HTC Viveport opens its doors to Oculus Rift owners

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: Virtual reality hasn't caught on with the masses as quickly as some had hoped. By welcoming Oculus Rift users to its marketplace, HTC may be realizing that the only way for the genre to move forward is through unity.

HTC’s Viveport VR store and subscription service on Tuesday opened its doors to an unlikely guest: owners of the rival Oculus Rift headset.

HTC launched Viveport as a marketplace for VR games and apps in 2016. The following April, the company rolled out a subscription service that allows members to download up to five titles per month.

Viveport was initially seen as a differentiator, a way for HTC to drive hardware sales through the curation of software. Having seemingly milked that angle for long enough, HTC is now interested in expanding the offering in hopes of generating additional revenue from Rift owners.

HTC notes that Viveport currently offers more than 1,400 VR titles with 500 available through its $8.99 per month subscription service although at launch, only 200 titles have been tested to be compatible with the Oculus Rift.

From now through September 16, Rift and Vive owners can take advantage of the Best in Both Worlds promotion to get additional free titles to keep forever. The breakdown is as follows for three-month, six-month and 12-month plans:

• 3-Month Plan ($19.99): Get Shooty Fruity to keep forever for free (Over $39 in value)
• 6-Month Plan ($39.99): Get Everest VR + Shooty Fruity to keep forever for free (Over $74 in value)
• 12-Month Plan ($79.99): Get Final Soccer VR + Everest VR + Shooty Fruity + Guns'n'Stories: Bulletproof VR (Over $154 in value)

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https://www.techspot.com/news/76271-htc-viveport-opens-doors-oculus-rift-owners.html

 

[alabama man]

I don't subscribe to anything, got free month of this with VIVE purchase, never used it. Not surprised by this, they probably have only couple of users, most of them used the free month and forgot to unsubscribe.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Probably going to be a case of too little too late. Being a Rift owner I still buy most of my VR games through Steam. I would imagine, although I may very be wrong, but most of the games available in VivePort are also available on Steam. If so then this would be pointless, unless some Rift owners want to do a subscription.

In all honesty though VR games just fall short in the long-term play-ability category, meaning the game just has too little content and you finish it in a relatively short time. Sure most of the games are cheaper than a full on AAA title game, but still; a lot of us want more. Full games like Fallout 4 VR, LA Noire, and Skyrim are awesome for that gameplay potential but I personally don't care for any of those games. We need more big games in VR and then we'll start getting somewhere. But right now all these little piss-ant games just aren't going to cut it for making your VR investment worth-while.

Now that being said racing and flight sims are adopting VR quite well, so that helps but these tend to be more niche markets. There are only so many hardcore racers and flight sim guys out there. I personally love playing Project Cars 2 and flying around in DCS in VR, and can do it for hours and hours.