Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus may eventually end up as rivals in the virtual reality arena, but for now the two companies are only giving each other a boost, according to SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida.
Yoshida told GamesBeat that both the Sony and Oculus teams are aware of areas they need to improve in. “In trying these things, we are kind of helping each other,” he said. Yoshida gave a couple of examples: the Oculus DK2 has low persistence, and that makes Sony strive to match its performance. Meanwhile, Morpheus’s 3D audio is ahead of Oculus’s.
“We’re pushing different things. Like everything in engineering, once someone does it, it’s common knowledge. Engineers, when they see that another person has done it, that elevates their perspective to push further,” he continued.
“At this stage, we’re helping each other and trying to find solutions to a lot of problems that we’re trying to solve.
“Even though we don’t work with each other directly, we’re helping each other as far as announcing something or showing a proof of concept or publishing some documents or something like that.” In addition to this technical arms race, Oculus and Morpheus help each other by creating buzz for VR, Yoshida added, commenting that Oculus has really opened the door for the technology.
“Lots of people are already making games on PC using Oculus. Those people are almost prototyping for Project Morpheus,” he said.
“By having two players catering to both PC and PS4, developers feel it’s a bit less risky to make this investment. Even though indie guys are very passionate people who might do this just for the sake of it, showing them the two different platforms where they’ll eventually be able to release their game – that reduces their risk in development. That’s another area where we help each other instead of competing with each other.”
