Oculus Rift And Gear VR's Stores May Be Cross-Platform

Speaking on the Dawn of Mobile VR this week at GDC 2015, Oculus CTO John Carmack suggested that developers plan for mobile and PC release of VR apps. "If you're making a Gear VR product," said Carmack, "plan on developing it for PC, too." We must assume that Carmack is referencing multi-platform releases, like a game made by a development group that's released to PC and released to gaming consoles separately. This may be the full extent of this comment, suggesting Carmack wants developers to be smart about opening up their platform release schedules.

On the other hand, Carmack COULD have been suggesting a model not unlike what we're seeing with NVIDIA GRID this week. Buy a game on GRID, play it on NVIDIA SHIELD, and you also get a Steam code with your purchase to download on your full-powered PC.

It could also mean that future Gear VR store purchases could be cross-buys, or cross-platform-buys. Buy the game or app for Gear VR and you get the game or app for PC – and/or specifically for Oculus Rift. Buy once, download on two platforms.

Cross-platform play with VR devices sold by Oculus and Samsung? Probably not for a few years. That'd be a little bit harder to handle.

On a similar note – unfortunate for the PC version of Oculus' hardware – Oculus Rift – wires will be here for a while. The mobile VR ecosystem will belong to Gear VR. According to Carmack, "[the] VR headset of our dreams doesn't have wires, isn't here now, and isn't coming within the next couple of years."