Robinson: The Journey tests VR gaming’s $60 price barrier

We’ve been looking forward to Robinson: The Journey for a long time. The game, which is all about close encounters with dinosaurs, is positioned to become the latest showpiece for Crytek’s game engine and its ability to create gorgeous virtual worlds. Crytek released The Climb (Review: 8/10) on Rift for $50 earlier this year and we found it to be a great game able to imbue genuine exhilaration inside an eye-popping environment, and we look forward to re-evaluating it with the forthcoming Touch controls.

Now we know the price of Robinson: The Journey on PlayStation VR from Crytek, arriving for $60 on Nov. 8 in the United States and Canada. It’ll launch the following day in Europe, Australia and New Zealand published by Sony and available in stores as well as digitally.

The price places it among the most expensive VR games, like EVE: Valkyrie (Review: 9/10) and Battlezone (Review: 8/10), each of which have significant multiplayer modes. Valkyrie features intense space dogfights with an added cooperative mode against real people, while Battlezone features levels that change with each play through as well as a cooperative mode. We’ve been told, however, that Robinson is a single-player game likely to take three to five hours to complete, depending how you play. Replayability will likely be driven by finding collectibles and other items hidden throughout the world, in addition to exploring environments and unlocking achievements.

Pricing is a very sensitive subject among VR early adopters, many of which are gamers. These buyers are accustomed to spending $60 on traditional games with campaigns expected to measure hours in double digits, with multiplayer modes that could deliver months of entertainment. VR games frequently don’t last that long, however, and virtual reality is home to content much more immersive and varied than traditional games. Content ranges from completely non-interactive 360-degree videos which don’t sell for anything to physically active games like Raw Data (early access hands-on) and The Gallery: Call of the Starseed (Review: 9/10) that sell for $40 and $20, respectively. Both Raw Data from Survios and the first episode of The Gallery from Cloudhead Games (which started at a higher price) cleared $1 million in sales, representing the highest figures we’ve heard yet for sales of VR-specific games.

Meanwhile, Feral Rites from Insomniac Games debuted at $50 (Review: 5/10) only to get panned in reviews, quickly dropping to $30 and offered on sale all the way down to $10, with six free games offered to buyers who paid the full price. In other words, the Oculus-exclusive title missed buyer expectations in such an extraordinary fashion the company decided to make amends.

Now Robinson: The Journey is positioned to become the next title to watch to see if buyers find themselves satisfied after dropping $60 on a VR game.

This post first appeared on UploadVR.