Microsoft Announces VR Partnership With Oculus Rift

Yesterday, at Oculus’s pre-E3 conference, the company announced that it was going to partner with Microsoft to bring Xbox One games to Oculus Rift. Now, before Xbox and VR fans get too excited about this, it’s not what you think- well, not exactly anyway.

First the good (?) news, all Oculus Rift units will ship with an Xbox One controller, meaning that you get a quality controller to play your games straight up. Unfortunately, that’s where the good news end. The actual ‘playing Xbox One games’ on Oculus part? Well, it involves streaming Xbox One games to your Oculus headset, and then playing them on there. In a virtual living room, with the game itself still being displayed on a 2D screen. So instead of playing the games on a real life 2D screen, you are now playing them on a virtual one.

What’s the point, exactly? It is abundantly clear that 2D XBox One games will remain just that, even when played on a VR headset. So why do it? Why go through all of the rigmarole?

At least we get a good controller for Oculus out of it.