Meta announced at Connect 2023 that Xbox Cloud Gaming is heading to Quest in December, meaning you’ll be able to play all of your favorite flatscreen games on offer through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Meta’s full unveiling of Quest 3 yesterday came with a fair bit of news, including specs, price, pre-orders and shipping dates; long story short, you can get Meta’s $500 consumer mixed reality headset starting October 10th, with pre-orders now live.
Sometime in December, Meta says we’ll also get support for Xbox Cloud Gaming on Quest too, which users will be able to use on a virtual screen that can be adjusted and resized.
There’s no specific date yet for when to expect Xbox Cloud Gaming to the Quest platform. On stage, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg only mentioned that it’s “coming to Quest in December,” so it’s possible we’ll see even Quest 2 included in the list of supported hardware in addition to Quest 3 and (presumably) Quest Pro.
As it stands, there are a few standard caveats. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription and a supported controller (sold separately) is required. Meta says in a blogpost that some streaming limitations may apply as well, including variable server availability and wait times, and geographical restrictions.
Want to know if Quest 3 is worth it? We haven’t gone in for our deep dive review yet, although we got a full hands-on with the headset right before Connect 2023 this week that goes into everything from confort to clarity.
Leaked documents relating to Microsoft’s business strategy for Xbox show the company eyeing XR technology but continuing to keep it at arm’s length.
While Microsoft has previously taken considerable steps into XR with both HoloLens and the Windows Mixed Reality platform on PC, the company’s flagship gaming division, Xbox, has notably not joined the fray.
Over the years Xbox leadership has repeatedly pushed back on XR interest, saying the tech doesn’t yet have a large enough audience to warrant investment. And while it doesn’t look like we should expect anything relating to XR from Xbox in the near future, the company is at least continuing to eye the tech as a potential opportunity.
Road to VR reviewed the entirety of a trove of documents that leaked this week in connection with an ongoing Federal Trade Commission v. Microsoft court case. The documents, which reveal a significant portion of Microsoft’s long-term plans for the Xbox brand, show the company is still skeptical of XR but not discounting it in the long run.
In a mid-2022 ‘Gaming Strategy Review’ document, Xbox pointed to “AR / VR” as one of a handful of “opportunities” the company was mulling as part of its “early thoughts on [the] next generation of gaming.” In the same section the company pointed to tech like cloud gaming and ML & AI as potential areas of strategic focus.
In another section of the same document the company highlighted Windows Mixed Reality, OpenXR, WebVR, and HoloLens among many platforms and services that Xbox can leverage to build its “next gen platform for immersive apps and games.” Given the context of the document, however, it doesn’t seem that Xbox is specifically referring to XR when using the word “immersive.”
While Xbox has mentioned XR as a future opportunity, the company’s tone is still significantly skeptical that the tech has achieved a meaningful addressable audience.
In another section of the same document which overviewed Xbox’s competitors, the company pointed to Meta’s billions of dollars of investments into XR, but concluded by saying, “we view virtual reality as a niche gaming experience at this time.”
Another document from mid-2022, which overviewed the company’s long-term plans for Xbox all the way through 2030, noted that Microsoft wanted to expand its hardware portfolios to include new hardware categories, but nothing on that long-term roadmap pointed to any XR hardware.
While the leaked documents did focus on long timelines, business is always dynamic and priorities can shift quickly, so it’s important to remember that the documents are just a snapshot of Xbox’s view in mid-2022. With the more recent introduction of devices like Apple Vision Pro, it’s likely that Xbox is looking even more closely at how important XR may be to its future portfolio.
Amid mounting pressure from Sony with the recent launch of its PSVR 2 headset for PlayStation 5, Microsoft again affirmed that it’s still waiting for the technology to mature before offering any sort of dedicated VR software or hardware for Xbox.
Xbox’s lack of VR strategy has been a long ongoing story, reaching back to when the company first announced at E3 2016 that its Xbox One X console would “lead the industry into a future in which true 4K gaming and high-fidelity VR are the standard, not an exception.”
As a show of big brand cohesion (pre-Bethesda acquisition), the company announced Fallout 4VR was supposed to come to the system, however a month later Xbox leadership began waffling about VR support on Xbox One X, which effectively led to the company putting an indefinite kibosh on all things console VR.
And that’s not changed, even in the face of PSVR 2 outperforming the original PSVR in sales in the first six weeks, taking a strong early lead over Sony’s first-gen PlayStation headset introduced in 2016.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter late last week, Xbox Game Studio head Matt Booty says VR just isn’t there yet for Xbox.
“I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there. We’re very fortunate that we have got these big IPs that have turned into ongoing franchises with big communities,” Booty said. “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.”
Meanwhile, the standalone headset market is moving along at a clip that would suggest the audience is already there, or may be there soon. Meta says it’s sold over 20 million Quest headsets to date as it prepares to launch its $500 follow-up, Quest 3. Only a few days after Quest 3’s June 1st unveiling, Apple announced its $3,500 Vision Pro headset, which if anything, will spur others to take XR more seriously.
Granted, PSVR 2 installs only account for a fraction of that 38 million figure, but if Xbox is hoping to wait for VR games to reach console-level unit sales, it may be handing over yet more revenue to its direct competitor for a while longer.
Still rubbing your eyes? Us too, but we’re pretty sure we’re not dreaming – Microsoft really is buying Activision Blizzard.
Or at least the Xbox-maker certainly intends to. That much was made official this week, with the caveat that the deal — as with any multi-billion dollar acquisition — could be subject to an antitrust investigation, should the FTC deem it necessary. Reports state Meta itself is currently subject to such scrutiny, though Microsoft previously passed its acquisition of Bethesda (which, in fairness, was reportedly valued at about a tenth of this proposed $68 billion deal).
Those apprehensions aside, the perceived implications of such a deal are nothing short of seismic. Microsoft will have the keys to the Call of Duty franchise and a stable of other legendary series that will add yet more value to its Game Pass platform whilst Sony still appears to be playing catchup with a possible contender for PS5. It’s a move not about which console you buy in the short term so much as which gaming service you subscribe to in the future as cloud streaming technology and other services increasingly detract from the appeal of localized hardware.
So, where does VR fit into all of this?
Well it’s not immediately obvious. Certainly, there are some short-term assumptions we can come to about what franchises we will and won’t be seeing in headsets anytime soon, but there are also wider implications to consider. Before we do that, though, let’s just remind ourselves of where Xbox is at with VR today.
Microsoft’s VR History
Microsoft’s — or, more specifically, the Xbox brand’s — current history with VR could be best described as frustratingly hesitant. Just six years ago the company seemed primed to join Sony, Valve and Meta (then Facebook) in the fight for consumer VR dominance, announcing that its Xbox One X console was capable of “premiere VR experiences”. But an Xbox-made headset nor third-party device support never materialized for the console, and hasn’t yet been announced for its successors, the Series S and X.
Reports claimed Microsoft had shelved plans for a headset and Xbox executives began to state time and again that VR was not a focus for the consoles. Even though Microsoft has its own line of Windows VR headsets made in partnership with others (the most recent of which being the HP Reverb G2) and the fact that we regularly see new VR innovations from the company’s wide-reaching research efforts, there’s been no signs of that position changing for Xbox itself anytime soon. That’s even as Sony prepares to launch a PSVR 2 for its competing PS5 console.
Xbox Holds The Keys To VR’s Most Requested Games
This week’s acquisition announcement might have been Xbox’s biggest yet, but it also only adds to an already significant list of gaming series that could help define a new era for VR. From its own studios there’s Halo and Forza, from Bethesda there’s Elder Scrolls and Doom (both of which have already had passing visits to headsets), and now there’s Call of Duty and World of Warcraft among many, many others.
These aren’t just popular games – they’re legacy brands that have paved the way forward for their respective genres that could one day be hallmark VR releases. Who hasn’t wanted to see Halo VR (not counting the bad one) or a new, native Elder Scrolls game? Would there be any better indicator that the technology had achieved mainstream status than seeing a Call of Duty VR game?
In the near term at least, it seems like we’ll be waiting a little longer for these games. Unless Microsoft is planning to reveal its own VR contender for its latest Xbox consoles in the next year or two, it won’t make much sense for the company to greenlight multimillion-dollar VR projects it won’t release on its own platforms. That is of course unless there are any more contractual obligations in play – both Bethesda’s Doom 3 VR and inXile’s Frostpoint were released post-Microsoft acquisition.
Sony’s VR Strategy Becomes Increasingly Important
Dialing down on the core rivalry between Sony and Microsoft’s gaming divisions, this week’s announcement strikes a grave blow to the former company. Sony’s PS5 seems to have outpaced Xbox Series sales thus far and that’s not likely to change within the next few years but, looking beyond this console cycle, Sony now faces serious questions about how it competes in an industry with an increasingly dominant rival that has cash reserves it can’t measure up to. One answer might lie in its work with VR.
Sony’s excursions into VR and Microsoft’s focus on services are obviously very different approaches but, strategically speaking, they’re both long-term gambles that stand to pay off in the future. Just as Microsoft is focused on a time in which Xbox is an app installed onto TV sets, Sony knows that there’s a future for VR technology beyond plugging it into a console to play the latest games.
And that’s what makes its work today so critical. Sony learned a lot with PSVR, went away and improved upon it. It will, undoubtedly, learn a lot with PSVR 2, too. Its studios will continue to flesh out best practices for VR development, and its R&D teams will continue to look at the way players interact with PSVR 2’s inside-out tracking, eye-tracking and other features and continue to refine the experience. Xbox, meanwhile, isn’t able to benefit from the same pool of user data and experience (though it will have taken its own learnings from the Windows MR line, no doubt).
That may be key to PlayStation staying ahead of Microsoft as the industry continues to grow into something much more significant. It seems like a far-flung future right now but, going forward, VR could be one of the key ways Sony is able to diversify and form a significant new pillar with the headstart Microsoft has afforded it.
But Microsoft Can Flip The Switch Anytime It Wants
The real question is how long that headstart will be. Microsoft could flip the switch on VR essentially whenever it wants: it now owns multiple studios that have dabbled with VR content, including Ninja Theory, inXile Entertainment and Escalation Studios (now known as Bethesda Dallas) and has a suite of other partners that have brought games like Skyrim, Doom, Wolfenstein and many more to VR. Then it’s got its work with Windows MR, which allowed it to dip its toes into the pool of VR ecosystems, even if anyone that bought one of the headsets had to turn to SteamVR to play most games.
It feels as if Microsoft is more than capable of launching a competent and compelling VR ecosystem pretty much whenever it sees fit. And such a device will enter the company not just into a new era of rivalry with Sony but also Meta and — very likely — Apple. those are two companies the wider Microsoft is already battling on several fronts.
A Microsoft Metaverse
Many will have flinched when Microsoft made mention of the metaverse in its press blasts this week and, while it’s easy to see why you’d have that initial reaction, you might want to ask yourself this: how could buying Call of Duty, the biggest online shooter going, possibly ever effect the eventual realization of an always-online virtual platform where people can work, socialize and, most pressingly, play?
If the metaverse does indeed become the next widely-used manifestation of online productivity and leisure, then Call of Duty is on a collision course straight towards it. In fact, the entire gaming industry is on that course in some capacity, even if it doesn’t really know it yet. There’s no other talent pool out there as well-equipped to handle the stresses the concept of the metaverse imply. And now Microsoft occupies a significant chunk of that pool, not to mention much of the software that could prove foundational for the future.
So, in the near-term? Microsoft’s latest acquisition won’t mean much for VR. We probably won’t see Overwatch VR, Call of Duty VR or World of Warcraft VR in the near future but, in all honesty, that wasn’t likely to happen anyway. It’s the longer game that really has us wondering – the growth of both an incredible gaming service and an ever-expanding team of digital computing experts under its wing. It has a lot of ground to catch up in the VR industry, but these tools could be what Microsoft needs to leapfrog its competitors later down the line.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has once again shot down any hopes for an Xbox VR headset in the near future, but hasn’t ruled out Xbox software appearing on other headsets.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Spencer said that Microsoft didn’t really have any plans for “bespoke accessories” like VR or AR headsets in the near future.
“As it relates to VR specifically, the best experience that I’ve seen is Quest 2. And I just think its untethered ease of use in its capability just doesn’t to me require it being connected to an Xbox in any way,” Spencer said. “So when I look at a scenario like that, I think of XCloud, I think of the Xbox Live community, I think of other things of how could we bring content to a screen like that.
“Whether we do something like that through first-party or third-party partnerships is kind of a second step to do we think the games that we currently have that we’re able to run on our platform would work there.”
Microsoft has played down chances of an Xbox VR headset on numerous occasions over the past few years, despite once saying its Xbox One X console was capable of “high fidelity VR”. But Spencer’s comments about software are interesting – Microsoft has explored bringing Xbox apps and IP to other headsets in the past – the Oculus Rift had an app to stream Xbox One games to a virtual screen and Windows’ own Mixed Reality headsets featured an exclusive Halo minigame.
But his mention of Xcloud here specifically is intriguing; could there be some appeal to using Quest 2 as another destination for Games Pass streaming? As Sony prepares to launch a VR headset for PS5, that could give Xbox some small way to remain in the conversation.
A message uncovered by IGN Italy when plugging in a pair of wireless headphones into an Xbox Series X/S caused a stir in the VR community, as it seemingly alluded to some level of VR support baked into Xbox consoles. Microsoft says however that the error message was inaccurate, and that VR for Xbox is still not a happening.
The review embargoes dropped two days ago for the Xbox Wireless headset (not a VR headset, rather the audio kind), but when IGN’s Italian site ran the headset through its paces for review, a very curious message appeared when connecting it for the first time. In English, it reads:
The VR headset must be updated. An update is available for the VR headset.
Image courtesy IGN Italia
Some prognosticated that Microsoft has mistakenly leaked VR support for Xbox, something it has repeatedly rebuked in the past. Others, who probably ran the message through Google Translate, chalked it up to a simple typo tantamount to mistakenly adding the letters ‘VR’ in front of ‘headset’. It’s not a typo though.
In English, we use ‘headset’ interchangeably with VR, AR and audio, but that’s not the case in Italian. Long story short, the word visore VR can be translated to ‘VR headset’ in English, but its more literal meaning is ‘VR viewer’.
A statement obtained by VGCfrom an Xbox spokesperson maintains that the message was a mistake though, calling it “inaccurate due to a localization bug.” Furthermore, the company added that “VR for console is not a focus for us at this time.”
This tracks with Microsoft’s long-term stance on VR for Xbox consoles going back to Xbox One. More recently, Xbox head Phil Spencer dismissed VR in late 2019 as something that was just too isolating to be pursued even for its Xbox Series X/S consoles.
“I have some issues with VR — it’s isolating and I think of games as a communal, kind of together experience. We’re responding to what our customers are asking for and… nobody’s asking for VR,” Spencer said.
Still, money left on the table is getting larger by the day. Sony has generated over two billion dollars in revenue with PSVR hardware and software sales. Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 has outsold every headset it’s produced, with an estimated three million units sold and over $150 million in app sales on the Quest platform.
And this is all while Xbox Game Studios is sitting on tons of VR development talent (inadvertently or otherwise), a console clearly capable of running VR games, and internal Microsoft departments working on immersive headsets. Virtual reality may prove to be too big to ignore at some point, but it seems at least for now Xbox simply isn’t ready to compete.
HP stated that its upcoming Reverb G2 headset currently doesn’t support Xbox One consoles after a Microsoft Store listing suggested otherwise.
The listing is a free app that appears to be a utility for performing a first-time setup of the headset. Under both the minimum and recommended specifications, the OS category reads “Windows 10 version 15063.0 or higher, Xbox One,” as pictured below.
Reaching out to HP, the company told us that there is “no current support” for Xbox One with the Reverb G2. The listing is likely an error, though it’s still up and visible as of the time of this writing.
Xbox VR support has been rumored for a long time in one form or another. The Reverb G2 is made in partnership with Microsoft (along with Valve), so a partnership to bring the kit to console would make sense. Another reason the listing is likely a mistake is that only the Xbox One is mentioned in the app listing, and not the newer Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S or Series X consoles. However, if the original Xbox One model can support VR content, then the newer One models and the next generation Series models should hypothetically be able to as well.
While the application listing is specifically for the Reverb G2, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of connecting other VR headsets to Xbox consoles either. That being said, Flight Simulator will launch VR support exclusively for Windows MR headsets this Fall, and the Xbox release of the title is still forthcoming. Xbox VR could take a similar path, with exclusive support for Windows MR hardware to tie in with the launch Xbox of Flight Simulator around the same time.
Two years ago, I wrote that Microsoft was well-poised to lead the way in VR in the next-generation of consoles. Today, that statement rings truer than it did before but, frustratingly, Xbox VR seems further away than ever.
Xbox VR’s Troubled History
It’s been a bumpy road. Microsoft once promised VR support for Xbox One X, but it never materialized, with reports suggesting an Xbox One VR headset had been put on hold. This was in spite of the fact the company already had a VR reference design in use with partners on PC. It even got a Halo game even if it is a bit, well, crap. Not to mention that, as this generation began to wind down, it bought Ninja Theory and inXile, two studios with great VR games under their belts.
But as the Xbox One Series X and Series S have approached, Xbox has doubled down on its disinterest in VR, assuring that the new devices won’t support headsets at launch. A new Windows PC VR headset, the HP Reverb G2, is soon to launch with support for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it’s not going to support Xbox. That makes yesterday’s bombshell announcement that Microsoft is acquiring Bethesda parent-company ZeniMax Media — and franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom and Wolfenstein along with it — a little concerning for the VR fanbase.
Now more than ever, Microsoft possesses the software and hardware might to deliver a robust VR ecosystem, but such a thing appears far from the top of the priorities list. Under Xbox ownership, it’s a legitimate concern that we might not see another VR Elder Scrolls game for a long, long time. There is but one shred of hope; a February 2020 interview in which Head of Xbox Phil Spencer said he hopes VR becomes big enough to be a ‘no brainer’ for Xbox.
The ball, in other words, is in Facebook and Sony’s court.
Carrying The Torch
Even four years in with success stories becoming more and more frequent, the VR industry is still small fry. Tens of thousands of people tuned into last Wednesday’s Facebook Connect showing, a few hours before more than a million turned up for Sony’s PS5 event. But things are beginning to change; Facebook has seen encouraging signs of life in the original Oculus Quest headset, and it’s about to release a cheaper and all-round better successor. Sony’s PS5 arrives in November and is widely expected to follow suit with a new headset of its own sometime in the future.
Based on Spencer’s words, it’s up to these two new headsets to prove that the platform is worth its while. Quest 2 needs to keep building on its past success and churning out more stories like the 2-million selling Beat Saber, while PSVR 2 needs to continue to make the case that the wider developer ecosystem can have meaningful revenue impact by providing PSVR support in games like Hitman III and — hopefully — Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7.
It can happen. Facebook convinced Ubisoft to make exclusive Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell VR games (no doubt with a lot of money put on the table). EA is dropping in VR support for Star Wars: Squadrons next month. These are brand-new entries in three of gaming’s biggest franchises and signify a growing interest in the market. Sony, meanwhile, has the platform and expertise to help make the likes of Skyrim VR and No Man’s Sky VR happen. Together with Facebook, the pair could well make the case for Xbox VR support quite tidily in the next three or four years.
If anything, it’s now in Sony’s interests more than ever to help make VR happen. The prospect of PSVR 2 is quickly becoming one of the company’s key differentiators against Xbox as Microsoft aggressively pursues its Game Pass subscription service and continues to buy up studios. A fresh wave of big-budget titles either exclusive to its platform or only offering console VR support on PS5 could be a big get as the VR market continues to grow.
There’s still a big gap, though, between promising lifelines and an industry that’s a ‘no-brainer’ to support. We’re going to need to see not just an uptick in sales but a fundamental shift in the way we talk about VR, from the prospect of ‘will it really take off?’ to ‘remember when it took off?’. That could still be years off.
That’s my takeaway from yesterday’s news. The Elder Scrolls VI VR can still happen, Dishonored VR can (and should) still happen. But VR still has to prove itself before they become a distinct possibility. In some ways, it’s the same story it’s ever been. Keep pressing on, then.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused article series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know what you think about the Microsoft purchase of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax!
But what does it mean for VR? We all know Microsoft doesn’t have the best track record with supporting VR as a platform, so could this theoretically limit these studios in terms of their VR support? We’ve already gotten VR entries for The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Prey from Bethesda properties so it makes you wonder if any future VR projects are at risk of changing or being canceled.
However, you can’t deny this absolutely does mean there is more funding at the hands of these teams. inXile is working on Frostpoint, a VR-only shooter, that’s coming this year and they’re owned by Microsoft, so it’s not a deal breaker at all. If Microsoft continues to fund and publish ZeniMax games on multiple platforms then it’s a net positive for everyone, really.
What do you think? Is this going to end up being a good thing for VR? Let us know down in the comments below!
Microsoft is to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Doom VFR and Wolfenstein VR publisher, Bethesda Softworks.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced the news on the Xbox Blog today. All of Bethesda’s family of studios, including id Software, Arkane, Machine Games and more are coming under the Xbox wing. Bethesda is arguably best known for the Elder Scrolls series of role-playing games, but also publishes new entries in famous franchises like Wolfenstein, Doom and Dishonored.
Following the announcement, games industry journalist Jason Schreier reported that Microsoft is paying $7.5 billion in the acquisition.
Bethesda — and the wider ZeniMax Media corporation — also has an interesting history with VR. Over the course of the past four years, Bethesda has put out several VR games, including ports of Skyrim and Fallout 4. It’s also released all-new titles like 2019’s Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and once promised VR support for mobile spin-off, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, though that’s yet to materialize.
But, going deeper, ZeniMax itself famously took Oculus to court after the company was acquired by Facebook. ZeniMax alleged that legendary game developer John Carmack had stolen Bethesda-owned technology in the process of working with Palmer Luckey on early prototypes of the Oculus Rift and eventually leaving id Software to join Facebook’s VR team. The lawsuit came to ahead in a 2017 court battle that initially saw Facebook ordered to pay ZeniMax $500 million. The payout was eventually halved to $250 million. None of Bethesda’s games have been published on Oculus stores to date.
For the past few years, Microsoft has committed to bringing all of its published games to PC, so it’s safe to assume new Bethesda titles will come to both the new Xbox Series S and Series X console as well as PC. It remains to be seen if future titles will come to PS5, though the upcoming Bethesda-published Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo do have timed exclusivity arrangements with Sony.
What do you make of the Microsoft Bethesda deal? Let us know in the comments below!
