At the Games Developer Conference this week Xbox Chief Phil Spencer revealed Microsoft’s plans to bring Xbox One games to the AR headset that was talk of the town at the Windows 10 event in January this year and has been since.

Speaking at the conference Spencer announced that gaming is going to be “critical to introducing consumers to such a radically new experience,” adding that the company’s development studios are already working HoloLens gaming experiences that will offer much more than what we’ve seen so far in the demos. He also said that Microsoft and HoloLens will be opening its doors to 3^rd party developers in the near future.

“Gaming is a huge opportunity,” said Microsoft in a press release, relaying what we already knew in that the reaction to the headset has been great. “There are going to be many uses and industries that take advantage of Microsoft HoloLens and everything that holographic computing has to offer,” Microsoft added. The company urged game developers to get the holographic APIs when they become available through the Windows Insider Program.

During the conference Spencer also revealed that for selected testers only Microsoft is launching an Xbox SDK. This will become available to all developers sometime within the year. The SDK will provide access to most Xbox Live services that are available for Xbox One, while in an effort to make Xbox Live accessible to all game developers Microsoft is introducing a new tier of Xbox Live.

Spencer also announced the company’s plans to expand its ID@xbox program (independent developer program) to bring more self-published games to the Xbox platform, PC and HoloLens. This, says Spencer, should suffice in helping developers reach gamers, “wherever they are”. Those gamers might also be pleased to know that all wireless accessories will in the future be supported for Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs, while sometime later in the year Microsoft said that it will release an adapter which enables PCs to use wireless Xbox One controllers. Lastly, Frontier Development’s space adventure game Elite: Dangerous will be on Xbox One this summer.

Photo credit: Microsoft