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Valve's Abrash compares VR transition to smartphone revolution

If you believe there's no future for gaming in AR, VR and wearable computing, just think about the first time you saw a smartphone, says Valve's Michael Abrash.

"I think if we went back to 2005 and said, 'I’m gonna give you this phone, and it’s gonna have as much processing power as a computer and a touch interface,' I don’t think you would’ve immediately said, 'Oh, these are the games that are going to end up being successful.' You probably wouldn’t have even predicted that there’d be so many people buying and turning it into such a huge market," Abrash told RPS.

" So I don’t know what VR will turn into, but I’m pretty confident it’ll turn into something great if the hardware can be good enough. That’s the thing that has to happen."

Abrash said Oculus Rift, which has both his and id's John Carmack's interest, "will be good enough to get that started".

"And then it has to evolve rapidly," he added.

The Oculus Rift VR headset has been successfully Kickstarted, attracting $1.8 million with over a week remaining.

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Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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