The likes of Sony and Meta have made plenty of strides when it comes to VR gaming, but as much success as the two of them have seen in that space, VR still very much remains a niche corner of the market, with not a lot of scope for widespread software or hardware sales. And that, as you might expect, is a factor that has made some other players hesitant to enter the market.
One of them is Xbox. Speaking in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty touched on the topic of VR, and said that for Microsoft, which needs to see player bases of 10 million players (or thereabouts) for a game to be considered a proper success, VR just doesn’t have an audience that’s big enough yet to justify investing in the market for Microsoft.
“I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there,” Booty said. “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.”
This, of course, is not the first time that the question of VR has been brought up with Microsoft, and it’s not the first time that the company has made it clear that it doesn’t see that as market that it wants to focus on, for a variety of reasons.
Other players in the market are continuing to take steps to try and expand. Meta Quest 3 is set to launch later this year, for instance, while the PS VR2 launched earlier this year- though the latter seems to have suffered less-than-stellar launch, where sales are concerned.