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Taiwanese tech outfit HTC has announced today that in addition to producing one of the three big virtual reality headsets, it’s now making the jump into first-party content for the platform, with its Vive Studios division launching Arcade Saga, an internally developed title.
Arcade Saga is a trio of games that make us of the Vive’s room-scale VR and has been developed by internal studio 2 Bears Studios. In the games, you play as a CPU as it fights against an evil AI. This is Vive Studio’s first game, but they’ll be looking to release more titles through the brand in the future, both from first and third party developers as they seek to create content that’ll help Vive’s platform look more attractive to consumers.
2 Bears Studios has alumni from Microsoft Game Studios, Midway and Rockstar at the helm, and will be continuing to develop games for the platform.
In fact, when Joel Breton, a vice president of VR content at HTC, revealed the studio on stage at VRX in San Francisco, he mentioned that potentially dozens of titles could release over the next year, as the internal studio already boasts more than 50 employees and is still hiring.
“This is a new pillar in HTC’s drive to create content and growth for the hardware,” said Breton about the game, “Arcade Saga is a love letter to classic arcade games.”
Vive Studios isn’t just based in games either. Apparently the company are actively exploring options in education, cinema, design, social, sports and professional tools and applications for virtual reality.
Considering virtual reality already has a wealth of content, at least when it comes to tech demos or vertical slices, it’ll be interesting to see if Vive Studios sticks to smaller pieces or trying to build up games with some longevity.
