Sony’s Yoshida hits back at Xbox boss’ criticisms of VR

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Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida has fired back at Xbox head Phil Spencer following his criticisms of VR. While Virtual reality is steadily growing as a market segment, Phil Spencer seems to disagree that it’s important, and Shuhei Yoshida took the opportunity to fire back at Spencer’s comments on Twitter.

The tweet in question may well highlight Sony’s philosophy on developing new technology, focusing on creating something new whether or not there might necessarily be consumer demand for the product.


The PSVR may well have been a gamble as, when it was first released, the current generation of virtual reality technology was still rather new. Despite these risks, it’s probably safe to call Sony’s crack at making a VR headset a success. It has sold more than 4 million units since its inception.

As impressive as that may be, there’s another number that’s important to note: that’s less than 5% of the entire PlayStation 4 install base. I think it’s safe to say that virtual reality gaming in the PlayStation ecosystem isn’t exactly niche, but it certainly isn’t a widespread phenomenon just yet, either.

Phil Spencer, for his part, stated that he had some issues with VR, considering it “isolating” and noting that sales of headsets just aren’t there yet. If you’re looking for a virtual reality experience, the Xbox ecosystem probably won’t be the place to get it.

“I have some issues with VR — it’s isolating and I think of games as a communal, kind of together experience. We’re responding to what our customers are asking for and… nobody’s asking for VR. The vast majority of our customers know if they want a VR experience, there’s places to go get those. We see the volumes of those on PC and other places.”


While Spencer has his reservations about virtual reality, he hasn’t entirely ruled it out for some point in the Xbox ecosystem’s future; it’s just that it isn’t going to be a particular focus for the next console generation.



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Source: https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/619878-sony-yoshida-hits-back-at-xbox-boss-criticisms-of-vr

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"Sony’s Yoshida hits back at Xbox boss’ criticisms of VR" :: Login/Create an Account :: 4 comments

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naterocks500Posted:

Mario350 phil spencer isnt an idiot sometimes, but yeah a console cant really handle vr mainly xbox as its a weaker console due to clock speed yet same apu, vr should be an option because if sony can manage to make psvr smooth play im pretty sure microsoft can do so as well, xbox has always had less features then a playstation, playstation was able to be a computer well an xbox could only play games and movies, but yeah vr isnt really taking off yet until half life alyx hits, but yeah theres honestly no need for vr on xbox yet


You have that backwards, the original xbox firmware was a heavily modified version of windows. Playstation was the one that only played movies,games, and audio cds. If anything, Xbox is more like a PC than playstation at this point. (Additionally, og xbox was/is a heavily modded device because of said firmware being not dissmiliar to Windows.) Either way I still think you have it backwards.

Mario350Posted:

phil spencer isnt an idiot sometimes, but yeah a console cant really handle vr mainly xbox as its a weaker console due to clock speed yet same apu, vr should be an option because if sony can manage to make psvr smooth play im pretty sure microsoft can do so as well, xbox has always had less features then a playstation, playstation was able to be a computer well an xbox could only play games and movies, but yeah vr isnt really taking off yet until half life alyx hits, but yeah theres honestly no need for vr on xbox yet

YinPosted:

I like Phil Spencer for the most part. I like Xbox for the most part. Hell, I'm not even a VR guy, but this way of thinking is just shooting yourself in the foot. Unless you plan on taking "normal" gaming to the next level and blow the competition out of the water this next console cycle, I think VR should be an option. You don't want to be the console that is the same but does less. That's not a winning strategy. Maybe it will be one of those things they realize mid console cycle. Seems to be their thing now.

THQPosted:

I love Xbox and will always be an Xbox guy, but damn I hate that Phil thinks this way. I bought a rift s last week and experianced vr for the first time and what I will say is it is truly revolutionary. The only issue is that there's not too many great games cause it's still labeled as "new tech" I hope Xbox adds some sort of VR implementation


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