File this one under saw-that-one-coming-last-century: Movie mogul Steven Spielberg says the future of gaming is — wait for it — virtual. As in “virtual reality,” the two words most likely to induce oohs and aahs in late twentieth-century sci-fi filmgoers, and least likely to produce so much as a tepidly inquisitive “huh?” from anyone now.
Apparently Spielberg has finally read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, seen Jeff Fahey wig out in The Lawnmower Man, and stuck his head in the red and black migraine-scape that was Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. Somewhere along the line I assume he rented The Matrix trilogy, too.
Per Edge, who transcribed the salient bits of an audio interview Spielberg’s gave to The Guardian, first we’ll be treated to 3D games, then comes virtual reality
…which just like 3D, that came and went in the 1950s, and now it’s here to stay in movies. I really think virtual reality, which experimentally came and went in the eighties, is going to be redeveloped, just like 3D is being redeveloped today, and that’s going to be the new platform for our gaming future.
So what do you think? Is virtual reality as inevitable as everyone’s been saying for decades? Ready to chase a red horse-pill with a tall glass of water while hunched in front of some leather-wrapped dude sporting a pair of rimless reflective sunglasses?
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