AC thVRsday
In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content material Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all issues VR, from new {hardware} to new video games, upcoming applied sciences, and a lot extra.
The online game crash of 1983 is known. Even when you weren’t alive on the time (which I wasn’t), you seemingly know that an ideal storm of overinvestment and poor high quality video games compelled your entire online game trade right into a deep melancholy. This phenomenon has lengthy been studied and predicted to recur, and it is solely attainable that we simply witnessed historical past repeating itself final month.
Whereas the market’s dynamics in 1983 had been wildly totally different from the online game market everyone knows and love immediately, the parallels between Atari’s failures and Meta’s dealing with of the Quest over the previous few years are strikingly related. Nonetheless, a small contingent of builders is seeing success, even when the swath of Gorilla Tag clones and Horizon Worlds slop continues to bury high quality titles from would-be clients.
Simulating jobs
One in every of VR’s earliest success tales is the sport Job Simulator, which is extensively revered not just for its on-point humor but in addition for its uniquely interactive qualities and mechanics which have held up over a decade of adjusting VR beliefs. It is since been put in over 6 million instances, and its multiplayer successor, Dimensional Double Shift (DDS), simply crossed over the 1-million installs mark solely a 12 months after it launched in beta.
However DDS is attaining success in a really totally different market than the one Job Simulator launched in. Again in 2016, the sport debuted on Steam and PlayStation VR, two conventional gaming platforms that enchantment to a really totally different set of avid gamers than the present Meta Quest crowd, which regularly defaults to mobile-style free-to-play video games over bigger, extra formidable choices.
Owlchemy Labs CEO, Andrew Eiche, had fairly a bit to say in regards to the evolving market and the place issues are headed in an interview I carried out with him this previous week. Regardless of some main setbacks with Meta’s studio closures and technique adjustments these days, Eiche had a surprisingly rosy outlook on the trade and the place VR gaming is headed subsequent.
Talking on the success of free-to-play video games like his personal Dimensional Double Shift, he advised me the attraction wasn’t simply that it was free to leap in and play, but in addition its fashion. “For those who take a look at the broader gaming panorama, there is a push in direction of play as play,” Eiche advised me. “We had a big push for a lot of, a few years in direction of aggressive multiplayer video games, and I feel you are beginning to see slightly little bit of a backlash.”
Whereas some individuals actually benefit from the high-skill nature of aggressive video games, numerous individuals merely do not have the time to get adequate to compete. In lots of of those video games, Eiche notes that gamers must “play your position, or we’ll accuse you of throwing the sport, and we’ll get very mad.”
The communities for cooperative and “slop” style video games, corresponding to R.E.P.O, Deadly Firm, Dimensional Double Shift, and Amongst Us, are sometimes distinct. Fairly than push gamers to win in any respect prices, the objective is “I assume you could possibly play the sport if you need and we’ll gently push you in direction of our targets,” which is strictly what Dimensional Double Shift does. The purpose is to have enjoyable with different individuals and benefit from the restricted time you might need to play video video games. Think about that!
The perils of free-to-play
Meta’s dealing with of the Quest’s app retailer has been referred to as into query many instances over by avid gamers and builders alike. The swap to permitting pure shovelware to launch alongside big-name titles like Batman: Arkham Shadow or Skydance’s Behemoth has been critiqued to kingdom come, and rightly so, because it has induced a considerable drop in gross sales on the platform in comparison with two years in the past when the shop was extremely curated.
Meta’s shift to selling Horizon Worlds content material over paid experiences has pushed lifetime avid gamers away from the platform, and Gen Alpha’s adoption of Quest as a extra enjoyable method to play has drastically shifted the viewers to 1 that always chooses free-to-play content material first.
Whereas that is nice for video games like DDS, it’s extremely unhealthy for a lot of others. Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, has admitted that errors had been made and that the corporate is working to show issues round, but it surely’s too little, too late for many individuals.
Eiche has been across the VR scene for even longer than me, so, in fact, I needed to ask him what he thought of what’s occurred this 12 months. “My idea is that, on the worst, that is 1983, and we’re in our Atari second the place an organization has doubtlessly put out too many tendrils in too many locations and moved slightly too quick and now has to again up. Whether or not Meta finally ends up because the Atari of VR is TBD.”
Unsurprisingly, Bosworth has a extra constructive tackle the adjustments at Meta. “We’re nonetheless investing extra in content material than anybody else. We’re even investing in additional content material than I feel we had been even a 12 months in the past,” he advised viewers in an Instagram AMA on February 3, 2026.
There is definitely loads of reality to Meta having invested extra in VR than anybody else, however the diploma to which the corporate is definitely investing is anybody’s greatest guess. We do know that Actuality Labs spending is not altering in 2026, regardless of Meta’s studio closures, however the firm is something however clear about the way it spends its money.
Whereas there’s loads of debate about what the way forward for VR gaming appears like, many events stay very constructive about the way forward for VR {hardware} and experiences. Eiche says he is “very excited for the Steam Body and Challenge Aura,” two enormous 2026 releases anticipated to change the XR panorama for years to come back.
Meta can be working on a considerably smaller, lighter headset that is reportedly going to be launched subsequent Spring. Rumors say they seem like a pair of glasses fairly than a VR headset and are referred to as Challenge Phoenix, as pictured above. Boz briefly teased it on the February third AMA, saying “not simply the subsequent one gadget, however the subsequent two gadgets that we’re [building] are very thrilling.”
The actual query is whether or not Meta can repair the Quest retailer in time for an thrilling new {hardware} launch. “The way in which the shop is structured has an unlimited influence on what the video games seem like,” Eiche advised me, and he is very proper. The present retailer design is rather like a cellular app retailer and “drives costs to free and consolidates round a couple of massive gamers with smaller groups discovering success in bursts.” Whether or not this or the Steam mannequin is the actual success ultimately will probably be anybody’s greatest guess.
