Valve's Abrash compares VR transition to smartphone revolution

If you believe there's no future for gaming in AR, VR and wearable computing, just think about the first time you saw a smartphone, says Valve's Michael Abrash.

"I think if we went back to 2005 and said, 'I’m gonna give you this phone, and it’s gonna have as much processing power as a computer and a touch interface,' I don’t think you would’ve immediately said, 'Oh, these are the games that are going to end up being successful.' You probably wouldn’t have even predicted that there’d be so many people buying and turning it into such a huge market," Abrash told RPS.

" So I don’t know what VR will turn into, but I’m pretty confident it’ll turn into something great if the hardware can be good enough. That’s the thing that has to happen."

Abrash said Oculus Rift, which has both his and id's John Carmack's interest, "will be good enough to get that started".

"And then it has to evolve rapidly," he added.

The Oculus Rift VR headset has been successfully Kickstarted, attracting $1.8 million with over a week remaining.