Head of Xbox Studios Not Interested in AR/VR, Considers Cloud Gaming a Small Market

[T0@st]

Matt Booty - the Head of Microsoft Studios - has been doing a lot of press lately, following the recent Xbox Games Showcase. Previous headlines focused on his declaration that first party development for Xbox One had ceased. The Hollywood Reporter has now cornered him on the subject of a possible Xbox augmented/virtual reality headset, although the interview did begin with a discussion about the company's Starfield IP being a good candidate for a movie or TV series adaptation. Booty swiftly shifted the focus onto current projects: "I don't have anything to share around there on Starfield, but I love your point that the worlds that we create in games, the characters that we create … people build entire digital hobbies around and invest hundreds of hours in (them), so it's cool to see linear media, as we call it, recognize that. We have our Halo TV series with Paramount; we have season one and we're shooting season two now. We've got the Minecraft movie coming up with Jason Momoa. We just recently announced that we've got the Gears of War franchise with Netflix."

Arch rival Sony is already two generations deep into gaming AR/VR headsets, and Microsoft has not produced an answer to PlayStation VR. Things have also gone quiet on the business-focused HoloLens product front. Phil Spencer did hint that the Xbox One X console was powerful enough to run a VR headset, but that was many years ago and he has since stated that leadership is not interested in exploring that market. Booty's response to the Hollywood Reporter's query also repeats his colleague's view: "I think for us, it's just a bit of wait until there's an audience there. We're very fortunate that we have got these big IPs that have turned into ongoing franchises with big communities. We have 10 games that have achieved over 10 million players life-to-date, which is a pretty big accomplishment, but that's the kind of scale that we need to see success for the game and it's just, it's not quite there yet with AR, VR." He claimed that their traditional model has "150 million active players across first-party (titles) every month," with cloud gaming contributing very little to that population: "For us, to be clear, it is a very, very small market. I'm not even sure you would call it a market yet, in fact." This tidbit is very intriguing given the big marketing push behind Xbox Cloud Gaming, and certain regulators deeming Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard a threat to competition within that market.




Booty continued his thoughts on the surprisingly low cloud gaming population: "It's very small usage and very small audience...it's something that we consider almost more experimental that we're trying out to see how it works. We just announced it. We've signed some great partnerships with NVIDIA and announced some other partnerships. So for us, it comes back to the content, which is really my focus." Continued business growth seems to dictate the Xbox division's direction: My teams have done an awful lot to make sure that we support touch interface and touch first so (the games) can be played on touch-first devices. But again, that content that we're streaming is our frontline content. We're not building anything specific for that. I think there's still a lot of economic issues to work out in terms of the cost as well. So in a weird way, it ties back a bit to your AR/VR question, and it's something that we feel we need to be up on being involved with the technology. We have some great partners that we're giving our content to, but for me, it comes back to the content and focusing on things that have scale."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[ixi]

Xbox > PS5 now officialy.

Yeah, personally I don't like VR.

 

[Solaris17]

Is this guy an actual exec? Because he seems to have his head on straight.

VR imo is a market pushing for customers. The quality of the games on VR hasnt impressed me, and the titles that support it or to little. I think rightfully so, most would argue that VR keeps getting developed because the demand is there. I disagree though, I think VR may be useful for things outside of gaming, but I think that VR headsets are getting better to try and keep that small fanbase going and try to attract others.

As for cloud gaming. Yeah I mean he is right. Physics exists. You would need a POP so close to your customers (GPU compute nodes at that!) for this to even MAYBE be viable (Netflix/Cloudflare ++ pop presence). Not to mention if you are talking about the US atleast, you are trying to serve a market where the majority of people dont have access to the broadband requirements to push this kind of throughput (the FCC classifying "broadband as 25mb/s")

I dont see either of these decisions equating to a loss for xbox in any way.

 

[Bomby569]

MS is notoriously bad at detecting any change in any market it's involved, so this may actually be the time AR/VR definitely takes off.

 

[AusWolf]

VR is a side option besides traditional PC/console gaming, and as such, it will never be popular as long as a headset costs just shy of a basic PC or console.

I also have a feeling that cloud gaming will go down in history as one of the many things that some companies tried, but never worked. I'd be happy if it didn't even go down in history at all.

 

[LabRat 891]

Funny. These statements seem 'reasonable'. They also seem lacking in stereotypical 'forward-thinking' (that companies seem so enthralled with)

Besides, Msft has enough 'resources' to just up and buy out any company that makes industry-disruptive strides in VR/AR.

 

[T0@st]

Is this guy an actual exec? Because he seems to have his head on straight.

A bit unusual; his own website focuses on hobbies rather than the big Microsoft career.

 

[Solaris17]

A bit unusual; his own website focuses on his hobbies rather than the big Microsoft career.

Shit same.

 

[evernessince]

Xbox > PS5 now officialy.

Yeah, personally I don't like VR.

Ignoring markets hasn't historically worked well for Microsoft.

Funny. These statements seem 'reasonable'. They also seem lacking in stereotypical 'forward-thinking' (that companies seem so enthralled with)

Besides, Msft has enough 'resources' to just up and buy out any company that makes industry-disruptive strides in VR/AR.

Not really given that Apple, Sony, Meta, and Valve are all competitors in the space.

 

[Airisom]

Cloud gaming has never worked long-term. Ever since onlive, every time some company invests money into cloud gaming it just fails. Big companies love it and want it to succeed because it defeats piracy and modification while gatekeeping their IP, but they just lose millions every time they make it seem like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Cloud gaming sucks.

As far as VR goes, I agree as well. It is a niche market, and I personally don't really see the appeal behind it unless you're just wanting to scare your grandma or play racing sims.

 

[Kyan]

As far as VR goes, I agree as well. It is a niche market, and I personally don't really see the appeal behind it unless you're just wanting to scare your grandma or play racing sims.

I'm actually using my rift S more than ever on Eurotruck simulator 2 with a friend's old steering wheel and pedals. It's really great but the screen resolution is not high enough to see what's on road sign from far away. I'm hoping Valve will release a new headset in 2024.
For everything sim related, VR headset are really great if resolution is high enough.

 

[Vayra86]

I'm glad this guy figured it out some decade too late
At least MS is clearly done with the bundled Kinect approach. For now. They're now bundling a game service with their console

I honestly don't know if the company has any direction whatsoever. They're just throwing money at everything and certainly some of it will stick. This is the same company that presented us a Hololens, demoing Minecraft in AR, etc.

Perhaps the final conclusion in the gaming market that really does stick is this: 'content is everything'.
Gosh! And then you consider the fact they're trying to spend multiple billions on an Activision acquisition that has a net value of bringing us zero new games compared to pre-merger.

Such strategy

MS is notoriously bad at detecting any change in any market it's involved, so this may actually be the time AR/VR definitely takes off.

The first part is so true... but it still won't make the second happen Well played though lol

Cloud gaming has never worked long-term. Ever since onlive, every time some company invests money into cloud gaming it just fails. Big companies love it and want it to succeed because it defeats piracy and modification while gatekeeping their IP, but they just lose millions every time they make it seem like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Cloud gaming sucks.

As far as VR goes, I agree as well. It is a niche market, and I personally don't really see the appeal behind it unless you're just wanting to scare your grandma or play racing sims.

But THIS TIME!!!11One
The technology is ready! Really! Truly! Except when you're outside the lab environment!

 

[LabRat 891]

Ignoring markets hasn't historically worked well for Microsoft.



Not really given that Apple, Sony, Meta, and Valve are all competitors in the space.

Considering, most of those competitors got into that market by buying up/folding-in 'talent'...

Msft can still do the same: All they need to do is buy out HTC's VR interests, and they'll be 'market leaders' in VR, practically overnight. (Like when msft bought Mojang. They went from nonparticipant to market-leader in one buyout.)

 

[evernessince]

Considering, most of those competitors got into that market by buying up/folding-in 'talent'...

Yes, some over a 8 years ago when the market was young. The more time goes by, the harder that is to do. You can't compare buying start-ups when the market is all startups to buying up the scraps when the market is filled with big companies. Completely different situations. Apple, Meta, Sony, and Valve aren't sitting around either. They have been buidling up eco-systems and investing. That's not something you can catch up instantly up regardless of how much money you throw around.

Msft can still do the same: All they need to do is buy out HTC's VR interests, and they'll be 'market leaders' in VR, practically overnight. (

Buying HTC would get you dead last in the VR space right now and it's only falling further behind lol. It doesn't have good wireless, it doesn't have good tracking, it doesn't have good audio, it doesn't have the best optics or screens, it's marketplace is pretty much dead, it has a terrible reputation in the VR community, it has pretty much 0 AR, and I could go on and on (horrid pricing to boot). HTC got into the market thanks entirely to Valve, who literally gave them their designs. They don't have good R&D and they pissed Valve off and lost their support so now they are skating off what Valve gave them.

Like when msft bought Mojang. They went from nonparticipant to market-leader in one buyout.)

?? Microsoft was into gaming FAR before it's Mojang purchase. Microsoft had hundreds of games under it's belt before Minecraft. Surely you are aware of their older titles from more than 2 decades ago like Age of Mythology? Not sure I'd call MS a leader in the game space, they've been acquiring a lot of studios but the number of duds they are outputting in increasing faster than their hits. I love playing Halo but Infinite was a massive disappointment, as was obviously redfall.

 

[LabRat 891]

?? Microsoft was into gaming FAR before it's Mojang purchase. Microsoft had hundreds of games under it's belt before Minecraft. Surely you are aware of their older titles from more than 2 decades ago like Age of Mythology? Not sure I'd call MS a leader in the game space, they've been acquiring a lot of studios but the number of duds they are outputting in increasing faster than their hits. I love playing Halo but Infinite was a massive disappointment, as was obviously redfall.

Minecraft is part of a genre, which it (and roblox) popularized. *That* was what I was referring to.
Prior to buying out Mojang, (AFAIK) msft had no competing/similar games.

I'm well-aware of msft's gaming lineage: up until my last build, one of the first things I'd do is load up Microsoft Fury3 (a win95 title).

As to HTC:
it doesn't matter much how far behind they are, IMO. It's the IPs they hold, and the sudden influx of funding that could be facilitated by msft buying them out.

 

[evernessince]

Minecraft is part of a genre, which it (and roblox) popularized. *That* was what I was referring to.
Prior to buying out Mojang, (AFAIK) msft had no competing/similar games.

So your argument is that Microsoft can catch up in VR / AR because it caught up specifically in the voxel based game genre? I'm not really sure how that logic really tracks. The level of effort required to create a voxel bsaed game is nowhere near that of creating a VR / AR HMD and ecosystem. It's not like every game company needs to have a Voxel based game either so them "catching up" in that very specific category isn't really relevant.

As to HTC:
it doesn't matter much how far behind they are, IMO. It's the IPs they hold, and the sudden influx of funding that could be facilitated by msft buying them out.

You can't suddenly buy a company, inject a ton of money, and expect instant results. R&D and hiring take a long time to yield fruit. As I pointed out earlier, their patent portfolio is terrible. You'd be just as well off buying Pico or any of the other smaller Startups (probably better off actually). You aren't going to buy a company the size of HTC and suddenly hire 10,000 employees when the job requires very specific knowledge and training. Your employees don't physically have enough time in the day to train that many people within a reasonable time-frame even if they stopped their normal work.

Intel proves this very well, a company with tons of employees, significant experience in the semi-conductor world, and a boatload of money can't even do this with years of work in the GPU space.

You are vastly over-simplifying things, having staying power in the VR / AR space is not as simple as buying your way in and everything will instantly work out.