Unity CEO Riccitiello: VR will be mainstream by 2020

In a "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit today, Unity CEO and game industry veteran John Riccitiello shared some of his thoughts on the virtual reality industry stating, perhaps boldly, that he thinks 100 million people will be using VR regularly by 2020, with the tech being in his words "mainstream" by then.

"I think it is going to take a few years for these platforms to reach audiences of 10’s or 100’s of millions like today’s game consoles, or even billions like mobile does today." said Riccitiello. "2017 will be a growth year, but likely not explosive growth. Watch for big / massive games in 3 to 5 years."

Unity’s role in virtual reality is not insignificant, with its widely-used game engine being used for a lot of virtual reality development, with Unity games running on every virtual reality headset in one shape or form.

This involvement does mean that Unity would be happier if virtual reality succeeded of course, Unitty have just realised a version of Unity you can use while in VR and has raised $181m in investment to fund VR/AR initiatives after all, but in his Ask Me Anything, Riccitiello has revealed he’s "a huge believer, long term, in AR / VR"

He talks more about VR and games in general in the AMA, which you can see here.