Polygon has a new interview with Hilmar Petursson, CEO of EVE: Valkyrie developer CCP Games, in which the future of virtual reality is discussed. In contrast to the optimistic expectations of the Entertainment Software Association, Petursson has a more realistic view of how the near future is going to unfold for the medium. He described the company's ten-year VR plan:
"We have taken the view that the first five years are going to be very slow and they're going to be very chaotic, and a lot of things are going to change and a lot of things are going to fail. But in the second five years, then we're going to see a rapid expansion like we've never seen before. But it's going to take five years from this year to sort itself out."
Petursson has not expected significant units of VR headsets, whether the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR, to be sold in 2016. "We had the expectation of the first five years of VR are going to be madness, and we're going to structure ourselves to find success in that madness."
His views are echoed by a second VR developer CEO Polygon spoke to - Hrafn Thorisson of Aldin Dynamics. The company is currently working on Waltz of the Wizard, a first-person fantasy spellcasting game. Thorisson says that developers should "assume the worst, and plan around that."
"The reason we're here now is we always assumed the worst could happen, and planned around that. Without sounding too dark ... It's just that this is a really risky space, and everyone going into VR right now needs to understand that."
Thorisson also guesses that five years is about the time it will take for VR to be considered "mainstream" - that is, present and used in enough homes and offices that it is no longer considered a new, high-tech novelty.
But if the next five years are going to be madness, rest assured we'll be here to cover it.
