Apple's Play with Sony to Outsource Vision Pro Gaming
Mark Gurman
"If you see a stylus, they blew it." I was reminded of Steve Jobs' (in)famous quote from 2010 following the launch of the iPad when reading the report that Apple may team up with Sony to offer VR gaming controllers for the Vision Pro. Why?
But Apple made a decision during the Vision Pro’s development that hurt its gaming prospects. Urged on by designer Jony Ive and hardware executive Mike Rockwell, the company chose to focus on the device’s novel interface, which relies on eye movements and hand gestures. Bringing a controller accessory into the equation would have been confusing to developers and further increased costs.
I actually agree with the call. The Vision Pro is already laborious enough to use as-is, adding controller complexity to the mix would have made it even more cumbersome. While Meta's Quest headset is easier to start using, the controllers are the drag there. That said, yeah, there are certain types of apps – namely games – which really need something more than the brute-force (though well done!) hand-tracking that the Vision Pro offers.
While standard Playstation and Xbox controller support has been there on the Vision Pro since day one, it leaves out the market for games actually built for VR. And almost all of those are built for the Quest platform right now. Asking developers to re-work their apps for your hand-tracking-only interface, especially when the user base clearly isn't there yet, is too tall an ask. Even for Apple.
Because of the wild success of the first App Store in 2008, Apple has too much hubris to pay developers to build content. Despite the Vision Pro’s shortcomings, the company expected developers to embrace the platform and avoid missing out on the next gold rush. That hasn’t happened. In addition to a lack of games, there’s only been a trickle of immersive video — partly because Apple has held off on releasing much content itself. But it’s clear now that the company will need to open its wallet. If it spent just 10% of the money that it puts into Apple TV+ movies and shows, the Vision Pro would be in better shape.
Gurman has his own sources now saying that there have been fewer than 500,000 Vision Pros sold to date. (Which is in-line with earlier reports.) Out of that base, a smaller subset would truly care about gaming – so, yeah. At the same time, it's a bit chicken-and-egg. Without supporting high-end VR games, gamers won't come. So...
Apple approached Sony earlier this year, and the duo agreed to work together on launching support for the PlayStation VR2’s hand controllers on the Vision Pro. Inside Sony, the work has been a monthslong undertaking, I’m told. And Apple has discussed the plan with third-party developers, asking them if they’d integrate support into their games.
This is critical because the currently supported PS5 and Xbox controllers are optimized for living room consoles, not virtual reality devices. To allow for the needed precision, Apple really needs dual hand controllers that support six degrees of freedom (6DOF) — like the accessories that Meta and Sony offer for their own headsets.
This feels like it could be a win/win partnership. Sony clearly hasn't seen huge success with the VR2 system, so a partnership with Apple can offset some of the sunk costs there. And also combat Meta in the space – a company that has long been closely tied to Microsoft, including with work in VR for Xbox. And much like with the new (very good!) Belkin-built top strap for the Vision Pro, it allows Apple to outsource a key component without admitting a mistake, as it were. Sure, Sony will need to offer a new SKU, but that seems easy enough to do.
Apple has a long, weird history with gaming. The level of seriousness they give the category seems to ebb and flow. But with VR – sorry, "Spatial Computing" – in these early days, it's pretty clear that gaming is one of the only ways to truly move units.1 Even better if they can convince some Playstation titles to make the jump!
Of course, it may need more horsepower – or at least more RAM – to make this all work. That's another point in favor of doing an M5 'Vision Pro 2'...
One more thing: while Apple, of course, eventually backtracked on the Steve Jobs Stylus comments and shipped the Apple Pencil – totally not a stylus, different, you see – might they do some sort of controller for Vision Pro as well?
Apple doesn’t have any imminent plans to launch its own controller, but the company’s design team spent a few years prototyping what is essentially a “wand” for the Vision Pro. This would be more of an Apple Pencil-like tool for precise control, rather than gaming. Still, it shows that the company knows its hand-and-eye approach won’t cut it for all uses.
The "wand" reminds me of old reports about a similar idea for the Apple TV back in the day. And while Apple never shipped that, LG eventually launched a similar idea with their remotes. I have such a remote, it's not great. I'm also reminded of Sony's own "wands" which were... not great. Better might be idea of using the Apple Watch – or eventual Apple Ring? – to augment the input on the Vision Pro? Or working towards the EMG wristband idea (shoutout CTRL Labs) that Meta is using with their 'Orion' smart glasses...
1 Of course, you might have thought the same thing about Apple TV over the past many years, and you'd be mainly wrong, with Apple only lending a sort of bare-minimum level of gaming support to that platform.