Big news week this week, and it’s not even the Oculus Games Showcase yet!
During a Capcom stream overnight, it was announced that Resident Evil 4 will be coming to PCVR and the Oculus Quest 2, with more news and gameplay to be revealed during the Games Showcase next week.
But if you skimmed passed the above paragraph, you may need to read it again and let it sink in – The hit horror franchise and fan favourite of the series will be coming to PCVR and also to the Oculus Quest 2, exclusively. That means it will not be coming to the original Oculus Quest.
The game looks to have been faithfully ported by Armature Studios, developers of Sports Scramble and a veteran of porting some hit games on to other platforms, so the game looks to be in safe hands, with the VR element being well captured for by a developer that has already had two VR Quest titles under their belts.
Resident Evil 4 marks the beginning of Quest 2 exclusive games, however, and I am sure by this time next week we will have seen growing a number of titles that will only be coming to the latest Oculus Quest platform, leaving the older original Oculus Quest behind with such great titles.
This is sad news for people still adopting the original Quest, however, to boost standalone VR we do need to evolve the platform and its technology, and part of that process is to leave older hardware support behind. This is even more important when it comes to VR and how resource-hungry the technology is. If you want life-like, Ready Player One level of experiences, then VR has to continuously evolve and improve over the years to get there.
This is the downside of being early adopters in this technology, but with the successes that the Quest 2 has had, it seems Oculus feels exclusives title like RE4 (and many more that follow) will certainly convert owners of the original Quest to upgrade, as well as lure in people who have yet to dip their toe into the VR space.
With Lone Echo II said to also be an exclusive title, and possible new titles such as Assassins’ Creed and Splinter Cell all on the horizon, if you have yet to jump in on a Quest 2, then there’s no better time than now to dive in or start saving.
