With the ever growing popularity of Virtual Reality (VR) gaming interfaces such as the Oculus Rift, the development teams at Microsoft have officially taken steps to keep Xbox gaming on par with the latest greatest technology which allows their players to have the most flexible and personalized gaming experience possible. Microsoft has taken the next step to advance the gaming experience they provide by teaming up with Oculus to allow streaming between the Xbox One and Oculus Rift VR Headsets. That’s right, soon you’ll be able to play your favorite Xbox titles in a virtual environment.

Today marks an evolution in our [Microsoft’s] ongoing partnership with Oculus, as Rift owners will be able to stream their Xbox One library to Rift with the new Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app, including fan favorites like “Gears of War 4,” “Forza Horizon 3” and “Halo 5: Guardians,” the biggest sports games,  indie darlings, Backward Compatible Xbox 360 games, and more titles coming in 2017.

At this time the VR capabilities for current titles unfortunately won’t recreate the actual game settings into a virtual environment due to the fact that the currently available titles were not developed as VR games. However this partnership between Xbox and Oculus does give developers the opportunity to expand into full VR creation for possible future titles that we may see. What the Oculus Rift will be providing up front is in fact a new environment from which to get your game on.

The new Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app connects to your Xbox One via your home network. Once connected, your console’s video output is streamed to your Rift headset and projected onto a massive screen in your choice of one of three immersive VR environments: “Citadel,” “Retreat” and “Dome.”

Although this doesn’t seem like much at the time it does open a lot of doors to VR developers to create more in depth content for VR gaming. To date owners of the Oculus Rift devices have been able to enjoy what the Rift library has to offer, however there has been concern noted that virtual reality gaming is just a novelty due to it’s, so far, lack of depth in content. The new Xbox compatibility provides Oculus Rift owners a unique perspective on their gaming experience while developers work on bigger projects.

In addition, with the Xbox Wireless Adapter and new PCs with native Xbox Wireless support, you can play games on Rift using your controller wirelessly right out of the box. Rift also works natively with Windows 10, which makes it easy to set up, jump in and have an incredible VR gaming experience. The Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app will be available for free in the Oculus Store on Dec. 12

It looks like we have a lot to look forward to in the development of Virtual Reality gaming, and we’re quite excited to see what lies farther down the road. We at DFTG are excited to be reporting any future updates in regards to VR gaming, in the meantime check out more exciting updates from Oculus right here!