No VR on Xbox One? Good! (Premium)

With Microsoft correctly deciding to cancel plans to bring VR/MR to Xbox One, gaming's more traditional fans are freaking out. Here we go again.

I'm not sure what it is about the video game industry that makes people so adverse to change. But as I've observed many times, Microsoft's strategy for this market isn't just correct, it's inspiring because it is so gamer-centric. Losing the console wars is the best thing that ever happened to Xbox.

The results speak for themselves.

Today, Xbox fans enjoy an unbelievable level of cross-platform compatibility. This allows two previous generations of Xbox consoles games to run, sometimes in improved form, on Xbox One. It allows original Xbox One games to run, always in improved form, on Xbox One X. It allows Xbox Play Anywhere titles to work on both Windows 10 and Xbox One. It allows Minecraft fans to play together across multiple platforms. And in the future, this compatibility will be extended to devices all of kinds as Microsoft transitions Xbox to a service.

And there are the services that bind, like Games with Gold, the shining jewel of today's gamer-centric strategy. And perks, like Games with Gold and Deals with Gold, that reward loyal fans.

Looking back on this month's E3 presentations---which Microsoft won handily, in my opinion, given Sony's even heavier case of sequelitis and the inanity of Nintendo's cartoon culture---I am struck by one oddity: With only a handful of quickly-passing exceptions, Microsoft barely mentioned hardware at all.

This was, of course, by design: Overly-sensitive video game fans had complained in the past when Microsoft's E3 presentations spent too much time, in their opinions, on hardware, especially new consoles. So Microsoft, ever accommodating, quickly mentioned the Xbox Adaptive Controller and then stuck to the script, delivering on two hours of game demos. Most of which aren't being released until next year.

And, that's the thing. Microsoft's desire to please fans is what's behind its announcement about five first-party games studios, which it hopes will silence the critics on its perceived lack of exclusives. It's what's behind it's quickie revelation about more Xbox consoles coming down the pike, even though hardware is most decidedly not where its future in gaming lies. And it's why Microsoft chose to slyly mention its plans to fulfill what was previous my theory about this future, by putting the services idea in fans' heads. It knows that suddenly showing up with a cross-platform, hardware-agnostic, cloud-based video game service will simply trigger the same doom and gloom pronouncements from the online cabals that are now still spitting about exclusives and E3 being about games, not hardware. You gotta play to the base.

Which is where VR/MR (mixed reality) fits in. Which is to say it does not fit in. Not on video game consoles. Most certainly not on Xbox.

Yes, Sony has a VR solution for its PlayStation 4 consoles. And its even...