Oculus and CCP Games announced that the award-winning space dogfighting game will come bundled with Rift pre-orders. The Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display for virtual reality, which sparked a VR renaissance after a successful Kickstarter campaign three years ago. EVE: Valkyrie was born from the part-time efforts of a small group at CCP Games that had a passion for virtual reality. While it was still a technology demo, EVE: Valkyrie walked away with numerous awards during it’s debut at E3 in 2013.
In EVE: Valkyrie, you play a fighter pilot living aboard a carrier, taking part in intense multiplayer dogfights. Through the wonders of cloning technology, you are made immortal, fearless in the face of death. The multiplayer battles are currently 8 vs 8, and a PVE mode was demonstrated at Eve Vegas 2015. Much like EVE Online, and Valkyrie’s sister spinoff Dust 514, there will be both character and equipment progression systems.
The business model for EVE: Valkyrie is currently unannounced, although CCP revealed that they are using the Active Monetization Platform from Aria Systems. This platform is a general billing and sales backend used by companies like Dell, Roku, and Adobe. It is unclear exactly how CCP plans to use this platform with EVE: Valkyrie, although given the ship skins shown in the video above, it seems likely that the title will have some sort of microtransactions.
Due to a recent schedule slip by HTC, the Oculus Rift is probably going to be the first commercial head-mounted display on the market. The scheduled release for the Rift is Q1 2016, which places it either a few weeks, or a few months away. With the recent marketing hype about pre-order bundles, it is likely that Oculus will start taking orders for the Rift soon. The price of the Rift hasn’t been announced, but it is estimated to be in the $350-$500 range.
Oculus drew hostility from the VR community recently for creating a console-like environment for the Rift despite it being a PC peripheral. CCP Games has expressed interest in making EVE: Valkyrie work with a variety of virtual reality hardware after its exclusivity agreement with Oculus expires. The duration of this agreement is unknown, and official EVE: Valkyrie support for the SteamVR ecosystem may be a year or more away. EVE: Valkyrie will, however, support Playstation VR when that product launches.
In 2016, virtual reality is expected to finally capture a significant share of the entertainment market after a 35-year journey. Oculus and CCP Games deserve a lot of credit for driving the technology forward.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Turk Fezzik.
