corners of the video game industry, Oculus VR has hired Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin to head up its developer division. This means that every game developed and published by Oculus itself will be made under Rubin's purview. Reportedly, Oculus VR has at least five first-party game studios set up in Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas, Menlo Park and at Oculus' HQ in Irvine.
"There have only been a handful of times in my life where I saw something that I knew would change everything," says Rubin in the company's official statement. "The awe-inspiring tech Oculus is building is a portal into an incredible world that my daughter will one day consider to be normal. The moment I put it on, I wanted to help define that future."
Rubin was part of Naughty Dog back in its pre-Uncharted days, when the company was known for franchises Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Dexter, which Rubin helped create. He also spent a brief period as head of THQ when it was gasping its final breaths, but there was too much damage already done for even a respected industry veteran like Rubin to turn that ship around.
Rubin's hire is the latest vote of confidence from industry heavyweights -- a roster that includes Id's John Carmack and Facebook, which acquired Oculus in early 2014 for $2 billion -- for a technology that so far is unproven, commercially speaking. Only a tiny portion of gamers have gotten to try out Oculus' Rift for themselves, and those only at exclusive trade shows like GDC and E3. But it's becoming as close to a sure thing as new tech can get, with so many major players jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon.
On June 4, Oculus brought Valve's Jason Holtman on board. Holtman, who helped create Valve's Steam software store, will oversee the creation of Oculus' proprietary ecosystem for selling games and apps. Games currently known to be in development for Oculus include Lucky's Tale by Playful Corp., indie title Superhot, Eve Valkyrie by CCP Games and Sega's Alien Isolation.
Oculus is already facing competition from Sony, who announced its VR headset dubbed Project Morpheus at GDC 2014 in March. Oculus is expected to work with multiple platforms, but Morpheus will work exclusively with Sony's PlayStation 4. Release dates for both platforms have yet to be disclosed.
