Read our VR special in this week’s MCV

Thisweek’s issueis all about virtual reality.

We have spoken to some of the people behind the new hardware to get a handle on this innovative market.

Then, the MCV and Develop teams tried the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, Playstation VR and Samsung’s Gear VR to give the pros and cons of each headset.

And the developers behind VR games, such as Adam Schwartz of studio Owlchemy Games and CCP’s lead designer Andrew Willans, also tell us about the development and technical challenges they ran into when making virtual reality titles.

Meanwhile, development icon Jonathan Blow discusses The Witness, piracy, pricing and why the title should not be called ‘indie’.

The full contents of this week’s issue are below. The digital edition can bereadhere.

• COVER: Reality Ruckus – The long wait is finally over ! Who will win between HTC’s Steam VR, Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Sony’s Playstation VR?
• VR SPECIAL: Brave New World – We’re just weeks away now, and while there’s a lot of excitement, there’s still much we don’t know about VR. How do you market it? What should it cost? Who is going to buy it? What’s going to drive adoption? MCV speaks to the people behind some of the most anticipated virtual reality hardware to find out more
• VR SPECIAL: Virtual Reality: The Review – The MCV and Develop teams round up the pros and cons of each of the big headsets coming to the market
• VR SPECIAL: Throwing out the rule book: The aches and pains of developing for VR – MCV speaks to some of the developers making games for the innovative tech to find out the challenges that have arisen out of building experiences for the brand new hardware
• NEWS: Releasing inaccurate sales info is ‘to our detriment’, says Witness developer Blow
• NEWS: Gamescom, Bridge Media, Playwire, OPM and Curse support MCV Awards
• NEWS: GOG: We are going to do Early Access right
• INTERVIEW: "The Witness isn’t an indie game" – Jonathan Blow was one of the developers that helped put the independent games scene on the map with Braid. But with a near-$6m budget and a seven-year development cycle, things are very different with his second title, The Witness.
• INTERVIEW: Eitr’s got Soul – Two-man team Eneme Entertainment started work on Dark Souls-esque 2D RPG Eitr in 2014; the next year its game appeared on-stage at E3 during Sony’s press event. MCV meets the developers
• APPOINTMENTS: Samantha Loveridge becomes Digital Spy’s new gaming editor
• OFF THE RECORD: This week, MCV tries to be all grown and mature up by offering (potentially fraudulent) insurance advice, but then ruins it by talking about a developer’s urine and persisting with that horse sized duck malarky