In today’s Oculus presentation showing the public the Oculus Rift Pre-E3, a huge surprise happened when Xbox and Windows was revealed to be a key part of the Oculus Rift. In fact, the company went so far as to call it a partnership with Microsoft.
As part of the partnership, Xbox and Windows games will have the ability to stream to the Oculus Rift. Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, actually stood on the stage and announced the features of the new partnership. He said that Xbox One games like Halo, Forza and Sunset Overdrive can work with Oculus.
This is a brilliant move for Microsoft, and a huge development in the gaming industry. For years, we have watched Microsoft and Sony battle it out in the realm of traditional game consoles. This battle has been epic and has swung in many different directions over the years. The Xbox 360, by most accounts, had the upper hand over the PS3 – it came out to market first and seemed to have the most titles, especially in the early days of that generation. Plus, Xbox’s Halo franchise was a massive juggernaut that Sony just never seemed to be able to match.
Then, the tide seemed to turn in Sony’s favor in the current generation. The PS4 release has, pretty decisively, been a much bigger success than that of Microsoft’s Xbox One. Sony’s focus on gaming over media-centric peripherals seems to have resonated with consumers. Microsoft stumbled out of the gate, with a tone-deaf obsession with Kinect, and a price-point that did not bring huge sales. The momentum seems to have only grown since, with the PS4 outselling the Xbox One by a wide margin.
Now, with its announced partnership with the Oculus Rift, Microsoft has possibly struck a decisive blow that could bring it back to relevance in not just this console war – but the NEW console war that is shaping up over VR devices. Sony has had a good position so far with its Morpheus platform, and it felt safe knowing that Microsoft had no real answer.
The partnership between Microsoft and Oculus now puts Microsoft in a much stronger position in the race to dominate the next-next-generation of gaming: the VR generation. With Oculus, Microsoft has a strong connection not just with the company itself, but with the giant Facebook network. The opportunities for leveraging this partnership are immense. We might be seeing the dawn of a new Console War – the VR Console War – and Microsoft just fired a major salvo at Sony.