Crytek’s Robinson: The Journey hopes to get the jump on the VR revolution

With Samsung’s Gear VR already out and three more major virtual reality projects set to release next year, we’re about to see the industry do some interesting gear shifting as third-party developers begin cranking out games that are compatible with the new peripherals. 

One of those is Crytek, famous for their CryEngine and game franchises such as Far Cry and Crysis. With Robinson: The Journey, Crytek tosses you into a pre-Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event setting with a sarcastic droid as your guide while you struggle to avoid getting stomped, chomped and nom nommed by dinosaurs. 

In a recent interview with gamesindustry.biz, Crytek’s director of production David Bowman sat down to explain how VR is setting itself to be the game changer in the industry and how Crytek is positioning itself to take advantage of this market change.

“With the progress in technology and massive investments into the sector, we believe VR is here to stay and it will transform the way we experience new media. VR is the bleeding edge of technology and therefore it maps to our company culture and our focus,” Bowman continued, “Furthermore, for 15 years we have been building tools and an engine for actually primarily creating worlds. Since the beginning of Far Cry, we've built wide and expansive worlds and we pushed it even further with Crysis. We have always been about immersion and immersive worlds, which is a big part of VR as well.”

While Bowman acknowledges that by default early adaptors will be the obvious initial audience, he remains confident that virtual reality is going to be a mainstay that will become the norm going forward while repeating the perennial comment associated with VR marketing that it needs to be experienced to be understood, “It is important though, that there are some great initial experiences for those early adopters so they feel they've spent their money wisely and they share their HMD with their friends and get the 'That's cool!' response. Since VR must be experienced to really be understood, this early group is going to be very important as they will influence their friends and families.”

Robinson: The Journey will arrive on PlayStation VR sometime in 2016.