Microsoft annoncerede for nyligt, at de har indgået et partnerskab med VR-firmaet Oculus, hvilket har ført til mange spekulationer om, hvorvidt dette er et tegn på, at firmaet gør sig klar til kamp mod konkurrenten Sonys Project Morpheus.
Det viser sig dog ikke at være så ligetil, idet Xbox-chefen Phil Spencer nu har været ude og forklare deres nuværende planer for teknologien, som firmaet hovedsageligt vil bruge til Windows-baserede projekter. Han afviser ikke at teknologien vil blive brugt på Xbox One i fremtiden, men det er altså ikke en del af firmaets umiddelbare planer.
"I like the fact that the industry's innovating with VR - and I include Morpheus in that, I applaud Sony for the work they're doing," fortalte Spencer til Eurogamer.
"Where we are in the adoption of VR, Windows is just a better platform. You've got 100s of VR games in development, it's an open platform, somebody can download Windows and get their C compiler and start doing work. We're early enough that getting hundreds of different creative minds thinking about what's happening - whether it's on Oculus or Valve's VR - is really what the industry needs."
Han fortsatte: "Linking it to a closed platform this early, and a handful of games that any dedicated platform is going to go fund, I don't think VR is at that point. I think the openness of Windows is the right way to approach it - which is why we spent time with Oculus and Valve in making sure Windows is a great platform for VR."
Da det uundgåelige spørgsmål om, hvorvidt teknologien vil blive benyttet på Xbox One, forklarede Spencer følgende:
"I'll let consumers choose. If they say that VR plugged into a console is the way they want to adopt VR... I love the fact we're working with the companies of VR, and our work on HoloLens is an extension of that, there's no 'VR is a bad thing'. We're just choosing to focus our efforts in the PC space. But if people want to adopt VR on a console platform, we wouldn't have any problem to keep that as an option."
Spencer fortalte også, at firmaets udvikling af HoloLens går raskt fremad, og selvom de ikke er klar til at komme med en endelig udgivelsesdato endnu, "er der ikke længe til".
Der blev også spurgt ind på hans tanker om Kinect, og her gentog han sin position angående forbrugerens valg, og understregede også, at en stor del af ejerne stadig bruger kameraet flittigt:
"If people say they want Kinect they go buy Kinect, developers can make games for Kinect - I embrace that, and I love that. But I'm not going to force consumers to buy it if it's something they don't want," forklarede han, og afslørede til sidst at ifølge en forbrugerundersøgelse, så er Kinect-ejerne "de mest tilfredse kunder firmaet har".