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Sony is on its second virtual reality headset but Microsoft is steering well clear. It has revealed that, while the market remains relatively small, it will not be adding VR games or hardware to its lineup.
Xbox Studios head Matt Booty explained that, even though its major rival has the PlayStation VR2 available for PS5, Xbox is not interested – not until it 10 million gamers are willing to get involved.
“I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “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 and VR.”
That’s a big ask, to be honest. Even the first PSVR only sold five million units in its lifespan. And the second is thought to be nowhere near that at present.
Sony has hopes the PSVR2 will eventually outsell its predecessor (the technology is certainly good enough) but it’s unlikely to be in 10 million global households anytime soon. And, it’s even more unlikely that a single game will be bought by every owner.
Even cloud gaming – something that Xbox is spending much more time, money and effort on – is a fractional pastime right now: “It is a very, very small market,” said Booty. “I’m not even sure you would call it a market yet, in fact. It’s very small usage and very small audience.”
That echoes the company’s argument against the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority block on the Activision acquisition. The CMA claims that its refusal to ratify the deal is because it is worried that the buyout could harm cloud gaming in future. Xbox has countered by saying the its Xbox Cloud Gaming service (part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) is a tiny part of its business. Booty repeats that.
Still, we’re not quite sure why it’s not at least interested in putting some of its games on the Meta Quest headsets, say. After all, Meta is estimated to have sold almost 20 million Quest and Quest 2 devices. It also has a Meta Quest 3 on the horizon. Surely those combined meet the criteria? We guess we’ll see.
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