Valve Compares Oculus Rift with Smartphone Introduction

Oculus Rift, the new Virtual Reality headset that recently got its funding via Kickstarter, is one of the pieces of hardware that one Valve representative believes will revolutionize the gaming industry in the near future.

Michael Abrash, who is now working for Valve and is known for his technical writing skills, tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “I think if we went back to 2005 and said, ‘I’m gonna give you this phone, and it’s gonna have as much processing power as a computer and a touch interface,’ I don’t think you would’ve immediately said, ‘Oh, these are the games that are going to end up being successful.’”

“You probably wouldn’t have even predicted that there’d be so many people buying and turning it into such a huge market,” he further goes.

He then adds, “So I don’t know what VR will turn into, but I’m pretty confident it’ll turn into something great if the hardware can be good enough. That’s the thing that has to happen.”

Michael Abrash also points to the Oculus Rift as a piece of hardware that’s solid enough to make Virtual Reality relevant again, with other developers then able to pick up on the trend and then improve its capabilities.

The Oculus Rift is currently on its way to being on the most successful projects on Kickstarter, with more than 1.8 million dollars (1.43 million Euro) attracted from backers with more than one week to go till the end of its funding period.

John Carmack, who is the leader of developer id Software, has already said that the Oculus Rift is an interesting device and that it will be fully supported by the BFG edition of Doom 3.

Any attempt to make Virtual Reality devices relevant again will have to win over a number of developers and maybe get support from other hardware makers.

Via: Valve Compares Oculus Rift with Smartphone Introduction