Sixense today announced that games industry veteran and former head of Vive Studios Joel Breton has joined the company as president of its studios and executive VP of product development.
Breton is tasked with leading the strategy for creation and delivery of AR/VR software, which is targeting businesses in healthcare, training, and entertainment.
A long-time games industry veteran, Breton started his career in product development at Sega of America in the mid-90s. He’s since worked in various development roles spanning 2K Sports, Bethesda Softworks, MTV Networks, and 505 Games. Breton’s stint as Vive Studios’ head started in 2016 and ended with his appointment at Sixense Studios.
“Joining Sixense Studios is an amazing opportunity to create showcase VR and AR content that redefines how humans learn, play, and interact with the products they use every day,” said Breton. “Sixense has been a leader in immersive computing for the past decade and I am thrilled to work alongside Sixense’s talented team and their global partners as we continue advancing the industry ecosystem.”
Sixense became somewhat of an infamous name among early VR adopters after the company raised over $600,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to support the development of STEM, a VR positional tracking standard that promised to bring 6DOF controllers and room-scale tracking to early VR developer kits.
While it’s been a long road filled with plenty of potholes, Sixense eventually announced refunds to backers last year as it made definite strides to pivot to the enterprise space. Ostensibly the enterprise market would prove to be a more hospitable environment for STEM, an accurate and occlusion-free—albeit somewhat obsolescent—magnetic 6DOF tracking standard.
Sixense CEO Rubin Amir maintains that Breton will help the company grow, taking advantage of their software team’s continued work on human interactions in immersive media.