Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney believes that VR “will completely change the world,” he said in an interview with Polygon.
The developer has already been working with VR, creating Unreal engine 4 tech demos to showcase the potential of Oculus Rift. At GDC, it showed off Couch Knights, a multiplayer demo set in a living room, where players command toys to fight each other as they scramble around the furniture.
Sweeney thinks that the technology is going to become ubiquitous; even bigger than smartphones.
“I think it’s going to be a bigger phenomenon than smartphones. You have to put it in perspective and realize we’re in maybe the [first-generation] iPhone stage right now where you have this really cool device, but it has some real flaws that prevents it from being a pervasive device for everyone.
“There might be an audience for 10 million users of the current tech, but as it improves with each generation, the audience is going to keep growing until eventually you’re going to reach a critical point where you can put on one of these devices and have an experience that is effectively indistinguishable from reality.”
It won’t be right for every game, however, Sweeney says. “Running at 30 miles per hour in an Unreal Tournament level makes you barf,” he offers as an example.
Cheers, Polygon.