Jesse Schell is once again at GDC, and his talk this year has proved very popular by the sounds of it. The Carnegie Mellon University professor and game designer this year gave a talk to a packed audience about his predictions for VR in the years ahead, and Schell seems to think virtual reality is about to kick off in a big way.
He made 40 predictions surrounding the tech, suggesting that he thinks there'll be upwards of 8 million VR headsets in the hands on players by the end of next year (4 million PSVR, 3 million Oculus, 1 million Vive), and that by 2022 there'll be more than 500 million headsets out in the wild, with a more than 2 billion mobile VR headsets.
Perhaps most interesting of all his predictions, Schell reckons that Microsoft will jump aboard the VR bandwagon if and when Sony has shifted 10 million PSVR headsets, and he revealed his belief that Nintendo is currently working on a portable VR device: "Imagine if you strapped a DS to your face, it's like that or imagine if the virtual boy didn't suck," he told the assembled audience. "I would bet Nintendo is working on one."
GI.biz were kind enough to write out the full set of forty predictions, so if you're interested and want to check out one man's vision of a virtual reality-filled future, check out the article.