Apple Vision Pro — Game developers and rivals share their thoughts

After years of rumors, Apple finally unveiled its Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset today at the Worldwide Developer Conference. And game developers gave their reactions.

There are a lot of developers at Apple headquarters, but we’ve gathered responses from developers and other tech companies – including rivals – to see what they think.

Numerous developers said the headset was too expensive at $3,499, and they weren’t impressed with the two-hour battery life. It’s also coming later than expected with an early 2024 launch. Others noted that the device is only compatible with Apple hardware and doesn’t give a nod to the open metaverse. For a while, things you can do “for $3,500” were trending on Twitter. You can expect the meme creators to be hard at work fooling Apple into launching a consumer device with a price point meant for development kits.

“They’ll sell anything they can make, but it’s not a mainstream gaming device. $3,500 is just too much to go mainstream,” said Jon Kimmich, a seasoned game maker.

Apple said there would be over 100 Apple Arcade games available at launch, but all that was shown was Take-Two Interactive’s NBA 2K23 – for a few seconds.

Investors weren’t too impressed, as Apple’s stock price closed up 0.76% today at $179.58 per share. Apple is still worth $2.82 trillion in the stock market.

Cher Wang, president of rival headset maker HTC Vive, said she welcomed Apple and the attention it can bring to the XR (extended reality) industry. That was a familiar chorus.

“As a leader in the XR industry, we are excited to extend a warm welcome to Apple as they venture into the vibrant XR community. With our years of dedicated innovation and commitment to pushing the boundaries, we eagerly embrace the arrival of a company that shares our unwavering commitment to technological excellence, user privacy and human-centered design,” Wang said in a statement. “Together, we have a unique opportunity to collaborate, inspire each other and reshape the future of XR experiences, impacting the lives of businesses and consumers alike.”

That was a common reaction. If Apple enters the market, it becomes legitimate and all participants in the ecosystem should benefit, or so the logic goes.

“It is important for the future of XR that Apple finally enters this space and further legitimizes its future,” said Kate Edwards, CEO of Geogrify, and consultant to the games industry. “Is Vision Pro the iPhone Revolution for XR? No, not in this iteration, but it sets a path for the type of AR/VR device that will likely be seen as useful by a lot more people. Hopefully this is a turn off that will encourage Meta and others to move to Vision Pro’s functionality.”

Others wanted to see Apple’s great application. Dylan Cuthbert, a veteran game developer, said he didn’t see a great app for it, though he expects Apple fans to buy the first few million units. But the great app is needed to get it to the mass market.

“As with any platform, it comes down to the software and creating an immersive experience that can’t be built any other way,” Trent Oster, CEO of Beamdog, said in a post. “The iPhone made Uber and AirBnB possible by bringing technology together. Apple Vision Pro needs similar convergence to take off. The killer app will have to be a commercial application to justify the price.”

It’s unlikely most brands will dive in until there’s mass adoption, but we’ll likely see an increase in the number of brands experimenting with the technology. Again, that’s good for the ecosystem.

“Most brands won’t invest in complex VR experiences until there’s a wider demand for those metaverse-like experiences, but it’s likely we’ll see an increase in brands experimenting with augmented reality (AR) and other, more established immersive experiences. concepts such as 3D and 360-degree images and videos as they can be more easily integrated into existing consumer websites and apps,” Tal Lev-Ami, CTO at Cloudinary, said in a statement. “It is also likely that adoption of VR in industries such as e-commerce will follow a similar path to generative AI, where there are now restrictions on widespread adoption, but the long-term impact it will have on consumer experiences is ultimately difficult to predict. exaggerate.” –

Dan Scarfe, CEO of XRAI Glass, noted that it was the worst kept secret in consumer electronics history.

“This is both a huge gamble for Apple and a huge validation of the burgeoning XR ecosystem. Apple’s launch of a device suddenly legitimizes the work that many companies have been doing for years,” Scarfe said. “While these first editions of new glasses are unlikely to become a bestseller, they provide further confirmation of life beyond smartphones. A world in which in ten years we will no longer carry phones with us and instead consume content from our always-on glasses.”

Urho Konttori, CTO of Varjo, believes Apple’s entry into XR is an important moment for the industry.

“Apple’s entry into XR with Vision Pro is an important moment for our entire industry,” Konttori said in a post. “Mixed reality is already a fixture in the corporate sector and the innovative technologies developed by Varjo have transformed the way the world’s largest companies work, train, design, research and collaborate. We hope today marks the turning point for consumers as it becomes part of their everyday lives as well, with promising applications for entertainment, personal productivity and communication.”

Game journalist Kyle Orland was “a little surprised at how little gaming was part of that Vision Pro announcement given how big of a focus VR has had so far.” I felt the same way, although it makes sense that you should announce it before all game developers really put their shoulders to the wheel. But game developers are the tastemakers, because they know how to use game engines (such as the Unity engine supported by Apple) and they will produce the most important apps for the device.

And Patrick Klepek said it felt like Apple was charging money for a developer pack and calling it a product.

Game developer Mark DeLoura said, “Who doesn’t like advanced technology? Hurrah! Who wouldn’t want to make games for a device that has a small user base because of the price? Apple will have to boost many of our favorite game developers with some [dollars] to support it, if they want games on it, which will be great for the developers.

Dmitri Williams, a professor of communications at USC, said: “I was struck by how little AR they covered in the reveal. The closest I saw was their spatial audio showing shapes in a room, suggesting that the LIDAR and to front-facing cameras can do *cool things*.

Johannes Vuorinen, CEO of HypeHype, said: “Great product. Feels like a future phone replacement when the device eventually gets smaller (and cheaper). This is supported by the fact that they have demonstrated the compatibility of existing iOS apps/games, including our Badland.”

Adnan Chaumette, CEO of Polygonflow, said: “Price isn’t an issue, it’s a feature: over the next two to three years, developers will have the first state-of-the-art computing headset that will enable them to create future-proof applications, and that’s exactly what Apple here is doing they don’t care about consumers yet they want to give developers everything they need to populate the Vision app store with content and by the time the developers are done Apple will probably have cut costs enough to make it to broaden the user base a bit. This is basically Meta’s strategy, but with more confidence.”

Michael Sullivan, a Unity developer, said there’s nothing new here except the passthrough technology.

“I’ve been making spatially aware VR/AR content for 10 years; it’s nothing new,’ he said. “Having all the technology in one room, cool! It’s a great piece of technology and the spatial 3D video capture will definitely sell these things to the Apple loyalists. The integration with the other devices is great, but anyone with a computer and a VR/AR headset can set up similar scenarios with little effort these days.”

He added: “I’m a Unity developer, I love that it looks like it’s going to be easy to transfer some of my experiences over there, but I’m hoping there’s a way to use our current devices to test the experience. I’m not buying the headset to put in. However, the other big thing is that there isn’t much compatibility with anything OTHER than Apple. My wife has a few, but they are not central to my own development efforts. The price tags on these devices are out of proportion in my opinion.”

Alexey Menshikov, an XR developer and CEO of Beatshapers, said the screen and design were cool. The M2 silicon seemed powerful, the battery life was normal for such devices and the 3D video capture was cool. But he noted that it’s aimed at single-player use, with no indication of experience in the same location. He was concerned that there are no hardware controllers, but the familiar gamepads will probably be fine. And it is not clear whether it will be suitable for large spaces. And he noted that no Unreal Engine support was mentioned.

“High fidelity passthrough is a game changer for collaboration. We can’t wait to build on it. Campfire is coming to Vision Pro,” said Jay Wright, CEO of XR company Campfire.

“This is the beginning of the spatial age of computers. Out of the box, Spatial will be one of the few platforms connecting Vision Pro + Meta Quest users. We are excited to bring one million of our UGC Unity-based worlds to this new Apple headset,” said Anand Agarawala, CEO of Spatial.