First the news, then my commentary:
On the Creator Hub:
Roblox is officially completing its rollout of the Creator Hub, a new hub that gives developers more tools and centralizes things like documentation and a developer forum into one place. Making the information easier to find seems like it could be quite helpful for developers, and that has an important aftereffect for Roblox, too: Roblox makes its money by taking a cut of what its developers earn, so it’s incentivized to make things better for the creators on its platform.
Intrance, co-creator of the popular Roblox game "Starving Artist" (more on that soon) is impressed so far: "I'd say the most noticeable improvements are the faster loading times and user interface. The addition of verified users helped with filtering out lower quality assets. They've also implemented lots of new analytics dashboards displaying all kinds of stats including retention, engagement, and monetization."
On the rumored Quest support:
The Verge reports “hearing” that Roblox is in the works for release on Quest in late 2023.
Editor Alex Heath launched The Verge’s Command Line paid subscription newsletter last week with a mention of “hearing that Roblox is planning to come to Quest in the back half of this year.” That timing could line up with release of Quest 3 and what’s expected to be a major jump in on-board graphics power, though there’s no indications either way precisely which Quest headsets could see support for Roblox.
Meta declined to comment.
The Creator Hub looks like an important addition, but I have to think Roblox creators would be even more thrilled if there was also news about a better revenue split than 70/30.
Quest support in 2023 seems likely, but with VR sales slowing down, this move could be a bit too late to enter a market that Rec Room is already dominating.
Quest support in 2023 seems likely, but with VR sales slowing down, this move could be a bit too late to enter a market that Rec Room is already dominating.
I just checked: Roblox has a system for 13+ age verification in place and offers spatial voice chat for verified users. In terms of avatar customisation and monetization, Roblox appears to be miles ahead of Rec Room. The player and creator base of Roblox is many times larger than that of Rec Room. I have little doubt that Roblox is going to dominate social VR on Quest.
Here is the creative director of Rec Room Inc. comparing Rec Room to Roblox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v-X7QcBWtg&t=1200s . But that was 2 years ago. With age-verification and spatial voice chat available in Roblox, the game is now able to offer very similar social experiences on Quest as Rec Room does. And with Rec Room Studio, Rec Room is slowly moving away from in-game building - at least for the high-end experiences. This is going to be tough for Rec Room.
Posted by: Martin K. | Friday, January 13, 2023 at 01:59 AM