Readers solve VR’s biggest problem: How do you eat pizza while playing?

Xbox, Beer Me
One of our Gameological Questionnaire interviews from E3 was with David Bowman, a developer at Crytek who was showing off a virtual reality tech demo that gives a feel for the studio’s upcoming VR dinosaur game, Robinson: The Journey. Down in the comments, doctaur brought up what is likely VR gaming’s biggest fault:
If I have to take a device off to swig beer, stuff pizza in my face, or check my phone, I honestly can’t see how I could play video games with it.
But Venerable Monk imagined our terrifying future where that won’t be a problem at all:
Careful what you ask for.
“With the new Hololens paired to an Xbox One, the transitions are seamless! Simply say ‘Xbox, phone’ and a fully-interactive, picture-in-picture view of your phone* shows up in your virtual hand! Now you can check your email during loading screens without even reaching into your pocket! And that’s not all! Say ‘Xbox, beverage” and a small straw will extend from the side of the VR headset to your mouth and deploy one of up to three distinct beverages**! No need to grope around for that glass when you’re gaming! Say ‘Xbox, pizza’ and the Hololens Multipurpose Claw (HMC)*** will extend to the nearest slice of ‘za, grab it, and gently guide it to your mouth using our patented Triangle Recognition Technology (TRT)****!”
*Only Windows phones with the Hololens plugin installed and paired to your Xbox One are currently supported.
**beverages must be pre-loaded into the three beverage receptacles that come packaged with the Hololens. Carbonated beverages are not currently supported. (Coming soon!)
***HMC sold separately. User must be able to lift 20 lbs with neck for proper use.
****TRT will not recognize pizza cut into squares, pending software update (2017-ish).
Everybody Calm Down
This week, Ryan Smith and I thought it might be fun to report back with the actual stories behind some of our weirder E3 demo sessions, as opposed to just talking about the games themselves. The comments quickly turned to what became one of the show’s hot button issues: Nintendo’s E3 offerings. While some of us might have been happy with Star Fox and Muppets, certain people were losing their damn minds over what they deemed a disastrous show, especially with the announcement of Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a 4-player 3DS spin-off of the acclaimed series. Wolfman Jew took a more pragmatic look back at Nintendo’s E3:
I get the sense that there’s a lot of inertia to anything Metroid inside Nintendo. It’s Yoshio Sakamoto’s thing, and he wrecked all his goodwill with Other M. Also, he seems to have no interest in the Prime games, seeing as how Other M implicitly took them out of the Metroid canon. Since shooters aren’t popular in Japan, it’s basically something they have to make with external developers, which is a process Nintendo has been getting better at but still needs work in.