Hugo Swart, previous head of Qualcomm’s XR division, announced he’s joined Google where he’ll lead the company’s XR Ecosystem Strategy and Technology efforts.
Swart shared the news in a LinkedIn update, noting the move happened a few months ago:
Happy to share that I joined Google couple months ago and am responsible for XR Ecosystem Strategy and Technology. Super excited to continue the XR journey and working with you all – great things ahead! Thank you Shahram Izadi for the opportunity! Looking forward to AWE this week!!
As General Manager and Vice President of XR at Qualcomm, Swart was a driving force behind the company’s Snapdragon XR series of chipsets, which currently power the majority of standalone headsets on the market, including all of Meta’s Quest headsets to date.
Hugo Swart introduces Snapdragon XR | Courtesy Qualcomm
Following Swart’s departure from Qualcomm in February, Alex Katouzian, Group GM of the Mobile, XR, and Compute Business Unit is currently overseeing XR at Qualcomm.
Swart is joining Google at a pivotal moment in XR, as the company recently announced a strategic technology partnership with Magic Leap, which is seen as an effort to keep up with Meta, Apple, and others in a race to control the burgeoning AR headset market.
This follows a notable setback last year when Google reportedly shelved its Project Iris AR glasses following mass restructuring within the company, which included layoffs, reshuffles, and the departure of Clay Bavor, Google’s then-head of AR and VR.
Meanwhile, Google is developing a new Android-based platform for Samsung’s upcoming XR headset announced back in February 2023, which is set to be powered by Qualcomm silicon. Google is also rumored to be developing a “Micro XR” platform for XR glasses, which is said to use a prototyping platform internally known as “Betty.”
Reality Labs, Meta’s XR division formed in 2020, is now being reorganized into two distinct groups, ‘Wearables’ and ‘Metaverse’, which reportedly comes along a “relatively small” number of layoffs.
As reported by The Verge’s Alex Heath, Meta CTO and head of Reality Labs Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth announced the reorg in an internal memo to employees, stating that all teams in Reality Labs are being merged into either a central ‘Metaverse’ organization, responsible for Quest, and a new ‘Wearables’ organization to dedicated to other hardware, including its Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses.
In the memo, which is available via Heath’s Command Line newsletter, Bosworth says the company’s smartglasses were “a much bigger success than we expected,” spurring the XR division to put more focus on the product.
Image courtesy Meta, Ray-Ban
“We have the leading AI device on the market right now, and we are doubling down on finding a strong product market fit for wearable Meta AI, building a business around it, and expanding the audience,” Bosworth’s memo reads. “Our north star to overlay digital content seamlessly onto the physical world remains the same, but the steps on that path just got a lot more exciting.”
Notably, Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses don’t include displays of any type, AR or otherwise, instead offering input through voice assistant and touch on the glasses’ struts for things like taking pictures, videos, and listening to music. In late 2023, Meta also added AI-powered object recognition.
As for its Quest-related efforts, Bosworth says the company is still “deeply committed to investing in Horizon as the core foundation of our social, spatial Horizon OS, and high-quality experiences for both mixed reality and mobile.”
Meta announced in April it will soon license its Horizon OS (ex-Quest OS) to third parties for the first time, including ASUS, Lenovo and Xbox. This comes part and parcel with it Horizon Store (ex-Quest Store) content library—seen as a bid to become a more prolific alternative to Apple’s Vision Pro.
“The org chart doesn’t primarily determine whether we succeed or fail, our execution does,” Bosworth said in the memo. “But by setting it up this way I hope we reduce overhead and allow people across teams to come together and execute with a more unified view of who our customers are and how we can best serve them.”
Meta declined to comment on the exact number of Reality Labs layoffs, however Heath maintains “it’s a relatively small number and focused on teams in Reality Labs where leadership roles are now redundant thanks to this new structure.”
At $3,500, Vision Pro is undoubtedly expensive, which many are rightfully hoping will be remedied in a prospective follow-up. Now, according to a report from The Information, Apple may be ditching the ‘Pro’ aspect of its next-gen Vision headsets altogether, instead aiming to release a single “more affordable” device in late 2025.
It’s rumored that Apple was slated to release two headsets: an expensive Pro-style device and a cheaper version targeted more squarely at consumers, much like how the company positions iPhone in its lineup today.
Now, citing an employee at a manufacturer that makes key components for the Vision Pro, The Information reports Apple has suspended work on that high-end follow-up due to slowing sales of the $3,500 Vision Pro.
Image courtesy Apple
There may be hope though, at least for anyone without the budget to shell out what amounts to a good used Honda Civic. According sources both involved in the supply chain and in the manufacturing of the headset, the company is “still working on releasing a more affordable Vision product with fewer features before the end of 2025.”
Granted, it’s important to note that Apple often leaks incorrect information in a bid to nail prospective leakers, so this (and any Apple report for that matter) should be taken with a heaping handful of salt.
This follows Apple’s announcement it was getting set to release Vision Pro outside of the US for the first time, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.
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Whether it’s “more affordable” or not, there’s a lot Apple can do to appeal to the masses without drastically sacrificing quality. Check out our article on the 6 Things Vision Pro Needs Before It Can Go Mainstream to see how.
Did you know you can technically play SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx (2020) on Vision Pro? Well, now you do, as the leading app dedicated to bringing SteamVR connectivity to a ton of standalone headsets is now available for Vision Pro on the App Store.
Previously offered as an invite-only beta, ALVR is now free on the App Store, allowing Vision Pro users to stream OpenVR games from your PC via Wi-Fi.
This includes support for Vision Pro’s hand gestures, however more than likely you’ll want some sort of controller to really make use of SteamVR content. Developer Max Thomas mentions ALVR supports dual controllers such as the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers, in addition to existing Lighthouse base station setups for enthusiasts already in the SteamVR tracking ecosystem.
Another thing to check is that Vision Pro is on the same local network as the computer, which for best performance ought to be 5GHz 802.11ac router with speeds greater than 300Mbps, placed within 20 feet (6 meters) from your playspace. You can get away with less, but you may experience some pretty annoying stuttering.
Whatever the case, network activity from other devices should be at a minimal to keep bandwidth clear for PC-streaming, and the host computer should be connected directly to the router via Ethernet. Lastly, make sure AirDrop and Handoff are disabled during gameplay to reduce stuttering.
The official release of ALVR on Vision Pro follows early third-party attempts to hack the software into working, which spurred indie developer Max Thomas (aka ‘Shiny Quagsire’) to start experimenting with bringing the streaming tool officially to visionOS.
Spatial design and prototyping app ShapesXR (2021) just launched its 2.0 update which better streamlines cross-platform support, letting team members more easily edit and collaborate in both mixed or virtual reality, but also now the web.
ShapesXR 2.0 is packing in a number of new features today to enhance the cross-platform app, which not only supports Quest 1/2/3/Pro and Pico 4, but also now standard flatscreen devices with the addition of a web editor for users joining with mouse and keyboard.
Check out all of the things coming to ShapesXR 2.0 below:
Enhanced UI/UX : Shapes has been fully refreshed with an entire new interface that takes unique advantage of depth and materials. The information architecture has been simplified to enhance ease of use and learnability.
Interactive Prototyping: New triggers and actions have been introduced to help designers explore more robust interactions, allowing them to use button presses, physical touch, and haptics to design dynamic and engaging spatial experiences.
Spatial Sound Prototyping: Users can now import sounds and add spatial audio to interaction triggers, creating more immersive experiences and prototypes that win the arguments and green lights
Procedural Primitives and New Assets Library: A new library of fully procedural primitives provides a diverse range of 3D models and templates for users to build with.
Custom Inspector: The custom inspector allows for precise adjustments, optimizing the design process.
Flexible Input Support: The new architecture and UI support any input type, including controllers, hands, and mouse and keyboard, making the design process smoother and more intuitive.
Released in 2021, ShapesXR founder and CEO Inga Petryaevskaya calls the addition of the new web editor “a strategic move to extend the time users spend in the product and to enable co-design and editing with those who do not have an XR device.”
To boot, a number of VR studios have used ShapesXR over the years to collaboratively build their apps, including mixed reality piano tutor PianoVision, physics-based VR rollercoaster CoasterMania, and XR platform for molecular design in the Drug Discovery and Materials Science industries Nanome. You can check out the company’s full slate of case studies here.
The app is a free download on supported platforms, including both a free and subscription-based plans. ShapesXR’s free plan comes with its core creation tools, three editable spaces, 150 Mb of cloud storage, 20 Mb import cap on files, the ability to import png, jpg, obj, glb, and gITF files, and export glTF, USDz, and Unity files.
Both its Team and Enterprise plans include unlimited editable spaces, respective bumps in cloud storage, and a host of other features that ought to appeal to larger teams looking to integrate ShapesXR into their workflow. You can check out all of the subscription plans here.
Pokémon GO developer Niantic announced it’s releasing a new visual editor and “powerful web gaming engine” called Niantic Studio, which aims to let creatives build immersive XR, 3D experiences, and casual web games.
Niantic Studio is essentially the company’s evolution of its subscription-based AR content development platform 8th Wall, which it acquired in 2022. Today, 8th Wall includes a number of tools for making AR content, including location-based experiences and a host of other stuff primarily targeted at mobile users.
Now available for free in public beta for 8th Wall developers, Studio goes one step further by giving developers a visual interface that Niantic says “makes everything you create accessible and visible in real time,” allowing users of all skill levels to start building with 8th Wall.
Image courtesy Niantic
As a web-based tool, Studio includes the ability to create everything from AR scenes that use Face Effects or World Tracking to more complex 3D web games and immersive XR experiences, the company says, noting it will add more of its existing AR features to Studio throughout the beta.
“Studio is a completely new approach to building immersive XR and 3D experiences with Niantic 8th Wall,” the company says. “With Studio, we’ve completely overhauled the development environment, moving from a code-only interface to an intuitive visual editor that combines the speed and power of the web with the robust tools needed to create more realistic 3D web games and XR experiences.”
Built on a Entity Component System (ECS) gaming structure, Niantic’s new web gaming engine is said to simplify complex development tasks, not only letting users quickly build and edit 3D scenes in real-time, but also enter a ‘Play Mode’ so you can preview experiences and even make changes while your project plays that save automatically.
Studio is available for free in public beta to 8th Wall developers starting today. New users interested in trying out 8th Wall and its new Studio game engine can sign up for a free 14-day trial before plonking down any cash, which bottoms out at $9 per month for the ‘Starter’ tier when paid annually.
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While both the platform and its resultant content is indeed web-based, it’s uncertain at this time whether Studio is focusing on adhering to the WebXR standard, which includes support for a broad range of XR headsets which can access content through supported web browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox to name a few. We’ll update this article when/if that becomes more clear.
Somnium Space, the Czechia-based company behind the upcoming Somnium VR1 headset, announced that orders for its long-awaited PC VR headset will be opening on June 20th, coming first to reservation holders.
It’s been a long time coming for Somnium VR1, which we last saw at CES 2023 when the company showed off a dev kit version of the headset. If you’re memory is fuzzy, at the time Somnium, which also runs its own social VR platform Somnium Space, was also hoping to release a standalone version of the headset at some point. Due to supply chain constraints though, the company decided to sideline the standalone version to focus on the soon-to-release Lighthouse-tracked PC VR headset.
We’re getting very close to that now; in addition to the order date announcement, the company detailed its full line-up, which includes eight variants available for order starting on June 20th:
Military Edition – TAA Compliant (Mixed Reality + Eye/Hand-tracking)
That’s a pretty hefty launch lineup, however VR1 is built with modularity in mind, allowing users to choose what factory-installed modules they want, with the Classic Edition starting at €1,900 (~$2,060 USD).
Somnium VR1 | Image courtesy Somnium Space
Check out the specs below, noting that optional add-ons to the base version are highlighted in red:
Display
Type
QLED Mini-LED Fast LCD
Resolution
2 x 2800 x 2880 pixels
Brightness
210 nit
Local Dimming
20000:1 (HDR)
Color Gamut
100% NTSC
Refresh Rate
72 Hz / 90 Hz / 120 Hz / 144 Hz (Experimental)
Optics
Lens Type
Dual-lens aspheric modules (two lenses per eye-box)
Peak Fidelity
35 PPD
Coating
Anti-reflection & Anti-scratch coating
Field of View (FOV)
Horizontal: 130°, Vertical: 105°
Diopter Lenses (Optional)
Magnetically attachable by VR Optician
Pass-through Cameras (Optional)
2 X 12 Mpx 4,056 x 3,040 (foveated transport), FOV 125° x 100°
IR-transmissive matte polymer with anti-fingerprint surface texture
Connectivity
Cable
Single all-in-one USB Type-C, 6 meter (20 ft) hybrid ADC cable, DisplayPort (32 Gbps), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power functionality
Modes
Native wired PC Mode (Lossless), Native SteamVR & OpenXR support
Audio
3.5 mm Headphone jack, High-quality stereo
Ports
3 x USB-C (3.2 Gen 2) 10 Gbps for external accessories, 3.5 mm Headphone jack
Anchor Points
4 modular customizable and 30 printable anchor points, M2.5 imbus flat head screws
LEDs
2 x Programmable RGB status LEDs
Headstrap
Double-knob memory foam adjustable headstrap
Positional Tracking
Lighthouse Based tracking
The company says it will begin sending out a limited number of emails each day to reservation holders, following the chronological order based on their reservation date.
Notably, each reservation holder is eligible for one purchase, which can include multiple VR1 units, essentially allowing the user’s unique ordering code to be used once to limit queue jumpers.
There isn’t a time limitation when you must make your purchase, the company says, which was designed to give customers time to complete purchases later, however units are on a first-come, first-serve basis.
If you haven’t reserved already, new reservations are being accepted up until July 10th. The company will be opening orders to everyone on July 12th alongside its full-day Somnium Connect event in Prague, Czechia. There, the company will be holding presentations, demos of Somnium VR1, and a keynote speech by Artur Sychov, Founder & CEO of Somnium Space.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is over, and while Vision Pro was a big focus with the announcement of its visionOS 2 update, it’s pretty clear Apple’s first mixed reality headset isn’t in a hurry to feature-match other XR headsets at this point, let alone Meta Quest 3. When Apple eventually does step down to the XR playing field with a more consumer-friendly headset though, there are a number of things would-be owners are probably hoping for that have so far gone missing.
A (much) Lower Price
What: This is a pretty obvious one. It’s only been about six months since Vision Pro’s launch in February, and while it’s leaving US exclusivity this month, the $3,500 headset still isn’t accessible enough right now for anyone but developers, prosumers, and only the most ardent of Apple acolytes to really entertain. It needs to be way cheaper for a few reasons beyond being able to sell to more people, which I’ll get more into below.
Image courtesy Apple
Why: Apple is essentially using Vision Pro as an expensive developer kit right now. As a result, the company seems more cautious with how it’s handling Vision Pro in comparison other new product lines, the most analogous being its first generation Apple Watch in 2015, which was initially criticized for being expensive, sluggish, and lacking critical functionality over the iPhones of that era (sound familiar?). But when Apple does launch a new product line, they typically put a tremendous amount of resources and energy behind them—all the more reason to be excited about what’s next.
And when Apple’s next headset does finally approach a price point closer to the rest of their consumer device lineup, people will be expecting a lot more than just productivity apps, a smattering of games, and tight integration with the rest of its mature ecosystem—admittedly one of the biggest, most useful things Apple is bringing to the table.
Mixed & Virtual Reality Games
What: Vision Pro may have over a million iOS apps thanks to getting developers to opt-out rather than opt-in to Vision Pro compatibility, although when you go looking for immersive XR games on the App Store, there aren’t a ton to choose from.
Right now, there are only a handful of mixed and virtual reality games, including Marvel’s What If…? An Immersive Story, Demeo, Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, LEGO Builders Journey, Puzzling Places, Proton Pulse Vision, Bombaroom, Soul Spire, and a few others—all of them worthy games in their own right, but a far cry from the comparatively massive number of titles available on the Quest platform.
Why: Some of this comes down to developer interest. The headset’s price makes it less attractive as a target platform mainly because it’s seven times the cost of a Quest 3. Less people can buy it, meaning there’s less potential return on investment for porting or creating new XR content, which is already a pretty niche games industry in comparison to traditional console and PC gaming.
It also comes down to Apple’s early insistence that Vision Pro isn’t a gaming console, despite its ability to play immersive content. For now, it’s geared towards productivity, which is reflected not only in the sheer number of office apps, but the integration into the Apple software ecosystem at large, which has historically put gaming in the backseat.
In fact, one thing it won’t be missing soon is the ability to do room-scale VR, thanks to the vision OS 2 update, which ought to free more developers from the standing position-only guardian launched on Vision Pro in February. Still, many of the existing games on other VR platforms need to be tailored to work with the headset’s eye and hand-tracking only approach to input, which leads me to my next point…
Motion Controllers
What: Some games simply don’t work without motion controllers—at least not in the way they were initially designed to. For example, developers like Google’s Owlchemy Labs had to rejigger their critically-acclaimed VR games Job Simulator & Vacation Simulator to make hand-tracking a smooth experience. While this works well for low-stakes object interaction, it’s not for every XR game out there.
Many XR games, such as shooters, simulators, platformers, or fast-paced rhythm games, actually need button input, haptics, and precise, low-latency 6DOF movement to truly work as intended, pushing developers to either search for some way to modify versions of existing titles, or build new content from from the ground-up specifically for Vision Pro; both are more expensive than just having an Apple-built controller that meets the standards of existing controllers.
Quest 3 Touch Controllers | Image courtesy Meta
Why: Apple hasn’t officially given a specific reason why it didn’t include controllers with Vision Pro, but there are a few patently Apple guesses on the table.
Typically, Apple’s design focuses on intuitive and natural user interfaces (i.e. the touch screen), and it’s clear the company has carried that over to Vision Pro with its use of voice input, and both eye and hand-tracking. Bundling controllers, like all concurrent standalones on the market, may have been seen as too much of a departure from this core design philosophy. All you have to do is put it on, and away you go.
A Stylus for XR Creatives
What: For all its impressive capabilities, if you want to paint a picture or design a 3D asset with Vision Pro (without connecting to Mac), you’re essentially finger painting since the headset doesn’t support a dedicated spatially-tracked stylus.
A recent patent had us holding out hope for Apple Pencil support at WWDC 2024, but that wasn’t the case—despite the company releasing a new version of its stylus to go along with the latest iPad Pro.
Logitech MX Ink for Quest | Image courtesy Logitech
Why: Apple hasn’t said as much, but we can see this one likely arriving before the release of standard motion controllers, maybe even as a third-party add-on to the current Vision Pro generation owing to the headset’s prosumer user base.
It makes sense that Apple needs to feeling out why people are using Vision Pro first instead of making rash assumptions. Still, Meta seems to be beating Apple to the punch here with the announcement of the Logitech MX Ink, which is due out in September.
Social Platforms
What: You won’t find many of the popular social XR platforms on Vision Pro, which if it isn’t your thing, probably isn’t that big of a deal.
But for now, the only big name in social XR on the headset is Rec Room, which is only available as a windowed version of the platform (i.e. not mixed or virtual reality). There’s no VRChat, no Roblox, and no BigScreen—currently some of the top social XR platforms out there.
Why: It’s not to say Apple needs those popular third-party platforms to make Vision Pro (or whatever the next one is called) successful in the long-term, but its competitor Meta not only has these, but is also making a big deal out of continuously integrating its own social layer Horizon Worlds closer to the core user experience in addition to making it available across the web for Android, iOS, and PC.
That, and Apple doesn’t really do social platforms, making it pretty unlikely we’ll see its own Horizon Worlds-esque social app in the future. Instead, Apple is leaning heavily on its existing chat ecosystem by integrating FaceTime with its impressively life-like Spatial Personas avatars, which allows Vision Pro users to scan their faces into the headset to create a digital identity that looks and moves like the user.
Apple is notorious about keeping its best features close to its ecosystem, so if it really wants to somehow get into the social XR game beyond FaceTime, you can bet it will be exclusive.
All-day Ergonomics
What: Vision Pro isn’t the all-day XR headset we’d hoped for. Like many, it provides around two hours of battery power, and can be plugged in to the wall for extended sessions—no real issues there. While standard, the company has also served up fairly middle of the road ergonomics, so there are some obvious improvements to be made here to transforming it into the ‘computer-on-your-face’ Apple wants it to be.
One of the company’s comfort-forward decisions was to offload its tethered battery for better on-head weight. Often, lighter XR headsets are better for long-term use, but a key area that’s lacking in Vision Pro (and many other headsets) is on-head balance. You can actually get away with heavier headsets when they are balanced closer to your head’s center of mass.
Why: Much of this can be forgiven since it’s a first-gen device. Interestingly enough though, Apple may be setting future expectations by keeping the headset’s battery off the user’s head, possibly even leading the company to offload compute to a separate device in the future, like a tethered iPhone or dedicated compute puck like Magic Leap 2.
Some of this added front weight comes from premium features Apple just couldn’t go without, namely a brushed metal housing, laminated glass front, and its EyeSight front display, which shows a holographic passthrough of the user’s eyes when in mixed reality mode. All-day use requires all-day comfort, which may put those premium features on the chopping block in Vision Pro’s (hopefully cheaper) follow-up.
Apple’s Patented Slow Convergence: The Big Why
It’s pretty clear by now that Apple does Apple-things, because it’s Apple.
Part of that, as many iPhone users can attest, is due to the company’s tendency to ignore key features on competing platforms, only to introduce them later down the line—almost as if they’ve invented them. It does this most visibly on iPhone, where just now in iOS 18 iPhone users are getting the chance to put icons wherever they want—an Android feature since the introduction of Android 1.5 Cupcake in 2009. Since Apple doesn’t like to appear to play catch-up with other companies, there’s no telling when of if any of those Vision Pro issues mentioned above will ever be a focus for the company. Apple may go happily along in the prosumer space for next few years, and simply never play the feature-match game your average consumer probably expects.
Admittedly though, we’re still in the early days of what could be the coming ‘Android/iOS’ platform wars of XR. If history is any indication, Apple undoubtedly wants to remain monolithic with its ‘walled garden’ approach to product and software development. Meanwhile, Meta hopes to become the ‘Android of XR’ with the release of its Horizon OS (ex-Quest OS) and Horizon Store (ex-Meta Quest Store) to third parties for the first time, marking a monumental shift in how the company will operate as a more open platform holder—essentially beating Google at its own game.
Convergence does tend to happen eventually though. Scalability requires consumers, so companies hoping to make them happy oftentimes end up making the same decisions over time, including price point, ergonomics, access to popular apps: Just look at the black rectangle in your pocket for proof.
There are a ton of Vision Pro wish list features not mentioned in this article. Let us know in the comments below what you’re missing the most.
Logitech today unveiled an XR stylus that comes as Meta Quest’s first third-party motion peripheral, targeting creatives working in both 2D and 3D media.
Called Logitech MX Ink, the spatially-tracked stylus supports Quest 2 and Quest 3, as well as “future headsets,” Logitech says. The company additionally confirmed it won’t support Quest Pro.
Logitech MX Ink is said to have a “natural pen-like feel and pressure-sensitive tip,” which allows users to create, annotate, and navigate in XR environments. The device allows the user to pair with Quest and use it interchangeably with Quest controllers too, making it effectively the first time Meta’s headset can support more than two paired controllers at a time.
Image courtesy Logitech
When it ships in September, MX Ink will come with a dedicated stylus customization page in the updated Meta Settings UI, allowing users to adjust pressure curves for the nib and the primary buttons, initial activation force, and double tap timing.
To boot, MX Link includes haptic feedback, and is spatially tracked in 6DOF, boasting “low latency and high accuracy,” said to have similar tracking performance to the Quest controllers themselves.
In the box is a charging base designed to keep MX Ink charged and ready, however it also features a dedicated USB-C port so you can simply take the stylus when on the go. It also includes a pair of replaceable nibs, which allow the user to choose between a very fine nib as well as one larger nib.
Image courtesy Logitech
The company has listed a number of compatible Quest apps, which include Adobe Substance Modeler, Gravity Sketch, PaintingVR, Arkio, Engage, OpenBrush, GestureVR, ShapesXR, and Elucis by RealizeMedical.
Logitech MX Ink is slated to launch in late September, and be priced at $130. A product page isn’t up yet, but it should be available closer to Meta Connect 2024, which is taking place September 25th-26th.
ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission (2018) is one of most popular PSVR exclusives to date, however Sony-owned developers Team Asobi are releasing its widely hyped PS5 follow-up Astro Bot without the addition of VR support. Don’t hold out hope for a VR port either, as the studio has now confirmed it’s simply not in the cards.
Talking to Digital Trends, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet confirmed the upcoming Astro Bot can’t (and won’t) ever be a VR game due to its unique development for TVs.
“We’re focusing 100% on PS5,” Doucet told Digital Trends. “Rescue Mission was great fun to make. Every medium has its strong points. In the case of a third-person game, whether you work on TV or VR is radically different. This idea that we could add a VR mode is not applicable to this kind of game. It’s applicable to some first-person games like racing, but not for this kind of game. So our choice was to go 100% for TV to really have as many people as possible playing this game.”
Speaking to Push Square, Doucet fleshes the decision on why it wasn’t developed with a hybrid TV/VR mindset:
“Certain games can afford to be hybrid, like first-person games, because there’s a closer similarity. But in our case, the design philosophy for both are very, very different. So, you know, it was a decision to expand on the world of Astro’s Playroom and bring Astro to the big stage. So from the beginning, that was really our focus.”
Granted, Astro Bot’s origins were first rooted in flatscreen from the beginning, with the character’s development stretching back to 2013 when PlayStation’s now defunct SIE JAPAN Studio released the bundled mini-game demo THE PLAYROOM for PS4, which was created to show off the console’s then-newly released PlayStation Camera.
Later showing up in 2016 on the original PSVR, Japan Studio released The Playroom VR, another bundled set of mini-games, this time tasked with showing off the headset’s capabilities.
This would eventually spur Japan Studio, where Doucet was Creative Director and Producer of Astro Bot, to release the full-fledged Astro Bot Rescue Mission in 2018. It’s been widely celebrated as one of, if not the best VR games to come to PSVR. In fact, we liked Astro Bot Rescue Mission so much, we scored the VR native platformer our first [10/10] in our full review.
Then, in 2020, just prior to Japan Studio’s closure, the studio released Astro’s Playroom, which served as a tech demo to PS5’s DualSense controller. Team Asobi would live on, headed by Doucet, while Japan Studio would be shuttered by PlayStation in 2021.
Notably, Astro Bot Rescue Mission has never received a PSVR 2 port, highlighting yet further the headset’s lack of backwards compatibility with original PSVR games.
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Maybe this “one for flatscreens, one for VR” pattern will continue on, but we’re not holding our breaths for now, as the studio is no doubt full steam ahead on hyping the upcoming PS5 exclusive, which we now know for sure will never come to VR headsets.
