Apple is now asking for help, with one of the top gaming authorities of the world.
The Apple Vision Pro has seen better days in its current performance in the market, but the Cupertino tech giant is looking to give it a boost in terms of VR gaming experiences in a new deal with Japan's Sony. In this latest move by Apple, the Big Tech American is looking to improve more of its flagship and only wearable technology in the market to deliver a new kind of experience for players to enjoy.
One of the biggest experiences that Apple is looking to get out of this pitched deal is to have Sony develop a dedicated set of controllers that would expand more of Vision Pro's capabilities in the name of VR gaming.
The latest Power On newsletter by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman shared that Apple is now looking towards advancing its wearable headset to feature new gaming experiences for its many users worldwide. However, the company would not be doing this alone, as it recently tapped into one of Japan's renowned multimedia conglomerates, Sony Group Corp., to help them in this latest venture.
It was revealed that Apple previously developed a peripheral for the Vision Pro called the "wand," and it would work similarly to the Apple Pencil device used on iPads for creativity and productivity.
However, there were no reports on games coming to the Vision Pro under this partnership, but the good thing is Apple will still continue its developments despite the disappointing sales of the XR headset.
Apple and Sony's talks centered on supporting third-party hand controllers to expand the VR gaming experiences on the Cupertino headset, integrated within visionOS for native support. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Apple and Sony were supposed to deliver support for PlayStation VR2 hand controllers for the Vision Pro last month but was postponed due to unknown reasons.
Moreover, Apple also had talks with third-party developers to integrate this support for specific games.
Apple went a different way when it first introduced the Vision Pro to the world as it did not share a VR or AR-specific wearable to the public, but the best of both experiences as an XR or mixed-reality headset. However, the most available experiences on the Vision Pro center on the different immersive environments for users to enjoy first-hand, and mainly focused on this content.
There is also a way to bring one's Mac computer into the mixed-reality world of the Vision Pro where users are given a chance to continue their experiences from the PC to the virtual world. This is thanks to the feature known as "Mac Virtual Display" which mirrors the computer's display inside the headset, and it only requires a user to have the same Apple ID logged into both devices and a similar network.
Streaming and other social experiences were also made available to the Vision Pro for several months now, but one of the top experiences missing here was gaming, and this is where Meta's Quest 3 takes the edge. However, it may not be long until Apple and Sony introduce their first upgrade for the Vision Pro using third-party controllers that may finally bring gaming to the iconic spatial computer.