The Oculus Rift lost a some of its supporters when it was purchased by Facebook. It was probably only a matter of time before a new developer took advantage of the situation. ANTVR, a Beijing made Oculus Rift alternative seems to be getting a lot of supporters.
Basic Information
Estimated Delivery: September 2014
Location: Beijing, China
Game overview
From the Campaign
The headset is equipped with Full HD display (1920×1080, 1.03 megapixel per eye). The sharp picture is projected onto your retina through the aspherical lens without distorting the image, allowing every pixel to remain in sharp focus.
While wearing the headset, you’re surrounded by the largest 4:3 standard screen in the world, which gives you a 100° diagonal field of view. This gives users an IMAX-like experience in the comfort of their own homes.
Controller
Our unique transformable remote controller can be used as a gamepad, light saber, gun and joystick. You can use it to play FPS/TPS/FLY/ACT/RAC and many other kinds of games. Another build-in 9-axis IMU of the controller makes this possible.
Campaign Specifics
Goal: $200,000
Pledge Tiers: 13 tiers ranging from $5 to $5,000
End Date: Mon, Jun 23 2014 7:26 AM EDT
Funding Type: Fixed
Chances of success
The goal is rather modest. The Oculus Rift campaign originally sought $250,000 although it received well over two million dollars by the end of the campaign. While this has slowed a little, it is still fairly likely that ANTVR will reach its initial goal, since it’s already well over half way there. It’s obvious that the company has already put a lot of effort into promoting the device. There are reviews from major sites such as TechCrunch and Kotaku.
However, there is a question of whether or not it will make the same kind of splash that the Oculus Rift made. The integrated controller, gun, and battery pack is a solid concept. However, there are now multiple competitors to the Rift, including Project Morpheus by SONY. China isn’t exactly known its impact on the game industry in the US, and let’s face it, the bulk of the support for Kickstarter campaigns comes from the here.
Updates??
I also noticed that while the team is responding to comments, there has yet to be a single update! This mistake kills campaigns. Hopefully the team will release an update within another few days thanking everyone who has backed so far and summarizing everything that has happened to the campaign to date.
Developer Kits
Taking a quick look back at the Oculus Rift campaign and the cost to develop for the device now, the dev kits for the ANTVR are just too expensive. This seems to have had an effect, since as of yet, only one backer has selected a dev kit tier. This is worrisome. Without developers, there won’t be any games, and without any games, there won’t be any customers. This was a problem that ATARI had back in the day with the Jaguar.