Microsoft and Oculus Are Ganging Up on Playstation

If virtual reality is going to change everything about the world, its impact will be felt first in the video game industry. It seemed in recent months that the battle lines were becoming clear as competing headsets were being built by Facebook-owned Oculus, HTC and Valve, Sony, and Microsoft, with the first commercial release dates set for 2016. Now Microsoft has suddenly thrown in its lot with Oculus.

Oculus held a press conference on Thursday to fill in a few key details about the headsets. The company said it would begin selling the devices by the end of March 2016, announced a $10 million fund to help independent developers make Oculus games, and demonstrated prototype controllers that players will hold in each hand to navigate virtual environments. Brendan Iribe, the company’s chief executive officer, said that the headsets will ship with Xbox controllers, and he described how Oculus will have a “tight integration with Windows”. He said players will be able to stream Xbox One games onto the Oculus headsets.