Unity has become the one of the most popular videogame engines in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) development, powering a huge variety of immersive titles on various platforms. However, it seems that Unity CEO John Riccitiello doesn’t believe that is enough and thinks the market is still waiting for VR and AR to turn a corner.
Riccitiello was speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, where he revealed that somewhere around two-thirds of all VR and AR apps on the market were built using Unity, though he stated that he also believed that the VR and AR devices on the market at the moment were effectively ‘beta’ kits.
“They’re not cheap enough,” he explained, “they don’t work well enough, you don’t have enough good control systems, you can’t see your arms and your legs in most of them and use them in an interactive way, there’s not a lot of content.”
Riccitiello continued by saying that he thought the main audience for currently available VR devices like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR were developers, not consumers, despite being marketed and sold as consumer devices: “AR and VR is mostly to this day been launched to developers,” he said. “I mean, name the content. It’s not there yet. I think it will be there yet.”
He later said he was impressed by how quickly business and industry had embraced immersive technology, saying: “It’s not a surprise that the commercial applications have preceded the consumer applications because, at least in my mind, we haven’t seen a consumer launch yet.”
Despite his remarks, Riccitiello still has a lot of faith in the future of VR and AR: “AR and VR is not yet a consumer smash, although it’s rising and it will ultimately get there,” he said.
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