Don’t hold your breath for Oculus Rift support on the Xbox One, as Oculus VR’s Nate Mitchell has made it clear that the Oculus Rift will only support Windows PCs when it launches next year. Despite the fact that Microsoft and Oculus VR are partners, to the extent that an Xbox One controller will come bundled with every Oculus Rift, Mitchell explained in am interview earlier this week that adding high-quality support for Windows PCs is hard enough, and although support for other platforms, such as the Xbox One, is a possibility in the future, it won’t be happening at launch.
Despite attracting tremendous public interest, the Xbox One and Oculus Rift combo might not be available anytime soon, but Microsoft is working closely with Oculus Rift, which shows signs of a promising but possibly long start. So far, E3 2015 viewers have gathered that players can expect to play in a virtual-reality living room by streaming games through Windows 10 to the Rift. These games include the Xbox One version of Paranormal Activity VR, which is scheduled for release in May 2016. Microsoft will also offer a Windows 10 Minecraft version that’s compatible with Oculus Rift. Eager players are wondering why it’s going to take a long time before the virtual reality and console combo comes, and it’s not like the Xbox One isn’t equipped with the necessary specs to run virtual reality games, not to mention that Samsung is going to release a VR peripheral that can run using a Samsung 2015-model smartphone. “What we were finding is that it’s hard enough to deliver a great experience reliably on Windows, never mind adding OS X and Linux to that, which are different beasts entirely,” said Nate Mitchell, vice president of product and co-founder of Oculus, in an interview with Polygon.
