MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
It looks like CCP’s Gunjack might be the best-selling VR title to date.
Speaking to Games Industry, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Ptursson said that the space shooter has so far sold over half a million copies. I think [this] is a record,” he added. I’m certainly gonna claim it until somebody tells me they’ve sold more"
Gunjack is not be confused with EVE Valkyrie. The latter is CCP’s premium triple-A VR title, which offers players a deep simulation of what space flight and combat could be. And that comes at a price – Valkyrie remains one of the most expensive VR titles on the market, selling at a whopping 49.99 on Steam.
Gunjack, meanwhile, started life as a smartphone game before being ported to other platforms. It sees players sat in a stationary cockpit on a larger ship, manning the guns. A sequel was released late last year.
Despite this success, however, CCP hasn’t yet made any money from its VR ventures.
"I would say we’re kind of break even on VR,” Ptursson added. So that’s almost paying for itself. When we saw virtual reality then it’s like… We’re gonna go in and we’re gonna go long.”
However, the CEO also confirmed that CCP does not yet have any plans to become a VR publisher, although such a move remains a possibility for the future.
"I think it’s a little early to go that far with it," he added. "I think the idea of traditional publishing maybe doesn’t fully apply. I think there’s some innovation that needs to be happening around the social aspect, but it’s not the traditional retailing of software, which I think is gonna be taken care of digitally.
"Currently good products float very easily to the top. So I think, at least for this year, and it really doesn’t make sense to look much beyond that. There will probably be a point in time, if we continue to be as successful as we have been, where we will have a set of knowledge, best practices, training, and insights that might be a foundation to help others be successful, but I think that’s gonna be something that emerges later."
