They didn't talk about VR gaming in their promotional material, but they partnered closely with Unity, and had a whole WWDC session about it. They care. They're probably just not quite ready to make a big deal about it.
Apple has multiple problems here, ones that it can't exactly outpace which is that when they do start making a big deal of gaming they back themselves into a corner. They have to face the problem that VR gaming devices are much cheaper and have similar effect/more studios dedicated to making VR games. They have the other problem that the leading game engine or 3D content in general (Unreal) belongs to a company they would rather see evaporate.
Even with the Epic situation, I'm surprised to see Apple buddying up with Unity after they've merged with a company that used to make Mac-targeted fake "Update Flash Player" adware installers.
Game consoles are a lot cheaper than gaming PCs, but both seem to do ok in the market. General purpose devices always cost more than single-purpose.
And I don’t think they’re losing sleep over Unreal. Plenty of games are done in Unity, and developers who want to ship on multiple platforms are leaning towards Unity in part of because of Epic’s alienation of Apple and other platform owners.
Definitely interesting times, but I don’t think either of those considerations will have an impact on Vision’s success (which is far from assured)
A Meta Quest 2 is just as "general purpose" as Vision Pro. It's basically the Android equivalent to Apple's iOS based Vision Pro. Apple has a bigger problem with the fact that they don't have any sort of VR controllers similar to the Quest's or PSVR2.
That's the point. Vision has to dictate itself as a general purpose device in the market, and so far they haven't done a great job at that. Their reluctance to lean into gaming is a huge part of this desire to present Vision as not some media consumption device but as something you should use daily for creation.
Which is why they are backed into a corner, they have to paint this picture while avoiding the largest 3d engine, ignore stiff competition with other (largely gaming which is important to note since your point about general purpose vs specific is kind of nullified when other VR headsets can handle non-gaming well too) headsets, and get developers on board to start making apps for the new platform before any sweeping changes to the app marketplace take hold.
It would have been nice to see Apple shift their weight behind O3DE instead, as Unity really has been struggling to capture an audience. Would have demonstrated a real commitment to creating 3D content. Those who ship on multiple platforms are really struggling to stick with Unity as it's made their lives harder the past ~5 years, when the same is easily achievable on Unreal or even Godot now.
My bigger question isn't the game studios or even the price, it's the controllers. Remains to be seen what sort of games people come up with that don't require the type of hand controllers with a thumbstick, grip/trigger, and a couple of buttons.
You'll really need to design from the ground up with its very specific input capabilities in mind. Porting titles over that were made for Quest, PSVR, or PC will be difficult.
We've been designing our VR fitness game [1] around hand tracking since Meta first came out with it 3 1/2 years ago. So far I can say that we did not regret it, but it definitely requires some workarounds around the accuracy and speed you get from controllers.
My hand tracking experience on my Quest 1 was unimpressive (though I haven't bothered to try again recently), maybe the Quest 2 is better. Even for just navigating the UI, the pointing part works fine but pinching to click was entirely unreliable.
With its eye tracking and much stronger hand tracking hardware I expect Apple's will work nearly perfectly, just a matter of how people support it in games.
Teleport movement is a big question for me, convention for that on controllers is to push the thumbstick forward, aim the targeting arc, and release. Will everyone be making up their own teleport movement gesture, and eventually the market will settle on an expected way to handle it?
Will games where you pretend to be holding something (mini golf for instance) feel weird with just hand tracking, and nothing to actually hold?
Apple has gone back and forth on if they care about games but I don't think I'd call it contempt. A bad strategy where they burn bridges with game developers due to talking a big game then not following through? Absolutely but "contempt" is a step too far I think.
When they released an Apple TV with an app store, casual gaming seemed an obvious use.
But they came with a controller that seemed to be designed with the goal of ensuring that it was as useless as possible for gaming (also as useless as possible for entering passwords!)
Apple is the third largest game platform. They don't have contempt for games. They just have no idea what exactly the vision pro will turn into so they aren't backing it down a path they can't return from. Selling it as a gaming device means that if they don't have the gaming market quickly enough, they might not be able to pivot to other markets. It's an open (ish, for apple) platform that the market will decide what it is to become.
You're gatekeeping gaming. Most mainstream games have some type of slot machine mechanic for virtual skins that are cash cows or are even pay to win. Apple also created a apple arcade to specifically curate games that aren't pay to win cesspools.
It might be a better take that apple generally treats games on an equal level to every other category of software. They just don't get much special treatment, historically at least ... ios may have changed that drastically (apple arcade is certainly a step in a direction). Meanwhile MS (even pre xbox) carved out work for them with things such as directx directinput etc.
But Apple used to be pretty great for gaming. I remember playing tons of games like pong or snake clones, dark castle, shufflepuck cafe or airborne on our Mac SE when I was a child.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10093/