TBH a bunch of speakers seems like it would be much worse. If you had an infinite matrix of speakers located at every possible point relative to your head, the

TBH a bunch of speakers seems like it would be much worse. If you had an infinite matrix of speakers located at every possible point relative to your head, then you could play each sound from the exact speaker representing the correct direction, and get perfect 3D audio. Maybe it would even be sufficient to have a sphere of speakers around you, or even a circle if elevation isn't relevant in most games. But in practice we don't have any of those. We have 4 or 5 speakers roughly arranged around the player. If one of those 4 or 5 directions happens to be exactly what you need, then great, play the sound from that speaker and you're good. But if not, then what? The brain decides the direction of sound based primarily on the relative latency between when it is heard in each ear [0]. How do you create a precise time difference when you have 4-5 different speakers each of which can be heard by both ears? Plus the game doesn't even usually know exactly where the speakers are located relative to the player's head. Exactly how far away are they? Are the front speakers closer than the back? With headphones, none of this is a problem. The game can precisely control exactly what the person hears, including precisely controlling interaural time difference. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaural_time_difference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaural_time_difference