In our pre-E3 article, we mentioned that Microsoft’s next move for gaming would be virtual reality and at the event, virtual reality was seemingly absent from Xbox head Phil Spencer’s speech. But last week, the company filed a trademark for the company’s latest venture, Direct Reality.
During an interview last week with American gaming site, Giant Bomb, Spencer outlined its main purpose and how it will assist developers in creating AR/VR programs. He further explained that Direct Reality will serve as the middle ground for any VR software to work on the head mounted display.
“I think it’s important as the Windows platform company that we don’t start getting people tied into “Well you bought this [head-mounted display], sorry it’s not going to work with these other things.””
He continued on the topic, stating: “When I buy a great monitor and plug it into my PC I’m not worrying whether Windows understands it and some games play on it and some games don’t,” he added. “When I say the multi-year journey that we’re on I think this is all part of that. Windows as a platform has to support any HMD natively that you plug in and we’ve been getting good feedback from the Oculus team and Valve about things we need to do with Windows 10.”
The company has devolved into AR by launching the Microsoft HoloLens, an AR headset that projects digital images onto real world. However, the HoloLens hasn’t been released for consumers despite a developer’s version released last year.
We already know that Microsoft wants to compete with Sony within the realms of VR since it doesn’t support VR at the moment. The tech company will be enlisting third-party assistance from ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and HP as the company will also have to address the issue of fragmentation. We could be looking at VR headsets coming soon to Windows 10 devices and Xbox One X consoles soon…
