Notch cancels Minecraft for Oculus Rift, but other developers still have interest
It looks as if the Facebook and Oculus deal already has its first casualty. Minecraft mastermind Markus “Notch” Persson has said that he’ll no longer be developing his game for the VR headset following Zuckerberg’s latest purchase. “We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus,” he tweeted. “I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.” Persson continues on his blog that, while social aspects could be one of VR’s biggest applications, he doesn’t want to work with social experiences — he wants to work with games. Beyond that, he doesn’t see the social network as a stable platform, and won’t work with it in any form as such.
If you were dead-set on traversing a pixelated Great Britain in VR, it’s looking like you might have to settle for the hacked PC version for now. All isn’t lost, though. Minecraft‘s already been announced as a PlayStation 4 title and the wraps recently came off Sony’s Project Morpheus headset — it could possibly show up there.
That arguably one of the biggest indie developers (and one of Oculus’ earliest supporters), however, has cancelled a project the scale of Minecraft is pretty major. What do others in the indie scene make of the news, though? Those we spoke to actually seemed pretty happy about it.
The developer behind the Rift’s highest profile game, and the one that Oculus trots out time and again when there’s new hardware to show off (EVE: Valkyrie), has nothing but praise.
“We’re very excited for our friends and colleagues at Oculus,” David Reid, CCP Games’ CMO told us. “We share their vision about the future of VR and gaming and are looking forward to participating in the consumer launch of the Oculus Rift with EVE: Valkyrie.”
“I think this is a smart move for Oculus,” Rami Ismail of Vlambeer told us. The developer behind Ridiculous Fishing, and, most recently, Luftrausers, said that while Oculus is well known on the tech scene, it needs a backer with huge public mind-share now that Sony has entered the VR space. “Facebook is a huge established tech presence, has amazing engineers, hardware, software, public mind-share and lots of money,” he said. “I mean, I am not a big fan of exits as a business model at all, but in light of not really having a profitable business model, it makes total sense for them to exit,” he said.
Indie publishers are bullish, too. “Ultimately if Facebook allows the Oculus platform to get into the hands of more people, gamers or otherwise, then this acquisition will prove to be a good thing,” Devolver Digital (of Hotline Miami fame) partner Nigel Lowrie told us. “We’ve seen what this next generation of VR technology from Oculus, Valve and Sony can do and how it can change the game. Anything that achieves a greater awareness and broader reach for video games as mainstream entertainment, and pushes new technology forward in new ways is ace.”
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables, HD, Facebook
Source: Markus “Notch” Persson (Twitter), Notch
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