Meteor Entertainment and Adhesive Games has announced today that Hawken, the free-to-play MMO coming out for PC at the end of this year, will support Oculus' new 3D headset called Rift. The headset made quite a wave on Kickstarter a short while ago but the Kickstarter project had nothing to do with turning it into a consumer product, instead it was about making a devkit available so companies like Meteor Entertainment could announce that games like Hawken could support it.
The Oculus Rift enables 3D stereoscopic vision within an encased visual environment. In other words, it's like actually being in the game and seeing things as if you were there. I can't tell you how crazy an experience like that could be for games like Doom or worst yet, Amnesia.
A lot of companies are starting to take advantage of the devkit availability via the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. And that's a cool thing, because it means that companies will be adding support for the product even though it's not out yet. The project managed nearly $2 million in crowd-sourced funding despite requiring only $250,000 to get the devkits out.
The latest update now includes support for Hawken, which means that when the game launches in December, anyone who decides to pick up a Rift headset will be able to play in a fully immersed, 3D surrounded environment.
Oculus Rift, Update #6: Hawken in Virtual Reality! from Oculus on Vimeo.
I was quite skeptical about the Rift before, but I'm beginning to see its potential. The fact that developers are diving head-first into this thing and are throwing their weight in with the devkits means that support for the Oculus won't be lacking.
Hawken is a free-to-play MMO with a $10 million dollar budget, a mini web-series in the works and lots of critical praise for attempting to revive the mech-shooter genre. The game is scheduled to launch on December 12th for PC. You can learn more about the Oculus Rift and its use with Hawken by visiting the Official Website.
