A device like this already has so many conflicting constraints to deal with that I’m not really surprised that they didn’t prioritise the things that would benefit gaming.
Hand controllers may well come a few years down the line (if the product line survives that long), but it’s very much in line with their behaviour historically to initially avoid requiring additional input devices: anyone remember how long it took Apple to release a stylus for the iPad?
Also seems like their efforts to protect privacy by restricting direct gaze input access may make certain kinds of gaze-related input actions tricky to implement, but the Unity video shared earlier suggested that they may be giving developers more access to that stuff (at least via Unity-based apps) than they’d previously implied.
Hand gestures are cool and all but i have yet to use a gesture system that isn't more than a little 'lossy'...
Yeah, you're already talking about the most expensive headset, nevermind that added cost for controllers. With this price tag you're going to be talking about a tiny installed base.
If it's easy enough to port stuff... and the controller ecosystem develops... well, sure, I guess this thing could find its niche. From an ROI perspective though it can't possibly be the primary target for game developers, which means it gets ports... and with ports to niche platforms there's always the risk of low quality / jank, which would only hurt the brand.
MiFi support down the road will be unlikely to solve the issue since without bundled controllers, the market size for games that require them won’t be big enough to justify making them & vice versa… unless each studio does something like Guitar Hero & releases their own peripheral & bundles it together with their game…
I can imagine lots of game genres that could work fine but they’ll only be economically viable if the market for VisionOS games itself is big enough to support such a business model or if Apple jump-starts things by investing heavily in individual titles. Their messaging to date hasn’t really suggested that they’re interested in playing that game though.
We’ll see, though.