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Time To Say It: There's No Excuse For Microsoft Not Supporting VR on Xbox

What do you think MS's near-term to long-term move(s) for VR on Xbox are (Choose All That Apply)?

  • 3P VR whitelisted compatibility

    Votes: 76 38.2%
  • 1P VR hardware (9th gen)

    Votes: 8 4.0%
  • 1P VR software (9th gen)

    Votes: 12 6.0%
  • 1P VR hardware (10th gen)

    Votes: 18 9.0%
  • 1P VR software (10th gen)

    Votes: 16 8.0%
  • 1P AR (Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality) hardware (10th gen)

    Votes: 19 9.5%
  • 1P AR (Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality) software (10th gen)

    Votes: 15 7.5%
  • None of the above (MS will never support VR or AR/MR)

    Votes: 106 53.3%

  • Total voters
    199
  • Poll closed .

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Not sure what you’re saying here? Are you saying I haven’t tried it? Because if so I won’t waste my time with you.

Probably shouldn't. VR fanatics won't ever accept the clear shortcomings of the platform, not least of which the fact that it can't come even close to the visual fidelity available on non-VR games today. A ton of your hardware's power goes into making it a decent experience, so there's little left to make it look great.

The vastly outnumbered minority of people who use Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR will swear by it being the most incredible experience. Then you actually compare it directly, and without VR it looks a hundred times better and more fluid, and you can still have head tracking with TrackIR.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
First-year sales are higher than every console but ps2. Like for like, and it's not slowing down. Quest 2 doesn't use wires but it can, and play every maxed out PCVR game there is. It's also portable like Switch and can be played most anywhere.

Kinect and Wii were very different. Far less expensive and most of Kinect's sales were dirt cheap or pack in. The reason they did nothing for gaming is they were limited to casual games. VR can do casual better than both and hardcore better than most non-VR games. Especially sims and a lot of fps games. Even 3rd person is objectively better.

I can tell by your verbiage you're not very knowledgeable on the subject and that's not bad or wrong either but VR is very different than wii or Kinect.
The simple fact remains though, that devs will target the biggest user base. Will VR ever surpass Xbox, PS, PC and even Switch user base? And the answer to that is no. Why create a game for 100m dollars for a user base that consists of 10 or 20 or even 30 million people when the Xbox and PS user base alone almost reaches 200m every generation?
 
I had a headset for about a year and didn’t really get the fuss. Some good stuff but ultimately it was mostly not very well polished and was limited. I’m looking forward to what’s next with Sony and I could be tempted in a few years.

MS will wait and see I’m sure.
 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
Not even the 10th day of the year, but probably the most entitled topic we will get in 2022.

For once, Ms is not pursuing trends for the sake of it. I like VR, but I like even more when every company does something different.

Besides, in a time they can't even supply enough consoles, why would they split their hardware production even more?
 

Deanington

Member
Guaranteed MS isnt ignoring this. They want better AR/VR for Teams etc. The Metaverse is going to play a huge adoption ( vr ) into this as well. Which MS isnt going to ignore.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
It sucks, but I don't think that consoles are simply there with performance, I am playing on 3090 and with VR, something like Flight Sim makes me sick after longer period of time. And I can hadle flying in turbolent weather in small plane just fine (in real life), so it's not that...
 
Imo, I don’t really think Microsoft needs VR. Microsoft needs to put the majority of their focus on first party offerings and figuring out how to take care of console supply issues. I don’t really see that many XBOX gamers interested in an inevitably expensive peripheral with niche games. VR is really cool tech, but the games imo seem gimmicky and even kind of shallow from what I’ve seen. I’m kind of surprised Sony is still tampering with VR especially considering how it sold on PS4.
 

Shmunter

Member
If cloud streaming is the end goal to reach 1 billion Indians etc. it is incompatible with VR low latency requirement. That’s the conflict.

Vr forever tethers you to local compute.
 
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Lognor

Banned
Vr is extremely niche and the reason is money. It will cost ms money to support vr on Xbox Series. I'd rather them use that money on something I would actually play.
 
If cloud streaming is the end goal to reach 1 billion Indians etc. it is incompatible with VR low latency requirement. That’s the conflict.

Vr forever tethers you to local compute.
Not really. VR can easily became a main way to experience those cloud games through a virtual display.

The simple fact remains though, that devs will target the biggest user base. Will VR ever surpass Xbox, PS, PC and even Switch user base? And the answer to that is no. Why create a game for 100m dollars for a user base that consists of 10 or 20 or even 30 million people when the Xbox and PS user base alone almost reaches 200m every generation?
VR will certainly outpace the console industry by the time we get into the 2030s. To say otherwise ignores the kinds of leaps it is primed to make, and the overall demand for VR's usecases.

There is inherently more appeal to VR than consoles in the long-term because it does more for the same buck.

VR will always be extremely niche and for the ultra nerd only.
Personally, no way im sitting in my house with that headset on, ever.

Its a waste of resources and dev time away from "real games" for Playstation, and would be the same for Xbox or Nintendo.
This is ignoring market trends that Oculus Quest 2 is selling to quite a lot of casuals and non-gamers compared to hardcore gamers.

VR will be a mass market product well beyond the success of consoles; it just needs time. Consoles themselves took a good 15 years to really take off.

VR is just pish IMO. I don’t even think it necessarily appeals to the hardcore or the casuals, just the small number of people with a pre-existing interest in VR. Sony are never going to make one of their tent pole exclusives VR only, because they’ll never alienate 96-7% of their install base.

Feels like VR gets a disproportionate amount of love on GAF. In reality it will always be niche due to the cost, lack of tent pole games and mess of wires.
Two of your three points aren't even true. Wires and cost are non-issues in VR today if you go with a Quest 2.

Exclusive AAA games are on their way, so there goes your third point.

All in all, you're wrong.
 
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it's fascinating how many folks here believe VR has mainstream appeal. won't ever happen. give up on it.
They're visionaries. You're not. Like the other 55% of the voting participants in this thread.

Seriously. If that many people think Xbox won't ever support VR, AR, MR of any kind ever, given an infinite amount of time, you're making a terrible bet.

This is a core focus for Microsoft itself, and that will obviously trickle down to Xbox eventually.
 
Probably shouldn't. VR fanatics won't ever accept the clear shortcomings of the platform, not least of which the fact that it can't come even close to the visual fidelity available on non-VR games today. A ton of your hardware's power goes into making it a decent experience, so there's little left to make it look great.

The vastly outnumbered minority of people who use Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR will swear by it being the most incredible experience. Then you actually compare it directly, and without VR it looks a hundred times better and more fluid, and you can still have head tracking with TrackIR.
The thing with VR is that it absolutely has shortcomings today, but when you talk specifically about immersion, it is a sliver of a sliver of a sliver that feels it is somehow 'unimmersive'.

The reason why you read takes like these online is because people that talk about videogames online are the most hardcore of the gaming crowd, and as such are the inverse of what the public thinks. These people are only satisfied with perfection or near perfection, and most gamers are not like that.

Gaming does not revolve around the hardcore. Most people on NeoGaf couldn't even name the 3 most popular games in the world.
 
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Shmunter

Member
Not really. VR can easily became a main way to experience those cloud games through a virtual display.

The virtual display is a grest bonus, but it’s just that - a virtual flat screen. You can’t market a vr headset without actual vr content, of which you cannot deliver over the cloud in the foreseeable future.
 

Sholi

Neo Member
I’m sure it would be possible to add third party devices that are compatible, would love to stream the quest 2 from a virtual desktop type app to the display. I can keep hoping.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Two of your three points aren't even true. Wires and cost are non-issues in VR today if you go with a Quest 2.

Exclusive AAA games are on their way, so there goes your third point.

All in all, you're wrong.
Great mate. So if you don’t go with Sony or Valve, the gaming companies with huge pedigree, and decide to sell your arse hole to Cuckerberg - then and only then are wires and cost a non issue. K.
 
Great mate. So if you don’t go with Sony or Valve, the gaming companies with huge pedigree, and decide to sell your arse hole to Cuckerberg - then and only then are wires and cost a non issue. K.
There's also this other scenario where maybe, just maybe, other companies catch up on the wireless and price benefits of Quest 2.

Maybe that maybe is also close to 99%. Just maybe.
 

Romulus

Member
Not sure what you’re saying here? Are you saying I haven’t tried it? Because if so I won’t waste my time with you.

If I’m misunderstanding your point though I’ll add some detail. I hated the plastic headset of the Quest 2 - it was hot, and it was blurry inside. I hated that I could see the edge of the display. I hated that I had to turn my head to look - the most unnatural, immersion breaking part for me. Felt like I was in a neck brace. The controllers just felt weird and I didn’t feel in control of my virtual ‘arms’ - it also felt weird to move my arms around and have these things in my hands that I couldn’t see but relied on to move myself around like I’m in an electric wheelchair. Those are just my top of the head thoughts - the games I tried (mostly demos admittedly) were also uniformly terrible.

I see the potential, but the reality right now, virtual and otherwise for me at least was a complete turn off. I really hope it works in my lifetime, but I’m far from convinced. I remember as a kid being super excited by those in arcade virtual reality machines, so it’s not like I was against the idea of the technology from the start, it just failed to impress.


No, I'm just saying I see people on forums saying VR isn't immersive for the first time, yet I've never seen that reaction in person after 400+ times. Every single time it was amazement, outside of the motion sickness people.
 

Romulus

Member
The simple fact remains though, that devs will target the biggest user base. Will VR ever surpass Xbox, PS, PC and even Switch user base? And the answer to that is no. Why create a game for 100m dollars for a user base that consists of 10 or 20 or even 30 million people when the Xbox and PS user base alone almost reaches 200m every generation?


No, it will not "surpass" that. But are you taking into account that it's only been out a year? You're talking about combined sales of Xbox and PS systems after 7+ years at 200 million lol. That's an insane comparison.
Devs don't have to target the biggest user base to get great games. The original Xbox and Gamecube had an incredible lineup exclusive and did far worse than Quest 2 its first year.
 
Pretty shit hypothetical when we know Sony’s next gen unit uses a wire.
Apparently the word 'future' means nothing to you.
Apparently you can't envision the idea of a PSVR3.

You're setting yourself up for failure. Stop trying to make predictions about infinite timeframes unless you actually take what can happen in that time into account.
 

Romulus

Member
VR is a waste of time and resources.


And it's about to be even more of a waste. Alot more publishers seeing these numbers will not want to miss out. Expect more shitty non VR games and delays as publishers allocate to cash in on the "fad."
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
Apparently the word 'future' means nothing to you.
Apparently you can't envision the idea of a PSVR3.

You're setting yourself up for failure. Stop trying to make predictions about infinite timeframes unless you actually take what can happen in that time into account.
Why stop there mate?

The Facebook Meta Oculus 9 in the year 2214 will just be a rectally inserted chip that takes control of your nervous system and slips you in to a coma like vegative state. No need for a headset, or even an actual game. The ‘games’ play out inside your head whilst your drool hits the floor and Facebook drones come and harvest your organs and measure your dick.

The only ones setting themselves up for disappointment are the VR cheerleaders who have believed it’s the ‘next big thing’ ever since they’ve had a virtual boy strapped to their pre-pubescent head whilst all the other kids had normal consoles.
 
Why stop there mate?

The Facebook Meta Oculus 9 in the year 2214 will just be a rectally inserted chip that takes control of your nervous system and slips you in to a coma like vegative state. No need for a headset, or even an actual game. The ‘games’ play out inside your head whilst your drool hits the floor and Facebook drones come and harvest your organs and measure your dick.

The only ones setting themselves up for disappointment are the VR cheerleaders who have believed it’s the ‘next big thing’ ever since they’ve had a virtual boy strapped to their pre-pubescent head whilst all the other kids had normal consoles.
Virtual Boy is not VR, and I've only ever seen VR as a 10+ year journey into mass adoption since Vive/Rift/PSVR launched in 2016.

And clearly PSVR3 does not mean the year 2214 or even the year 2034. It means something like 2027/2028/2029.
 
I expect and prefer them to push VR next generation when hardware is more capable and hopefully more available.

The way I look at VR is it's still maturing to a point where everyone is figuring out what standards and expectations will be for the platform going forward. Even if they offer all the bells and whistles in a high-end product like eye-tracking and new things that aren't even being talked about yet, success is far from guaranteed when you look at the current market adoption rates where the best VR experience with the Index is dwarfed by the low-cost of entry Quest 2, despite having inferior hardware. They were able to pull 10 million units because they didn't have to sell a $300-$500 system to run VR on top of selling the HMD, which is what MS has to do.

Current market trajectory puts Xbox in 3rd place by a substantial margin and VR this gen will be an even smaller slice of that. The risk-reward just doesn't make sense right now for them IMO but I do believe they have talent from developing HoloLens that will take on VR gaming in the same way a DirectX folks came around and brought about the Xbox.
 

Three

Member
If I were them. I would make windows mixed reality compatible with series X and S, but I wouldn't put much resources into it.
People have to remember that resources you put into VR is less resources to go into pancake games, which is where the vast majority of people still play games.
This is what I keep hearing by people trying to make it seem like the investment would mean less pancake games to sway people away from it while at the same time some of the same people go into other threads and talk about MS' warchest of infinite money. The other excuse is that VR isn't ready.

Nobody can deny Sony make some of the best pancake games while at the same time having enough money to support VR games too. Why can't MS? The answer is that it's their console sales that makes the investment not viable/profitable but some can't accept that and so it becomes about taking away their pancake games.
 
It doesn't need to have a persistent wow factor, if the games have great gameplay to back it up.

Unfortunately that isn't the case for most of the VR software, and the gimmick wears off quickly.

I get that, but there are a lot of shallow non-VR games too, including ones with objectively broken game mechanics. So is this more a case where VR needs to have a higher ratio of games with solid gameplay since it's the one people are less familiar with?

Because I can understand that thought, even if I think most of the biggest VR games are already getting the gameplay to back them up by virtue of them also being big AAA traditional/non-VR games that just happen to get VR support added to them.

They don't need to produce a headset, they can and should license one for xbox (or even better add support for most existing headsets) and make VR games for PC/xbox.

Pretty sure flight sim is VR compatible, do the same for the forza series and some of bethesdas RPGs then call it a day. Can even add a VR tier to gamepass and have it be cross save save and seamless between xbox and PC like the rest.


No need for XBVR, just let people use their quests and their indexes as a means of gauging interest.

This is the best approach for them in the near term, I agree. Whitelist Quest 2, whitelist Index etc. and make them compatible. 3P devs will provide the VR content, maybe even a few 1P studios will want to provide it as well.

Best news is that it will encourage creation of more VR content, which helps the tech and the medium, and is a win for gamers.

Not even the 10th day of the year, but probably the most entitled topic we will get in 2022.

For once, Ms is not pursuing trends for the sake of it. I like VR, but I like even more when every company does something different.

Besides, in a time they can't even supply enough consoles, why would they split their hardware production even more?

That's why I'm also saying they don't need to produce a 1P headset of their own. If they just whitelist support for a couple of existing 3P ones, so that they can be used on Xbox consoles, that would already be a big step towards support with very little risk in costs or resources for Microsoft.

If cloud streaming is the end goal to reach 1 billion Indians etc. it is incompatible with VR low latency requirement. That’s the conflict.

Vr forever tethers you to local compute.

Hmm, I dunno. Streaming tech is constantly improving, and latency is getting lower. A lot of latency issues are on the ISP provider, too. For example Starlink generally has latency of 20 - 30 ms, meanwhile Hughsnet has latency of over 700 ms. These are for wireless, satellite-based internet service btw. Regardless if the streaming latency on xCloud, Stadia etc. end is great, any user stuck with the latter ISP is going to have an unplayable experience.

If VR is going to be longer-term tethered to local compute, I feel that's going to be more an issue with too many people being stuck with mediocre ISPs, and possibly too much in overhead from Wifi specifications making that so. But if the streaming tech can improve to a reasonable level, and internet infrastructure improves for the majority, then you can get good enough VR headsets in the future that are cheap to manufacture, and maybe companies pair them with their own wireless module routers built with low-latency wireless communication in mind suitable for gaming, including VR gaming.

That's one way things can look 10, 15 years from now potentially.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
This is what I keep hearing by people trying to make it seem like the investment would mean less pancake games to sway people away from it while at the same time some of the same people go into other threads and talk about MS' warchest of infinite money. The other excuse is that VR isn't ready.

Nobody can deny Sony make some of the best pancake games while at the same time having enough money to support VR games too. Why can't MS? The answer is that it's their console sales that makes the investment not viable/profitable but some can't accept that and so it becomes about taking away their pancake games.

Not matter what mental gymnastics and deflections you try and do its a fact that the more exclusive VR games a company makes means less pancake games.

Microsoft could do VR. But they choose not too.

Theres pros and cons to both stratagies.


VR is still a niche market.
No doubt the PS5 will be a huge hit, but the PS4 was the casual fortnite/cod/fIfa/GTA box, with sonys barrier to entry sticking to $70 games and Xbox having more pancake games + gamepass + series S I can see they will likely scrape some of the casual market back.

PSVR2 detracts from what made the PS4 such a huge success, however imo sony are still doing enough of what made the PS4 a success to ensure PS5 will have similar success as the PS4.
 

Menzies

Banned
This is what I keep hearing by people trying to make it seem like the investment would mean less pancake games to sway people away from it while at the same time some of the same people go into other threads and talk about MS' warchest of infinite money. The other excuse is that VR isn't ready.

Nobody can deny Sony make some of the best pancake games while at the same time having enough money to support VR games too. Why can't MS? The answer is that it's their console sales that makes the investment not viable/profitable but some can't accept that and so it becomes about taking away their pancake games.

I think the market dynamics have changed a bit from the first PSVR.

At the time of release MS had 6 developers, now they have ~26.

Maybe the 95% of PS4 users, seemingly with no interest in VR, aren't too excited about even fewer games against the competition?
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
It doesn't make enough money yet so they don't care. They will support it eventually when the tech matures more.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
PSVR 2 is looking like big success based on... What?

You don't know price. You could see teaser for one game and you don't know price for that game.And you don't know if it will be any good. I mean PSVR had excellent game in form of Astro Bot and it did not made a difference

And you are coming out of PSVR with pathetic 4% attach rate
Sony is mad for wasting resources and money on another sales failure when they could have been investing in more AAA games. I’ve played a few PSVR games and it didn’t convince me to buy one. My friend who’s got one only brings it out when he’s got visitors, otherwise it’s gathering dust. I think the new PSVR will sell worse than its predecessor. MS is making the right choice here.
 
The answer is that it's their console sales that makes the investment not viable/profitable but some can't accept that and so it becomes about taking away their pancake games.
Or the reason is that 95% of console players don't care enough for VR to actually buy into it.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I don’t care for VR at all myself, so I’m pretty glad MS isn’t wasting money In that space.

Allowing 3rd party headsets couldn’t hurt though I guess. I’d assume it wouldn’t be all that difficult to implement support for.
 

hlm666

Member
The virtual display is a grest bonus, but it’s just that - a virtual flat screen. You can’t market a vr headset without actual vr content, of which you cannot deliver over the cloud in the foreseeable future.
VR streaming has been in the works for a little while by some smaller startups and nvidia has a VR streaming service called cloudxr but it's only targetted at pro vis currently. you can bet Meta has something in the works as a subscription feature for the long game.

 

Romulus

Member
The vastly outnumbered minority of people who use Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR will swear by it being the most incredible experience. Then you actually compare it directly, and without VR it looks a hundred times better and more fluid, and you can still have head tracking with TrackIR.


Raises hand proudly. Even at lower fps, reduced visual fidelity, playing flight sims in VR is just amazingly good. Playing it on a monitor is just awful by comparison. Theres zero sense of scale and everything looks tiny, no depth perception either. Head tracking without vr sucks.
I don't even think flight sim is well optimized as of January for VR. Still superior.

Its not just "vr enthusiasts" lol

 
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It doesn't make enough money yet so they don't care. They will support it eventually when the tech matures more.

MS do support VR though...well moreso AR and mixed reality...just not in the consumer gaming space. So apparently they think there's enough money to support it in those areas at least.

The question is why does it need to be a massive moneymaker in the gaming space before they'll willing to jump in with even opening up support on console to specific 3P headsets?

I don't understand why they don't just allow Oculus or Vive to connect to the Xbox Series consoles. Just do 3rd party support. It's a NO BRAINER!

Exactly. Minimum financial risk, less work on their end vs. building a 1P headset, and opens up more options for players and developers on their platform. Also can open up more content to secure for GamePass. It's a win-win all around.

Imagine writing that after 2021 when Microsoft was probably best game publisher in terms of MC score and had one first quality party game every month from august to december

Funny guy

Yeah, that be our Shmunter Shmunter alright

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