EVE Valkyrie - Warzone

Eve Online developer CCP has pulled out of virtual reality development, a move that affects some 100 or so staff.

Here's an exotic new gaming term: cross-reality. Sounds exciting doesn't it? It was used to refer to Eve: Valkyrie, the multiplayer spaceship dogfighting virtual reality game, which, as of 26th September, is inviting a non-VR audience in.

It means non-VR Eve: Valkyrie players on PC and PS4 will be able to play both with and against people using PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

The cross-reality launch coincides with the arrival of an expansion for Eve: Valkyrie, which is so significant the game's name is changing to Eve: Valkyrie - Warzone. The expansion will be free to all existing owners of Eve: Valkyrie - $29.99 to everyone else - and replace the base game.

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Well I never, PSVR launch day has finally arrived and to celebrate, I made up a brand new word: Streampocalpyse. I think it has a nice ring to it.

Yep, I'll be streaming PSVR games today for as long as my stomach can handle it, and as always I'd be honoured if you lovely lot fancy joining me in the video below.

I've gotten hold of as many PSVR launch titles as I could manage and I'll be trying to play at least half an hour of each, hopefully more, but it all depends on whether or not I can keep my lunch down.

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Something unexpectedly thrilling happened on Friday, during CCP's annual Eve Fanfest event in Reykjavik. Following last year's death of an in-game leader of the Amarr Empire faction (think very angry, very ruthless space monks with a fetish for lasers), players were tasked with representing the various fictional sub-factions hoping to fill the resultant power vacuum. The outcome of a series of matches between these representatives would determine the in-game heir to an empire.

Eve Valkyrie - CCP's space shooter set within the Eve Online universe - will support cross-platform play in the future. The news was revealed by the game's executive producer, Owen O'Brien, during the opening ceremony of the company's annual Fanfest gathering in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Valkyrie, currently available as an early access title for the Oculus Rift, is also in development for both the HTC Vive and Sony's upcoming PlayStation VR hardware. The news ensures that owners of the game will be able to play together, regardless of their preferred VR platform.

O'Brien also went into a litte more detail on the upcoming Carrier Assault mode that's planned for the game. This mode, described as an evolution of the current Contol scneario, sees players attempting to whittle down the shields of a carrier ship, pick off the defensive turrets sprinkled across the carrier, and then infiltrate the ship interior to destroy its critical core.

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Eve: Valkyrie, CCP's virtual reality spaceship shooter game set within the Eve Online universe, will come out on Valve's Vive at some point in 2016.

Eve: Valkyrie was a Rift launch title (it came out alongside Oculus's headset last month), and was once pegged as an Oculus Rift exclusive. It will also launch on PlayStation VR when Sony's headset comes out later in this year.

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Yesterday Oculus announced the Rift virtual reality headset costs £500 / $600 - a higher price than many had expected.

Oculus Rift costs £499 / $599 - without shipping.

Pre-order an Oculus Rift and you'll get a copy of CCP's sci-fi adventure Eve: Valkyrie to play on it.

Insomniac is making a game for Oculus Rift.

From the archive: With this year's Eve Fanfest just around the corner, it seemed like a good moment to revisit this piece from April 2015 about last year's event. With CCP adopting a more workmanlike commitment to Eve Online's future - rather than the wide-eyed ambitions of old - its annual jamboree in Reykjavik had never felt more like videogaming's TED conference.

CCP has officially kicked off its annual Fanfest celebration with a keynote address that focused on the company's efforts exploring virtual reality technology.

Eve Online developer CCP today laid off nearly 50 staff members in a "gigantic cut" for its Reykjavik headquarters.

Eve Valkyrie is at the vanguard of the virtual reality gaming charge, and it's testament to the belief Oculus has that more than half of its brand spanking new Oculus Rift DK2 dev kits were in Iceland last week at Eve FanFest to showcase a brand spanking new build of the game. It's head and shoulders above what we saw recently at GDC.

Fans of internet spaceships, take note! Today is the opening day of Fanfest 2014, Icelandic developer CCP's annual celebration of its Eve universe.

UPDATE 02/05/2014: CCP has released pre-alpha footage of the new and improved Eve Valkyrie, now built on Unreal Engine 4.

For all the noise around virtual reality recently - for reasons good and bad - it's easy to forget we've yet to really see any serious-minded, dedicated games emerge for any of the systems. There are demos, patched-in support and exciting little rollercoaster rides, but if it really is the future of gaming then you might be wondering where the more traditional games are by now.

Programming legend John Carmack has responded to concern surrounding Facebook's purchase of Oculus, saying the social media behemoth "get the Big Picture".

Notch might not be happy with Facebook's purchase of Oculus - but that doesn't mean all developers are.

Sci-fi dogfighter Eve: Valkyrie will be exclusively available as an Oculus Rift launch title, developer CCP and Oculus have announced.

The stylish space shooter will also be co-published by Oculus as part of a new publishing program at the company.

Eve: Valkyrie is, as the name suggests, a spin-off from spaceship MMO Eve Online, which also spawned console shooter Dust 514 last year.

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2014 is upon us, and it promises riches and glory unlike any year before it. With their launches under their belts, the next generation of consoles will, hopefully, show us what they're made of. Virtual reality headsets may make their mark on the mainstream. And with a raft of crowdfunded games due out over the next 12 months, 2014 should tell us whether all that money we pumped into promising projects on Kickstarter was worth it.

CCP's sexy little Oculus Rift dogfighting game Eve: Valkyrie can be played without a virtual reality headset. People play it that way at the company's Icelandic HQ, CEO Hilmar Petersson told me - because there are only a few headsets to go around. "So I mean it is possible," he said.

Palmer Luckey thinks it's one of the best games out there for the Oculus Rift. I've yet to play everything - and Gamescom last week was my first experience with the headset that's sent excited ripples throughout the industry - but I'm not about to argue with the Oculus founder. Eve Valkyrie sells you on the virtual reality dream better than anything else out there, delivering a bespoke experience that transports you into another world with startling efficiency and effectiveness.

Over the spring EVE Online developer CCP constructed a tech demo called EVR that imagined what the space MMO would look like if it were a dogfighting game that used the Oculus Rift. Those who played it were impressed, so the developer decided to flesh out this proof of concept into a full game entitled EVE: Valkyrie.

Coming to PC next year, Valkyrie will feature multiplayer space combat. CCP isn't discussing whether or not it will have a single-player campaign at this time, or if it will be playable without the VR headset, but the new gizmo is its raison d'être.

EG-contributor Richard Cobbett was so taken with it this April that he suggested one stand in an excruciatingly long line to play it, lest they regret it forever. "If you're at FanFest and thinking you'll skip the queue for some reason, go stand in it right now. Really. Impossibly long or not, you will bitterly regret if it you don't," he said in his preview of the EVE: Valkyrie tech demo.

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