Recently, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer went on record to say that until full-length VR experiences come out, Xbox is not joining the VR bandwagon. Today, news has appeared that suggests this is not strictly true. Microsoft has announced that owners of the Oculus Rift can stream their games from the Xbox One. There is a catch, however, because there are no VR games on the Xbox One. So what does this mean?
Xbox One’s sort of VR experience
Image courtesy: Road to VR
Just like Netflix’s virtual reality experience on the Samsung Gear VR, the VR is misleading. Microsoft has announced that anyone who owns the Oculus Rift can stream their Xbox One games to the headset. The games themselves will still be the traditional format. The difference is that instead of playing in your living room, you can play in any environment you want. Well, not any environment, a choice of three. The settings sound lovely (Citadel, Retreat, and Dome), but seem to be more of a gimmick than anything else.
Imagine watching this in a castle or beach setting. Image courtesy: Forza Motorsport
Good news is that there are a lot of games that will be supported in this update. Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4, as well as a back-catalogue of 360 games, will all be supported. This means that you can play your games old and new in places outside of your apartment. It also means that you no longer need to invest in such a large television to get the most out of the graphics. Of course, we haven’t had a chance to see this in action, so how well the graphics turn out is unknown. Let’s hope that the Xbox One has enough processing power to handle both rendering the game and your new environment.
How to get it and the future of Xbox VR
Image courtesy: Microsoft
If this takes your fancy and you have a Rift, you can get your hands on the experience from 12 December. You need to download the app, the obviously-named, “Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift” app. At least it’s free, so you can justify spending the money on both the console and the Rift.
Image courtesy: PC world
As for what this means for the future, that isn’t so certain. It stick’s to Microsoft’s business agreements with Oculus, in conjunction with the Xbox One controller support that came out last year. However, considering we don’t know for sure what the Scorpio is going to do, and that Microsoft is making their own VR headset, it’s too early to tell if this is a sign of further Oculus integration in the future.
Source: International Business Times UK
