VR technology certainly isn’t cheap to manufacture – you only need to look at the massive asking price of the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift to know that. Besides the wallet-destroying cost of an actual virtual reality headset though, it appears that just making your games compatible with any given VR device incurs an extra cost to development, as Capcom can attest to.
As part of a recent investor Q&A (via VideoGamer), Capcom revealed that making Resident Evil 7 fully compatible with VR did result in higher development costs.
“Certain things were required in making the game VR-compatible, such as graphic needs that are more complex than before, thus there was an increase in development investment,” reads the published article, which later adds that costs were kept to acceptable levels by way of an optimized development cycle.
We believe we have succeeded in optimizing our development process via fundamental technologies including our 3D scanning system, lighting and shading, which allowed us to minimize additional costs while achieving high-quality development.
Resident Evil 7 releases for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on January 24 and, if the Beginning Hour demo is anything to go by, it’ll be positively terrifying when played in VR. In fact, even certain members of Capcom find it a little bit too unnerving to experience in such a way.