Don’t expect Xbox VR to be at E3 this year, or in stores this holiday

When it does hit, it will likely be wireless

Jun 6, 2017, 1:40 PM UTC

Microsoft discusses MR

Brian Crecente/Polygon

Microsoft won’t have any form of virtual reality for the Xbox One or Xbox Scorpio at E3 this year as the company continues its focus on VR for computers, officials tell Polygon.

And when VR does arrive on an Xbox console,potentially still next year, it sounds like it will be wireless.

“Our primary focus is making our mixed reality experiences a success on Windows 10 PCs,” Alex Kipman, technical fellow at Microsoft, told Polygon today. “We believe that right now a Windows PC is the best platform for mixed reality as its open ecosystem and enormous installed base offer the best opportunity for developers, and Windows offers the most choices for consumers.

“Windows has been the birthplace of a variety of technologies, and we believe this will hold for mixed reality too. Given the efforts we have underway on Windows for mixed reality, and our belief that console VR should be wireless, right now we are focused on developing mixed reality experiences for the PC, not on the console.”

The company declined to comment on whether this would impact a 2018 release for VR on an Xbox platform.

In March, Microsoft announced plans to bring mixed reality — which in Microsoft’s view includes everything from augmented reality to virtual reality — to the “Xbox one family of devices” in 2018. The company specifically called out the soon-to-be-released Scorpio in that statement as well.

”Because as we saw 4K gaming and really high-end VR taking off in the PC space, we wanted to be able to bring that to console,” Xbox chief Phil Spencer toldThe Verge during last year’s E3. “Project Scorpio is actually an Xbox One that can natively run games in 4K and is built with the hardware capabilities to support the high-end VR that you see happening in the PC space today ... when it ships it will be the most powerful console ever built.”

While VR won’t be a component of Microsoft’s Xbox press conference pre-E3 next week, there will certainly be a lot of talk about the Scorpio console. Stay tuned for our coverage on that and more as we approach the big show.

We’ll also have a deep dive on the current state of virtual reality — featuring conversations with Microsoft, Sony, Oculus, Vive and others — later this week.

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