John Hanke, the CEO for Niantic (the studio responsible for Pokémon Go), has recently spoke at the Mixed Reality Summit (via Gamesindustry.biz) and, unlike other developers who praise the medium, he thinks VR could actually be a problem in the future.
"My thing about VR is I'm afraid it can be too good, in the sense of being an experience that people want to spend a huge amount of time in," he explained. "I mean I already have concerns about my kids playing too much Minecraft, and that's a wonderful game."
"We're human beings and there's a lot of research out there that shows we're actually a lot happier when we get exercise, when we go outside - and outside in nature in particular. I think it's a problem for us as a society if we forgo that and spend all of time in a Ready Player One-style VR universe."
He instead thinks augmented reality could be the answer. "With AR, there's a huge amount of potential to do things that really do have a positive impact on people," he said. "There is research about the health impact of Pokemon Go in particular but you can expand that to apply to all AR games. These games can encourage people to be more active than they would normally be. As a parent, part of my motivation for building this kind of game was to try and get my kids out of the house. I think there's a ton of good that can be done."
He also revealed that Niantic aren't working on VR, nor is it likely that they will do in the future. "There are a lot of people out there already doing VR, so I don't think it would ever be a focus [for us]. I'm not sure AR and VR are destined to be these two separate things. These things may converge into a single set of experiences," he said.
Do you think VR could be a problem as Hanke suggests?