GDC 2016: Everything we saw from Sony, Microsoft, Oculus and HTC

GDC 2016
GDC 2016

The 2016 Game Developers conference, or GDC for short, is a wrap for now, and we bid farewell to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Calif.

This week, we saw the future of gaming, and it can be summed up in two words: virtual reality. We went hands on with the consumer-ready versions of Oculus Rift and Sony PlayStation VR, plus got a status check on HTC Vive. We tried VR experiences of every stripe, and learned that while there's a lot of promise for the still-nascent tech, there are plenty of problems standing in its way.

But that wasn't all, not by a long shot. Check out our complete coverage below, and head on to Page 2 to see if what we expected to see at this year's show came to be. Until next year!

Day Four: Play time

The big hit of the show was virtual reality, and especially the PlayStation VR. We found out how much it will cost and when it's releasing. Let's just say, the PS VR price was music to our ears.

Sony PlayStation booth GDC

Day Three: Game on

GDC is buzzing with developers eager to try the latest hardware - the lines are long for every VR booth - and, alternately, show us what they've been working on.

We started the day with the announcement that Witcher 3 won the top prize at the show's game awards, then learned what it takes to make a game that people will play for 30 years.

Our hands on reviews with the Oculus Rift consumer version and PlayStation VR are also updated with our impressions from GDC, so check those out if you're thinking of taking the VR plunge.

And we've been putting up some whacky show floors sites on Instagram - check it out!

GDC 2016

Day Two: we see every Oculus Rift launch game

The Oculus Rift may be an expensive piece of kit, but you haven't seen the games yet. Luckily for you, techradar news editor Michelle Fitzsimmons has, and color her impressed.

"I left the Oculus Rift GDC event thrilled for the headset," Fitzsimmons writes. "Neither it nor the games were absolutely perfect, but it was more than enough to convince me that I want one, and there will be plenty of content for me to choose from once I get it."

That sure sounds like a solid first impression. Particularly, Radial G: Racing Evolved looks like the VR F-Zero game we've always wanted, and the opportunity to go into space in VR will be tough to pass up. Read the rest of our coverage below:

GDC 2016

Day One: PlayStation VR's price is revealed

The story of the day, and probably of all week, is the PlayStation VR price. It will call for $399, which is honestly the most that Sony could get away with having it require a $350 box to play it.

It's the most affordable, but least powerful, of the big three VR headsets, and it releases sometime this October. That gives Oculus Rift and HTC Vive a huge head start, but none of that matters: Sony has an install base of some 30 million and a much lower barrier to entry.

It's going to be an interesting holiday season, that much is for sure. Read the rest of our coverage below:

GDC 2016

Day Zero: the first fully independent VR headset appears

The "first day" of GDC saw the unveiling of the Sulon Q, the first VR headset to be entirely free of wires and a required PC to play. It's packing AMD technology inside and doubles as an augmented reality (AR) viewer with outward-facing cameras.

While not as powerful as its PC-beholden brethren, the battery pack strapped to the back of your skull means that you can use this thing literally anywhere. It's even running on Windows 10 inside, with some interesting AR applications of the operating system.

Sulon, a startup supported by AMD, is already where we want to see every VR headset go – free of wires – and takes that one step further. That's quite a bold move for what's technically VR's first true year of existence. Read the rest of our coverage below:

Now, head on over to Page 2 to see what we thought was going to happen at GDC 2016, and tell us just how wrong (or right?) we were in the comments.

Joe Osborne also contributed to this article

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.