Anyone with even a passing interest in the video game industry knows that Nintendo is a company that tends to dance to its own tune. In truth, it’s an idiosyncratic quirk that keeps them unique – can you really imagine another company opening an E3 presentation with a Muppets sketch? – burning its own path through the likes of the Wii motion controller and the Virtual Boy. But 20 years after the release of the later peripheral, The Big N remains unexcited about the current state of virtual reality.
At least, that’s according to Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who expressed his general apathy with the platform in its current, embryonic state.
“We have knowledge of the technical space, and we’ve been experimenting with this for a long, long time. What we believe is that, in order for this technology to move forward, you need to make it fun and you need to make it social. I haven’t walked the floor, so I can’t say in terms of what’s on the floor today, but at least based on what I’ve seen to date, it’s not fun, and it’s not social. It’s just tech.”
From Sony’s Project Morpheus to Valve’s HTC-powered Vive, Microsoft’s augmented HoloLens to the Oculus Rift, there’s no question that virtual reality was a hot-button topic during this year’s E3 trade show. And though Fils-Aime raises some valid points about the market in general, which is still finding its feet toward general mainstream acceptance, the pessimism does ring a little hollow considering that the beloved personality hasn’t “walked the floor” to see what E3 2015 has to offer for VR.
What do you think, though? Indeed, do you agree with Nintendo and Fils-Aime’s stance on virtual reality? Let us know in the comments.