Everyone had that one friend who had the entire Rock Band set up; the drums, guitars and the mics. It was that one friend who fed us the constant rhetoric of how great a band you were and promised you that somewhere in the world, there were tone deaf people who would appreciate what your squad played out. It looks like we’ll be able to relive those nights of belting out tunes similar in sound to screeching cats as Rock Band goes VR.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR, the pioneering virtual reality startup bought by Facebook for $2 billion last year, went on stage at the Game Awards ceremony in Los Angeles to announce Rock Band VR, a new virtual reality game created in collaboration with Harmonix. He said the game would likely debut by March of 2016. Unfortunately the price of the Oculus was not mentioned, though estimates are that it roughly costs $1,500.
With the collaboration, Harmonix joins companies like Netflix and Hulu, as well as game makers like Sega and Ubisoft, all of which are making content for virtual reality. To get that VR experience, you’ll don a set of goggles that places a screen so close to your eyes you can no longer tell the difference between the computer-generated world and the one you’re actually in. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, believes it will change the way we use computers and revolutionize how we communicate with each other.
The hype around the upcoming products is intense. Analysts are saying that tens of millions of these devices may be sold in the next few years, helping to attract enthusiastic investments from venture capitalists.
Source: CNET
