Google announced its acquisition of Owlchemy Labs, which is a successful Virtual Reality focused Game studio.
Owlchemy Labs is known for creating of Job Simulator & Rick and Morty Virtual Rickality VR games. Owlchemy labs are an Austin based team and they have announced in their blog post that they will be joining the Google team. It is a big day for them and they are thrilled at the acquisition by Google. Owlchemy Labs was initially founded in the year 2010 and is a games studio.
Google Backing
The said studio will continue to release such VR games for different platforms, but it will receive backing and support from Google. This is comparable to Skillman and Hackett, the Tilt Brush studios, which was acquired by Google back in 2015. Alex Schwartz, the co founder of the game studio Owlchemy has stated that their studio has several original games that are in the production or prototype stages. They will continue to work on those and are excited to have Google’s support in their endeavors.
VR Focused
Owlchemy Labs is well known for creating games that mimic the use of actual hands while playing a game. The studio has reassured its fans through a blog posting that it will continue to focus on its hand interactions and offer top quality experiences, similar to that offered by Job Simulator. According to Schwartz, a full motion tracking with hands is their main focus.
Vision for AR and VR
However, this will be in contrast to the present VR platform used by Google, namely Daydream, which makes use of a remote having limited set of motion controls. According to ReljaMarkovic, the engineering director for VR/AR at Google, states that they have a huge vision for virtual reality and augmented reality. They have big plans for Daydream, which is a considered a great product and there will be a lot coming to the project.
The Acquisition
It is difficult to predict how exactly the acquisition of Owlchemy Labs by Google is going to work out. It looks as if the acquisition points at the creation of something more than the present Daydream version. According to Markovic, they have not yet finished with exploring the ways of interacting using the hand controls. This does not mean, however, that they will be bringing Job Sim into Daydream, but a lot of learning has to go into this type of thing.
According to both Schwartz and Markovic, Owlchemy Labs will be occupied with the broader VR community and developing it, but will share the knowledge and practices and contribute to the experimental program of Daydream Labs as well.
More on VR
Google will probably give more information regarding its VR plans at the I/O conference to be held next week. However, there are no rumors about what can be expected at the conference and Owlchemy Labs has also not announced any project as yet. However, the acquisition of Owlchemy Labs by Google means that Google could be working on developing additional VR content. This is different from Oculus, a Facebook owned company, which actually closed down the VR studio so that it could afford funds for external projects.