An Italian error message sparked rumours that VR might be coming to Xbox after all, but Microsoft was quick to crush those hopes.
While testing Microsoft’s new Xbox Wireless Headset on the Xbox Series X, IGN Italy encountered an error message that read: “Il visore VR deve essere aggiornato”. According to Google, this translates to: “The VR viewer needs to be updated”. Understandably, they believed that this implied that Xbox was planning to add VR support to their consoles, something Microsoft has denied in the past.
According to IGN, Microsoft responded to the speculation by blaming the language barrier and reiterating that they have no interest in bringing VR to Xbox consoles.
The copy in this error message is inaccurate due to a localization bug. VR for console is not a focus for us at this time.
Microsoft’s Phil Spencer previously mentioned, back in 2019, that “nobody’s asking for VR”. Not on the Xbox consoles, at least. They’re pretty happy to keep virtual reality on the PC side for now, with their HoloLens series of headsets and that fancy new mixed reality Mesh platform that is everything you want the future to be.
Meanwhile, PlayStation recently announced that a next-gen VR system for the PS5 is currently in development, to launch some time in the future (not this year).