'Lucky's Tale' To Be Bundled With Every Oculus Rift

By Kevin Carbotte
published

We may not know exactly when we'll be playing with the Oculus Rift, nor do we yet know the price for the privilege, but we're starting to get a picture of what the bundle will include. Oculus just announced that Lucky's Tale will come with the Rift.

Lucky's Tale is an Oculus exclusive platformer title being developed by Playful. If features Lucky, a cute animated fox, and a bright colorful world reminiscent of games such as Banjo Kazooie, Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot.

A third person game doesn't seem like a natural choice for VR, but everyone that has tried the game seems to "get it." Tom's Hardware's Rexly Peñaflorida took a look at Lucky's Tale in June of this year and said that all of his "doubts about the Lucky's Tale were erased after actually sitting down and playing the game."

The founder and CEO of Playful, Paul Bettner, was actually one of the original backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign. He put down $5,000 and received a visit to the Oculus headquarters in 2012; his team has been working on VR prototypes ever since. Oculus said Playful's "passion for creating fun, awe-inspiring VR games shows in one of the most unique experiences that will launch on Rift next year."

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, said:

"We always believed there was an opportunity for platformers in VR, but it wasn't until playing Lucky's Tale and working with the Playful team that we truly realized its potential to change how people view this genre of gaming forever. Lucky's Tale delivers on everything you want in a next-generation VR game -- it's thrilling, full of adventure, and incredibly fun to play."

The Oculus Rift VR HMD is set to release in the first quarter of 2016 with pre-orders opening sometime soon after the new year. It may be a couple of months until we get to play with the headset, but at least we'll be getting software with the bundle.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kancaras
    I need the actual Oculus!! NOT the alternatives, NOT some childish content. Where the heck is it?
    Reply
  • plasmastorm
    I would suspect 6 months to a year and several million $ in development away yet.
    Reply
  • Finkledbody
    I have no faith in Oculus. I don't see this becoming available for purchase in 2016. And lets say for some reason they did manage to get it out. There will be so few games available it'll be akin to Wii U. Many will buy, then many used system will be selling on Ebay and Craigslist. Value will plummet. Sales will begin within the first year and old stock will sit and rot. By the end of the first year, there will be no more then 20 available titles.
    Reply
  • Warsaw
    I have no faith in Oculus. I don't see this becoming available for purchase in 2016. And lets say for some reason they did manage to get it out. There will be so few games available it'll be akin to Wii U. Many will buy, then many used system will be selling on Ebay and Craigslist. Value will plummet. Sales will begin within the first year and old stock will sit and rot. By the end of the first year, there will be no more then 20 available titles.
    Lol, do you even own a WiiU? That's actually my favorite console out of the current crop and I own all three. The only reason it failed was due to a lack of target marketing and not really showcasing the system to an audience. The current library is better than either Playstation's or Xbox's IMO. I will say as an opportunity that Nintendo should have had their main two games out at the beginning and it would have propelled it a lot more-so (Mario and Zelda).
    Reply
  • Digmeahole
    I have no faith in Oculus. I don't see this becoming available for purchase in 2016. And lets say for some reason they did manage to get it out. There will be so few games available it'll be akin to Wii U. Many will buy, then many used system will be selling on Ebay and Craigslist. Value will plummet. Sales will begin within the first year and old stock will sit and rot. By the end of the first year, there will be no more then 20 available titles.

    There are almost 20 games out now that are compatible with the rift and it has not even hit retail yet..These devices are going to change gaming forever. Have you even tried the rift or even Google cardboard for that matter? It is AmAzInG!
    Reply
  • Digmeahole
    I have no faith in Oculus. I don't see this becoming available for purchase in 2016. And lets say for some reason they did manage to get it out. There will be so few games available it'll be akin to Wii U. Many will buy, then many used system will be selling on Ebay and Craigslist. Value will plummet. Sales will begin within the first year and old stock will sit and rot. By the end of the first year, there will be no more then 20 available titles.

    There are almost 20 games out now that are compatible with the rift and it has not even hit retail yet..These devices are going to change gaming forever. Have you even tried the rift or even Google cardboard for that matter? It is AmAzInG!
    Reply
  • James Mason
    The real question, is Lucky's Tale a good enough reason to buy the Oculus Rift alone, like Super Mario was for the NES.

    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17224072 said:
    I need the actual Oculus!! NOT the alternatives, NOT some childish content. Where the heck is it?

    The hardware is useless without content.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    17224427 said:
    I have no faith in Oculus. I don't see this becoming available for purchase in 2016. And lets say for some reason they did manage to get it out. There will be so few games available it'll be akin to Wii U. Many will buy, then many used system will be selling on Ebay and Craigslist. Value will plummet. Sales will begin within the first year and old stock will sit and rot. By the end of the first year, there will be no more then 20 available titles.

    17224366 said:
    I would suspect 6 months to a year and several million $ in development away yet.

    Definitely way off the mark there.
    The hardware development is done. Oculus has said as much.
    Pre-orders will start soon according to Palmer Luckey last week on twitter.

    There's no reason to think VR isn't coming in 2016. 3 major players are poised to launch headsets within the first 6 months of the year.
    Oculus is standing strong with Q1 -
    HTC has said pre-orders start in Feb for the Vive followed by a release in April.
    PSVR is slated for the first half of next year, and with the content lineup they have showed its easy to believe this to be true.

    VR will certainly be slow to take off. Its not going to have a 20 million headset install base in the first year, but it will be here for the long run.
    Reply
  • Quixit
    I need the actual Oculus!! NOT the alternatives, NOT some childish content. Where the heck is it?

    Why? You want a half-baked product now rather than something decent later?
    Reply