With Project Scorpio's reveal just a few days away at E3, there was a glimmer of hope that we might also get a look at Microsoft's plans for VR on the console. In an interview with Polygon, however, Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman tempered expectations around any potential look at Microsoft's Xbox VR plans — at least for E3 2017.
For now, Microsoft's focus seems to be purely on making great mixed reality experiences on Windows 10 PCs. That said, Kipman's comments indicate that Microsoft is looking towards the future with an eye toward a completely wireless console VR experience. From Kipman:
Our primary focus is making our mixed reality experiences a success on Windows 10 PCs. We believe that right now a Windows PC is the best platform for mixed reality as its open ecosystem and enormous installed base offer the best opportunity for developers, and Windows offers the most choices for consumers.Windows has been the birthplace of a variety of technologies, and we believe this will hold for mixed reality too. Given the efforts we have underway on Windows for mixed reality, and our belief that console VR should be wireless, right now we are focused on developing mixed reality experiences for the PC, not on the console.
Microsoft previously announced that Windows Mixed Reality experiences would be headed to Xbox One and Project Scorpio at some point in 2018. How, exactly, the company intends to go about those plans is still a bit of a mystery. Hardware partners like Dell, HP, and Acer are all cooking up mixed reality headsets for Windows right now, but all of those require being tethered to a PC to work. If wireless console VR is the goal, a different headset would be required. If Microsoft can pull it off, however, going wireless would give the company a significant leg up over the competition.
Everything we expect from Xbox's E3 2017: Rumors, Project Scorpio, and a whole heap of 4K games
