Former EA CEO on VR

"It's going to recover"

By Lucy O'Brien

Former EA CEO John Riccitiello has elaborated on his prediction that we'll see a “gap of disappointment” in the VR market.

Speaking at VentureBeat's GamesBeat summit, the Unity CE said that 2016 is a "masking tape and twine year" for VR.

“The truth this year is that from a hardware and a software perspective, it’s a masking tape and twine year,” he said, as recorded by VentureBeat. “These things are barely making it to the shelf. They’re barely making it to the consumer. They do magical things. I’m a giant bull on the long-term opportunities for VR and AR. But these revenue forecasts for the early years—they’re going to miss their numbers in 2016 by 80 percent. They’ll miss them again in 2017 by 60 percent or more.”

Riccitiello also predicts that we'll experience a "VR is dead" sentiment in the mainstream media as the hardware struggles to gain hold in its early years.

"It’s only a matter of time before people say, “Oh, it didn’t happen. VR and AR is all a hoax. It’s a fizzle.” The New York Times is going to run that on the front page, right before Christmas, to p*ss us all off. We’re going to get that.

"It’s going to recover, but all of you out there, if you can, play down this year’s numbers. They aren’t going to happen. Don’t let the journalists get away with the I-told-you-so. They set up this straw monster and the monster doesn’t show up. This is so predictable."

http://ift.tt/24i2KqQ

Riccitiello took over the head honcho role at Unity Technologies in 2014 after serving as both COO and CEO at Electronic Arts for six years.

Lucy O'Brien is an editor at IGN’s Sydney office. Follow her ramblings on Twitter.

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