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Oculus Story Studio
Ever since Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion they have been spending money like crazy on hiring and expansion. Oculus has been able to bring the best talent in the world into its organization.
Oculus recently announced the creation of Oculus Story Studio. This is to make in-house VR Movies and other VR experiences.
But, isn’t Oculus about making awesome VR headsets for VR games?
The focus of Oculus from the beginning has been on VR games. However, the potential applications of VR are much broader. And as many who have spent significant time with the current VR technology can tell you, VR experiences without explicit game elements are some of the best content available.
Big Names working at Oculus
There are some heavy hitters from Hollywood and the movie industry working in Oculus Stories Studio. This includes people like Rob Stromberg, the director of Disney’s Maleficent, and Saschka Unseld from Pixar who directed The Blue Umbrella.
Rob Stromberg saw the future of VR. After trying it the first time, he said “This is going to change everything” .
He continues later by saying, “We’re at the fledgling stages of this stuff and I can’t even imagine 10 years from now where we will be.”
Saschka Unseld sees the great possibilities with virtual reality technology: “The possibilities of VR are much more vast than we first imagined because the way you experience it matters, whereas the way you experience a movie doesn’t matter for how the movie is told.”.
Saschka also points out how VR movies are different from traditional movies, “I think there are going to be stories that will touch you in a way very different than normal films do. And that’s the ultimate goal of a lot of stories, is to enhance people’s lives.
5 VR Movies in 2015
Saschka said, “we have a slate of 5 films coming out this year.” These movies are all in the early stages, but Oculus has been demoing Lost, which takes you to a forest where you
Oculus VR Movie: Lost
come across a giant robot. All who have tried it have reported being wowed by the experience.
It’s a good guess that if any of these 5 VR movies were released today, they would be the best publicly available VR experiences in history. This is due to the quality, talent, and experience that Oculus brings to the table.
Speculation on Oculus Rift Consumer Release Date
There has been speculation on the release date of the first consumer Oculus Rift. Oculus has been careful to not give any concrete date. As Oculus CEO Brandon Iribe said, “We’re all hungry for it to happen … We’re getting very close. It’s months, not years away, but many months.”
But with Oculus Story Studio saying these 5 films will be released in 2015, that is very strong evidence for a 2015 release date.
Below you can find the introductory video produced by Oculus:
https://vimeo.com/117849907