Ubisoft has made an effort to bring together the owners of different virtual reality headsets by announcing that its upcoming VR titles will support cross-play across HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR.
This means that even if you recently picked up a PSVR headset but your friend has owned their HTC Vive for a while you’ll still be able to play Eagle Flight, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and Werewolves Within together.
We hope you enjoy the inevitable arguments over how the differences between headsets could influence your losses/wins.
Ubisoft’s cooperative and competitive multiplayer game Eagle Flight is already available on PSVR and Oculus Rift, but the HTC Vive version of the game will launch on December 20.
Werewolves Within and Star Trek: Bridge Crew aren’t released just yet but when they do launch on December 6 and March 14 respectively, they’ll both already support cross-play.
Friendly competition
High-end virtual reality isn’t an outright success as a platform just yet so it’s good that Ubisoft is making an effort to make the market feel slightly less fragmented.
The HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PSVR will appeal to different consumers for different reasons and taking away the limiting feeling that they need to choose the same headset as their friends to enjoy a multiplayer experience gives the market a good chance to develop diversely. It's particularly promising that this move is coming from a large mainstream developer.
There will, of course, still be competition between headset manufacturers to have the greatest market share but for virtual reality to stick around as a platform choice moves need to be made to encourage widespread adoption of the technology no matter what headset is chosen.
Not only that, it supports the claims that virtual reality isn’t just an isolated gaming experience. By reducing the limitations around playing with friends, virtual reality immediately becomes more social.
- Not sure which headset to choose? Let us help with our roundup of the best VR headsets of 2016.
