Starbreeze Studios and Acer have signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture for StarVR - the head-mounted 2010 degree VR device that debuted at E3 last year with the wheel-chaired and shotgun infused Walking Dead demo. The agreement is pending approval for the boards of both companies.
"Since our launch in June 2015, we have had an amazing start with StarVR. By partnering with Acer we shift gears yet again to firmly position us as the leader in top-end VR experiences. Acer is an excellent, experienced and prominent hardware partner that will accelerate us in realizing and producing a high-definition, high-fidelity VR headset," said Bo Andersson Klint, Starbreeze CEO. "We've been working with a clear roadmap for our VR strategy from day one, and are now about to realize one of the first major collaborations we set out to achieve. The future for StarVR is now set and extremely exciting."
"Acer is thrilled to join forces with Starbreeze in bringing the StarVR head-mounted display to the market," said Jason Chen, Acer Corporate President and CEO. "We are devoting R&D resources across multiple aspects of the VR ecosystem for a coherent and high-quality experience, while just last month Acer announced powerful desktops and notebooks fully-ready for StarVR. Starbreeze and Acer share the same goal of delivering best-in-class VR applications, and we look forward to unlocking new VR possibilities together with this partnership. "
Starbreeze has already announced plans for Starcade - a location-based VR experience, and in Cannes at the film festival they unveiled their first cinematic experience for StarVR "Cockatoo Spritz" directed by Stephane Barbato. Currently there are no plans to turn StarVR into a consumer product, but perhaps it's a possibility a couple of years down the line.