Can Gaming Save the Apple Vision Pro?

That could still pose problems in expanding the Vision Pro’s gaming offerings—it’s hard to imagine how the award-winning likes of Batman: Arkham Shadow or shooters such as Arizona Sunshine II function without those sorts of inputs.

However, the patent does suggest that “the handheld input device may may include a haptic output device to provide the user’s hands with haptic output,” and haptics—vibration—alone can dramatically improve gameplay in VR.

Playing the Game

The game Synth Riders is a great example of this. Developed by Kluge Interactive and available on both Apple Vision Pro and more conventionally gaming-focused VR platforms, it’s a rhythm action title, similar to the likes of Beat Saber. Orbs representing musical beats fly towards the player, who has to match the orbs’ position with their hands, hitting individual notes or following arcing trails of them.

On platforms such as Quest or PlayStation VR, the haptics of the controllers subtly pulse as you catch each beat and gently vibrate as you trace the rails, that sense of feedback instantly telling you when you’ve hit or missed a beat. This helps you gauge where to position your hands, and how to move your arms through the game’s space.

On Apple Vision Pro, your hands glide untouched through the air, tracked only by the headset’s external sensors, no tactile response to guide your performance. As a result, the same game feels far less accurate and harder to play—in this writer’s experience—on Apple’s hardware. Controllers with haptics could help alleviate that, even if they wouldn’t allow Batman to fiddle with his utility belt.

Some game creators are perfectly happy without controllers on Apple Vision Pro though, including Andrew Eiche, CEO of developer Owlchemy Labs. The studio is one of the longest standing VR developers—its breakthrough title Job Simulator was the first game announced for SteamVR a decade ago, and has since been ported to everything from the HTC Vive to PSVR 2 and, as of May 2024, the Vision Pro.

Set in a future where robots have replaced all labor, the game sees players recreating the mundane jobs of the present, usually to comedic effect. Even on platforms with controllers, Job Simulator’s gameplay is centered on the player interacting with objects around offices or kitchens using virtualized hands, so it was a natural fit for the Vision Pro.

“Right now, it feels like the industry is being ‘held back’ by not including controllers, but I contend this is a necessary growth step,” Eiche tells WIRED. “I would like to see VR—or XR, MR, Spatial, Immersive, whatever we call it—become mainstream.”

“Hand tracking is accessible to almost everyone. It’s something natural that you don’t have to peek out of a headset to remember what button ‘B’ is,” Eiche adds. “That’s not to say controllers should be eliminated. I think [they’ll be] similar to [how] smartphone controllers are an add-on for power users who want that specific precise control with discrete inputs.”