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Microsoft today announced that it’s entered into an agreement to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of game studio Bethesda Softworks. I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs, and they don’t have a grudge against me, so maybe I will be able to re engage with some of my old titles.
Microsoft announced it’s planning to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the studio will play a key role in the development of its future metaverse platforms. Xbox doesn’t feature any form of official VR compatibility, not even with its range of Microsoft Mixed Reality headsets.
Amid mounting pressure from Sony with the recent launch of its PSVR 2 headset for PlayStation 5, Microsoft again affirmed that it’s still waiting for the technology to mature before offering any sort of dedicated VR software or hardware for Xbox. “I think for us, it’s just a bit of wait until there’s an audience there. .”
Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment). Sony unveils the new controllers of the PSVR2. Sony promises amazing haptic sensations on the controllers, that should be able to provide “impactful, textured, and nuanced” sensations. Image by Microsoft). Top news of the week. It will so have inside-out tracking.
With big game launches and more VR headsets on that market than ever, 2020 is shaping up to be a huge year for VR, and an excellent time for first-timers to jump in. The Best PC VR Headsets in 2020. Fortunately a free and official plugin from Microsoft also makes it compatible with SteamVR content. Image courtesy Sony.
With the curious case of Microsoft initially announcing VR support for Xbox One X and then later pulling the plug before launch, it wasn’t clear if the company would use its next console as its opportunity to finally jump into VR. Meanwhile, Sony has already confirmed support for PSVR on PS5, and hinted at plans for a next-gen headset.
Already, several top-level companies like LG, Apple , and Sony are joining the market of AR hardware producers, dominated so far by Microsoft and Magic Leap. These new models will be more affordable, lightweight and easy to use, as well as more powerful, with improved performance.
“Big tech companies, rather than smartphone manufacturers, are leading XR devices because they have the necessary content and platforms,” said Kim Gwang-soo, an analyst at eBest Investment and Securities, adding, “Google has an operating system Android, Microsoft has Xbox and Sony has PlayStation.
Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine, said it would consider building a launch title for Sony’s “next VR platform” during negotiations about Fortnite cross-play on PlayStation in 2018. With the company’s next VR headset not expected to launch until at least 2022, it’s unclear if the Sony took up the offer.
Mojang, the Microsoft-owned studio behind Minecraft , announced it’s dropping support for the original PSVR next year, leaving any hope for PSVR 2 support firmly at (bed)rock bottom. Then, there’s Mojang’s parent company Microsoft, which has been fairly wary of VR gaming in general over the years.
Update (March 20th, 2020) : GDC Summer is slated to happen between August 4th – 6th, taking place in the original conference site at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Before the postponement, a litany of companies stepped back from GDC 2020 such as Epic, Microsoft, Unity, Sony, Electronic Arts, Facebook, and Kojima Productions.
After a slow start, 2019 rounded out to be an undeniably strong year for consumer VR, setting up a springboard into a big 2020. Here’s an overview of the major happenings in VR over the last year, and a glimpse of what will come in 2020. Stormland’s Innovative Open World and Developer Acquisition by Sony.
Notably, nDreams is known for a host of VR games over the years, including The Assembly (2016) , Phantom: Covert Ops (2020) , Fracked (2021), and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord (2023), and more. At the time, the studio said it employed 250 people, meaning the layoff could affect up to 40 people.
Sony, for example, has a mature console ecosystem, with a huge relative advantage in game prices (3x), sales channels and customer base (10x+) over Quest. It’s likely that Sony and Microsoft start to actually make money on the massive quantities of identical hardware by mid-cycle. They make it up on the games. per employee.
So, what are the arguments against VR commonly seen in 2020? Microsoft and partners like HP, Asus, Samsung, Acer, and Dell launched a batch of ‘Windows Mixed Reality’ headsets [Amazon] a few years ago. “VR Headsets Cost $1,000” Image courtesy Oculus. VR headsets can be expensive.
Let’s be honest: no one made correct predictions for 2020. But hey, let me play this game anyway, so here you are my predictions for virtual reality in 2021 based on the trends and the anticipations that we had at the end of 2020! 2021 won’t be the year of VR. I know, we all feel like this.
Sony creates an AR headset for LBVR. Sony is offering a Ghostbuster AR experience in Ginza, Japan, and for this it has manufactured an AR headset. Valve said that the game should launch in 2019, but knowing Valve Time, if we are lucky, it will be announced in 2019 and launched in 2020. News worth a mention. Image by BBC).
Or that Microsoft is working on a new reference design that fixes the issues of the first one? This week, a rumor spread among XR communities: next-gen PSVR will be announced at a press conference to be held by Sony on February, 5th. And again… is it possible that this headset can accommodate both forms of tracking ? Learn more.
billion and in 2020 it has been predicted to achieve $22.9 The leading producers of VR headsets like Sony, Oculus, Google, HTC, and Samsung, mainly focus on creating cost-effective devices. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are expected to reduce the prices for their game products in the coming years. billion and $9.6
So while we can see which headsets were the most popular in terms of searching, we can’t be sure how much of the volume is organic versus influenced by the amount of marketing money spent by Oculus, Sony, or others. Data courtesy Sony, chart by Road to VR. SEE ALSO Microsoft Affirms VR Isn't a Focus for Xbox Scarlett.
It didn’t feel like it, what with a major pandemic and massive financial crisis, but 2020 was actually an incredible year for gadgets. For companies like Apple and Microsoft, this could have been a landmark year were it not for everything else going on. While the competition for our attention this year was steep,… Read more.
Sony, Microsoft, EA, and several other major names are reportedly skipping this year’s conference as well. Facebook’s decision to cancel F8 comes on the heels of news that Oculus would be backing out of this year’s Game Developers Conference over similar concerns.
Assuming production ramps back up by early Q3, IDC projects a rebound which brings total 2020 shipments to 7.1 The most growth in 2020 will be in VR, which isn’t surprising given that it’s more mature than AR in its product lifecycle. Specifically, Sony announced 5 million cumulative units sold in January.
revenues in 2021 , up from $1.14B in 2020, with a 2x growth over one year period. A report from Insider states that Microsoft may have canceled its plans for HoloLens 3. Microsoft has answered the report saying that “HoloLens is doing great” , and Alex Kipman has tweeted not to believe what you read on the internet.
It’s been a bit of quiet start to 2020 for PlayStation VR with few videogames coming out and Iron Man VR delayed until May. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) did reveal that 5 million headsets had been sold but a lot of the focus currently is on PlayStation 5.
Image by Sony). Image by Microsoft). Microsoft ramps up distribution of HoloLens 2 and Kinect For Azure. Microsoft is working to improve the distribution of its latest devices: HoloLens 2 and Kinect For Azure. Header Image by Sony). Thank you all for making me feel your warmth, you are an amazing community!
Moreover, a recent report from Juniper Research says that the number of hearables in use will grow to more than 970 million units by 2024 (an increase of 270% compared to 2020). This means that the wireless noise-canceling headphones from Sony not only let users stream music but also handle calls and get information on demand.
Image by Sony). Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. So, PSVR2 probably won’t launch before 2022 : Sony can afford that also because it has no competition in the console VR space , so there is no need to rush.
Sony has acquired Insomniac Games. Sony has acquired Insomniac Games , one of the most talented game studios among the ones focused on Virtual Reality. The studio will so become part of the Sony Worldwide Studios. MRTK, not to be confused with VRTK, is the official SDK to develop for Microsoft HoloLens and HoloLens 2.
The report examines the market size and revenue of consumer VR hardware and software from 2016 and forecasts growth through to 2020. As headset manufacturers face fewer supply constraints than last year, hardware sales will continue to earn more than VR software, at least until 2020. billion in 2017, up 142% year-over-year.
Image by Sony, from Road To VR). Sony announces PS5, it supports PSVR. With an online livestream of around 1 hour, Sony has finally unveiled the design of the PlayStation 5. But Sony has confirmed that while we wait for it, the PS5 will be able to work with the current PSVR device. I hope you’ll enjoy it…. SSD (8–9 GB/s).
Per se, this is not a surprising news (all companies are working on next iterations of their devices), but what is surprising is the timing that the report suggests: a new Oculus Quest should have been announced at the end of 2020, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will come in 2021. Investments in AR/VR companies are at 2013 level.
Sony unveils a new virtual concert experience at CES. billion and plans to go public via direct listing after delaying their IPO at the end of 2020 due to the unexpected soar of Airbnb and DoorDash stocks at their debut. The company is currently developing an email service to compete with Google and Microsoft.
At Sony’s PlayStation 5 Showcase this afternoon, the final (and much awaited) pieces of the puzzle with regards to the console’s launch have dropped: pricing and a release date. Sony’s next-generation console will launch on Thursday, November 12 th. 2020/11/12. 2020/11/10. Disc Drive. 4K UHD Blu-Ray.
On the other side, this is massive for Apple, that mixing the data of Apple Maps together with all these point clouds detected by the rear cameras when in use, will be able to create an AR Cloud ecosystem probably even before Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Microsoft releases Azure Remote Rendering. supports VR. 3D artists rejoice!
The game was due to launch in 2019, but has seen several delays, most recently due to Coronavirus , which has pushed the release date into the second half of 2020. .” Ready at Dawn has been in development of Lone Echo II since at least 2018. Image courtesy Ready at Dawn.
In a post summarizing the results obtained in 2019 and talking about the future projections for 2020, Valve has teased interesting news for next year, saying that SteamVR 2.0 I had forecasted it in my predictions for augmented reality in 2020 : AR Cloud wars are starting. Do you want to know the best XR events of 2020?
percent between 2016 and 2020, according to a new industry research report from TechNavio. “Market research analysts at Technavio predict that the global virtual reality (VR) in gaming market will grow steadily during the next four years and post a tremendous CAGR of more than 84% by 2020,” the report summary said.
Plus, it was a proprietary system, owned by Microsoft, and didn’t play well with other metaverse platforms. In its blog post, the company said that it will be focusing on other metaverse-related efforts, such as the launch of Microsoft Mesh , an enterprise-focused metaverse platform. ” And it’s making money.
Sony will give PS4 camera adapters for PS5 for free. Sony has answered this question in the weekend. Facebook and Microsoft publish two interesting research projects for VR. This week, Facebook and Microsoft have released two interesting works from their R&D department. Some info on content. Learn more.
Even before the pandemic of 2020, people looked at extended reality (XR) technology as an opportunity to improve digital collaboration, training, and communication. Applications like Zoom and Microsoft Teams grew massively following the demand for video conferencing software during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are announcing today Integration of Interhaptics with Hololens 2 Haptic design for all mobile phones early 2021 Upcoming Haptic design for PS5 in 2021 Interhaptics was released to the public in September 2020. Hololens 2 Credit: Microsoft One of the major XR platforms used in business applications is Microsoft Hololens 2.
It is also a defensive, move that makes it avoid the loss of its partners, as it has happened with Insomniac Studio that has just been acquired by Sony. IDC publishes new forecasts for 2020. A new forecast by IDC shows how 2020 will still be a transition year for AR and VR. Trimble stress-tests its AR helmet.
Image by Sony). Sony has finally revealed that PlayStation 5 is coming on November 12th (in America, Australia, Korea and other countries; rest of the world is on November, 19th). Sony has confirmed once more than PlayStation 5 will work with the same hardware of the PSVR. Microsoft finally enables Research Mode on HoloLens 2.
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