According to The Hollywood Reporter, Matt Booty, head of Microsoft Game Studios, said that Microsoft currently does not plan to get involved in the field of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), because this market is still in its infancy. Too small to meet Microsoft’s gaming success criteria.
Buddy said that Microsoft’s games need to reach a scale of about 10 million players to be successful, and VR and AR currently do not have such an audience. He also said that Microsoft is lucky to have some big IPs that can build ongoing franchises and huge communities.
Booty’s view differs from the strategies of companies like Sony and Meta (formerly Facebook). Sony launched the PlayStation VR2 in February and reportedly sold 600,000 units within six weeks of its release, surpassing the initial sales of its predecessor. In March, Sony President Hiroki Totoki said he thought the PS VR2 had a good chance of surpassing the combined sales of its predecessor, which had sold 5 million units by the end of 2019. Meta revealed earlier this year that it had sold nearly 20 million units of its Quest VR headset.
It is noticed that Phil Spencer, the boss of Microsoft’s gaming department, caused controversy in November 2019 because of his comments on VR, which some people thought were contempt for the technology. He called VR a relatively niche and “isolated” form that didn’t fit with his vision of gaming as a form of “shared” entertainment, adding that “no one was asking for VR” amid Xbox user feedback. Spencer later clarified his remarks, saying that he “likes” the game industry pioneering different areas, but that VR “isn’t our focus.” He said in February 2020 that while the Xbox doesn’t support VR, he hopes that one day the field will become “so important that we have to be a part of it.” By the following year, Spencer reiterated that Xbox had no interest in developing VR hardware.
