Ubisoft is developing virtual reality games for next year and beyond

Ubisoft is currently developing a "number of games" that will support virtual reality devices when they begin hitting next year, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during an analyst call yesterday.

"We believe a lot in virtual reality because we see that it is really giving a chance for gamers to be more immersed in worlds, and we are developing a certain number of games that are going to take advantage of this new possibility," he said in response to a question about supporting virtual reality hardware. "We are working on the different brands we have to see how we can take advantage of those new possibilities, but making sure also we don't suffer from what comes with it, which is the difficulty to play a long time with those games.

"We are very bullish about the potential. We think it is going to bring more players to the universe of video games, and we are going to come with our brands. We will have a few titles in the first year and we will have regular games coming following that."

Earlier this year, Sony announced that its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset would go on sale in the first half of 2016. Oculus announced that it plans to release the consumer version of Oculus Rift sometime between January and March 2016. Both Valve and Microsoft are working on their own headsets, but neither have firm release dates.

Guillemot's comments seem to contradict comments made by Ubisoft Vice President of Creative Lionel Raynaud during GDC in 2014.

"VR would need to sell at least 1 million units to be viable for development," Raynaud said during a roundtable interview, according to GameSpot.

The company later backed away from that number, saying it wasn't meant to be taken literally.