Despite directly claiming that the rift could never work on games console (pre facebook buyout) and Microsoft doing their own thing with their interesting augmented reality headset Hololens, they have joined forces.
Today at their pre E3 event Oculus Rift dropped the bombshell. Under this deal all Oculus Rifts will come with Xbox One controllers and stereo adapter. The Oculus Rift will apparently work natively with Windows 10, so you should need any special programs to use the headset and the PC should see it as another display device.
“The Rift will natively work with Windows 10. And we all know that VR experiences require the highest performance, and with Direct X 12, we believe we’ll be able to create state of the art virtual reality experiences on top of Windows.”
But it's not just PC users getting something out of this, Oculus Rift will work with Xbox One as well. Players will be able to stream their Xbox games to the Rift, Phil Spencer name dropped Halo, Forza and Sunset Overdrive as being compatible games. The term streaming surgets thats all games will be compatible with using the headset as a private screen with an update being needed (or existing Kinect functionality) to use the motion tracking. Another possibility is that the Oculus Rift isn't really connected to the X1 but just relaying the image from the windows 10 xbox streaming app.
Abe's Take
This is a good deal for both sides. This gives Microsoft's own AR tech some breathing room and brings VR to their console. For Oculus this gives the device a default input device as standard and bring the device out of the mythical "PC gamer dungeon" and into people's living rooms, which is what Oculus' owners Facebook really want.
I am sure this has upset Sony's they was expecting to heavily market their VR headset at E3 as "the only console VR experience".
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