Xbox says the VR market is currently too small for it to chase

The head of Xbox Game Studios has said the VR and AR market is currently too small for the platform holder to get involved in.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Matt Booty suggested Xbox games need to reach around 10 million players to be successful.

“I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there,” he 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.”

In March, Sony president Hiroki Totoki said he thought PlayStation VR2 had a “good chance” of outselling its predecessor, which had sold five million units by the end of 2019.

PS VR2 launched in February and sold around 600,000 units during its first six weeks, outpacing the original during its launch window, according to Sony.

Meta has sold almost 20 million of its Quest VR headsets to date, the company reportedly said earlier this year.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer attracted criticism in November 2019 with comments he made about VR, which some perceived as being dismissive of the technology.

He called VR a relatively niche and “isolating” format that doesn’t fit with his vision of gaming as a “communal” pastime, adding that when it came to Xbox customer feedback, “nobody’s asking for VR”.

The Xbox head later clarified his comments, stating that he ‘loves’ that the games industry is pioneering in different fields, but that VR “is just not our focus”.

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He then stated in February 2020 that while Xbox was not supporting VR, he hoped that one day the space would become “so important that it would be a no-brainer for us”.

The following year, Spencer reiterated that Xbox had no interest in developing VR hardware.