While the games and tech industries have been courting VR and AR technologies for a number of years, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty has re-affirmed that Xbox won’t be jumping in on the trend anytime soon.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Booty said Xbox was waiting “until there’s an audience there,” before considering delving into first-party VR development. “We have ten games that have achieved over 10 million players life-to-date, which is a pretty big accomplishment, but that’s the kind of scale that we need to see success for the game and it’s just, it’s not quite there yet with AR, VR,” he said.
Given Booty’s benchmark of 10 million players for the scale of success Xbox would be looking for to even consider VR technology, it looks like VR hardware is unlikely any time soon. Sony’s PSVR had sold 5 million lifetime units between its 2016 release date and 2020, when Sony last released sales figures.
The hold-off on investing further in VR seems like a safe move, with the International Data Corporation (reported via Bloomberg) saying that low unit sales of VR devices like the PSVR2 (despite Sony confirming that it had outsold the original PSVR in its first six weeks) may be due to the rising costs of living, rising interest rates, and rising layoffs. IDC’s vice president of data and analytics, Francisco Jeronimo, said “VR headsets are not top of mind for most consumers under the current economic climate.”
Booty’s comments come as no surprise, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer sharing similar views during the 2021 WSJ Tech Live. Spencer said that the Xbox team were “big believers” in VR technology, but were more focused on software for the time being, believing that software would “scale better in the long run”.
“There’s a lot of good players out there that have done some amazing VR work…but we’re gonna stay…in the consumer space focused on software, and I think that’s a good bet,” Spencer said.
While an Xbox VR release is unlikely in the near (and possibly even far) future given their commitment to a focus on software and their currently stacked roster of upcoming games, it seems like Xbox has its finger on the pulse should consumer trends shift towards a desire for more VR devices.
With many competitors in the market though, on top of their consistent hesitation to jump in on hardware development for VR, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
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