Xbox has no plans to develop for VR anytime soon

Back when Microsoft announced the Xbox One X, Phil Spencer jumped the gun by promising both 4K gaming and ‘high-fidelity VR'. As we now know years later, Microsoft has not made any efforts to bring VR to Xbox and it sounds like that won't be changing anytime soon.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Xbox Studios head, Matt Booty, touched on the subject of VR, confirming that Microsoft is still taking a ‘wait and see' approach to VR, preferring for a bigger market to emerge before investing in it with game development resources.

“I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there”, he said. Booty adds that Microsoft is in a good position with its major IPs, but hints that the current VR market just isn't big enough for the investment required:

“We’re very fortunate that we have got these big IPs that have turned into ongoing franchises with big communities. We have 10 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.”

Microsoft has dabbled in mixed reality with the Hololens, but that project appears to have stalled in recent years. Recently, Sony launched the PS VR2 headset, Apple unveiled its own Vision Pro headset and Meta is set to launch the Quest 3 headset later this year, so while Microsoft isn't involved, the VR market is looking healthy and is attracting investment from other major companies.

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KitGuru Says: We've had consumer VR for almost 10 years now but the market is still very small compared to PC/console gaming and mobile gaming. Do you think VR will eventually become the future?

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