Starbreeze released 14-15 Fiscal Year back in August, and the report was rather peculiar. In some ways the report seemed extremely positive, and it was. Payday was the cash cow making them a ton of money, and the company was in the green again, which was unusual given the checkered history of Starbreeze financially. From the company’s inception in 1998 to 2013 Starbreeze had in fact lost money. The story after that is different, the company is now posting record profits and is looking good.
The issue with all of this? StarVR.
If you look, something that is considered in this next fiscal year (15-16), is Starbreeze’s stab at virtual reality with StarVR. Starbreeze’s VR assets were acquired in July 2015, making it after the 14-15 fiscal year.
The issue with things here is transparency. Virtual Reality R&D costs A LOT of money. How much?
“Every VR product has been a failure,” Luckey says. “Nobody lending money for manufacturing looks at Oculus and says ‘I can loan you $250 million!’”
Palmer Lucky is the founder of Oculus, the makers of the Oculus Rift. Everyone knows what Oculus is because of the $2 billion acquisition by Facebook. What one may not realize, is that Palmer said originally it would take his company a quarter of a billion dollars to develop their VR.
Why is this even remotely relevant, you may ask. Oculus Rift is less technologically ambitious than Star VR. Starbreeze’s attempt at VR will be the best VR product on the market when it comes out, but the problem with that is the inherent cost. No one currently knows how much Star VR has cost to create. Similarly no one knows how much Star VR is going to retail for. The headset itself is going to be 5120×1440 pixels, or approximately 77% of 4k resolution.
The cost of creating a 4k capable machine is going down, but the most budget 4k capable graphics cards right now still cost around $500 dollars on their own. All in all, a consumer is looking at a very expensive computer to run Star VR, and the headset itself will not be cheap either. Using the Oculus Rift as a point of reference will lend some credence to what I’m wondering out loud.
Oculus Rift’s headset is 2160×1200 pixels, or about 35% of the pixels that Star VR’s screen will have. Oculus Rift has recently been said to be roughly around $350 for the consumer version. The so called “Rift Experience” will cost a consumer roughly $1000 to $1500 for the computer plus Oculus Rift.
With that in mind, how can StarVR possibly be affordable enough to be a success? It took $250 million in funding to ensure the production of the Rift plus a huge Facebook buy out. Oculus is looking at their VR situation as a longer term thing because the reality is that the first version of the Rift will not make all of their money back. That is in no way possible or realistic.
Star VR is more ambitious technically, and will likely be the best VR product, but will come at even more of a price premium. Whatever the cost has been to Starbreeze financially won’t be told anytime soon, but the things to bear in mind are the choices Starbreeze and subsidiaries have made recently.
In June 2014, Payday’s IP was fully bought out by Starbreeze. Around the same time, Payday 2 began having DLC updates multiply like Ebola in an incubator. There’s at least one DLC a month, and recently microtransactions were added much to the ire of fans. The reason the community was so hateful towards the update was that it was during a “free” event and added in new ways for Starbreeze/Overkill to make money while Overkill had famously stated that there would be no microtransactions for Payday 2. Every single move that has been made for Starbreeze’s cash cow franchise seems to be about keeping the company afloat on its own while Starbreeze goes off and does whatever with the cash.
All of this could be a coincidence, and I hope I’m wrong, but deep down I feel like StarVR is ruining Payday 2. Overkill and their product should NOT be responsible for keeping an entire publishing house afloat but seemingly that is where they are.
Spritezeit 