Oculus’ co-founder defends exclusive Rift games by pointing to Sony’s PlayStation VR

Over the last few weeks, Oculus has take a lot of heat for securing exclusive titles for the Rift, a move many see as detrimental to the advancement a of virtual reality. Unlike other areas of tech, as a whole, the virtual reality industry has had a collaborative focus so far, despite multiple tech giants competing in the space.

In an effort to defend Oculus’ move to secure exclusive titles, something that’s exceedingly common in the console video game industry, founder Palmer Luckey pointed to Sony’s efforts to release exclusive titles.

“You see Sony investing in their content the same way,” said Luckey in an interview with TechCrunch. “They want to make things that take advantage of their features that they have in the best way possible.”

Luckey notes that this is how he sees the VR industry operating moving forward and that it has both short and long term benefits, though he does mention he understands the frustration this move causes HTC Vive owners.

“The reality is, I can see where that’s painful for some people, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad for the VR industry, or that it’s fragmenting it, or in the long run, it’s not the right way for the ecosystem to work,” says Luckey.

Current Oculus Studios partnerships include Insomniac Games’ Edge of Nowhere and Crytek’s The Climb, two games that will remain exclusive to the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR.

Controversy surrounding the Rift erupted last week when it was revealed that Giant Cop, an upcoming game developer by Other Ocean, would come to the Rift first, when it was initially revealed to release initially on the Vive . The developer of Serious Sam VR also recently revealed that Oculus offered the company a timed exclusivity deal for a “shit ton of money,” which it ultimately decided to decline.

According to UploadVR, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has been outspoken about exclusive titles as well.

[source]TechCrunch[/source][via]UploadVR[/via]