The prospect of the Xbox One offering support for the Oculus Rift has been discussed, but it’s not something that is close to happening, Oculus product VP Nate Mitchell has revealed.
“It has been a conversation, but I can say we’re not so close,” he told Polygon when asked about an Xbox One-compatible Rift, reiterating previous statements. This is due in part to the difficulty in “deliver[ing] a great experience reliably on Windows.” Adding Xbox One (or any other platform, including OS X or Linux) would complicate things before the Rift has had a chance to become established on Windows PCs.
“No one is really thinking right now about bringing the Rift to a console, especially when the spec is so different from what we’re targeting right now,” Mitchell said.
The idea of an Xbox One Rift headset isn’t so crazy, as Microsoft and Oculus have been working together. Oculus announced earlier this year that every Rift will ship with an Xbox One controller. (There will also be a separate, Rift-specific controller called the Oculus Touch.) Additionally, Rift owners will be able to stream Xbox One games through a PC to a Rift headset, but only so that they can be viewed in a sort of virtual theater–you won’t be playing the games themselves in actual VR.
Mitchell went on to explain that it isn’t a matter of the Xbox One not having enough horsepower to support VR–Gear VR runs off a Samsung phone–it’s just a different set of challenges.
“That’s the thing, you can absolutely deliver a great VR experience on Xbox One; what I should say is with the hardware that’s in the Xbox One,” Mitchell said in response to a question about the Xbox One being powerful enough. “We’re not really focused on it right now. It really depends on the content you want to put there.”
Microsoft has yet to publicly show a great deal of interest in virtual reality, and has instead focused on augmented reality through projects like HoloLens. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has said he doesn’t think VR is a fad, but he recently told GameSpot that he personally hopes VR doesn’t become the only way to play games.
Sony, meanwhile, is taking a much different approach with PlayStation VR (née Porject Morpheus), though it still has yet to offer specific pricing and release details for the PS4 device.
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