Apple just snapped up Nat Brown, who most recently was part of Valve’s Virtual Reality team. Before that, he was one of the gang-of-five that convinced Microsoft to create a little device called Xbox.
Whether he’s joining the team running Apple Arcade or will be part of the company’s Augmented Reality efforts is anyone guess.
Brown’s comment on Twitter about his move to Apple doesn’t reveal anything specific about his new role:
“I’m looking forward to continuing to work on my obsessions by focusing on all applications of graphics, and working with any of you using graphics on Apple platforms.”
Gaming or AR? Both?
Apple Arcade will be an “all-you-can-eat” subscription service for iOS, iPadOS and Mac. It will offer exclusive new games, and ban in-app purchases. Someone with Brown’s decades of experience in gaming would surely be an asset to this project.
Or he could be joining a rival group. Apple’s Augmented Reality efforts have been going on for years, and it’s supposedly developing an AR headset. Brown’s LinkedIn profile shows much of his more recent efforts have been devoted to VR, but the two are related.
Perhaps he’ll combine VR with Apple Arcade. He could be responsible for the creation of VR games to run on Apple’s AR headset.
