Minecraft has been confirmed to be releasing for upcoming virtual reality device, Oculus Rift. The company’s CTO, John Carmack, announced the news on Twitter yesterday, saying: “We’re thrilled to announce for the [Oculus] Rift! Tune in to the #OC2 keynotes.”
The announcement is bound to generate some renewed interest in the device, and it couldn’t have come a better time, considering the the platform is going to be competing directly with Sony’s PlayStation VR, which is due to release next year.
However, Carmack made some humorous comments regarding the development of a VR Minecraft in an interview with PC Gamer, stating that he essentially coded the port entirely by himself without any kind of remuneration. Speaking as if he were his lawyer concerning the development process, Carmack stated:
This is terrible, they own everything you do, we have no recourse, there’s no recourse any of this will happen. John, you’re basically working for Microsoft when you’re working on this.
Carmack doesn’t seem to be too bothered about the whole thing, though:
I think [Minecraft is] the single most important application that we can do for virtual reality, to make sure that we have an army of fanatic, passionate supporters that will advocate why VR is great. This is why you want to do some of it every single day. It’s part of this infinite playability that we’re currently lacking in our current set of titles. So this is a huge, huge win for me. Everybody that work on that at Oculus and Facebook, you all have my deepest thanks for making this happen.
Oculus Rift is due to release in Q1 2016 – around the same time as PlayStation VR – so look forward to the inevitable comparisons in the lead up to release.