AWE USA 2026 is returning to the Long Beach, CA on June 15–18. As the most important annual XR event on our calendar, we’re excited to once again be able to offer an exclusive 20% discount on tickets as the event’s Premiere Media Partner.
Since I started attending AWE USA in 2018, the conference has grown in scale and scope, offering increasingly more interesting and valuable sessions, exhibitors, and networking. It has steadily evolved into what I consider the must-go event for the XR industry. It carries the torch of passion that ignited the XR space back when it was little more than kickstarters, meetups, and those crazy enough to believe that immersive tech was not only possible to build, but worth building.
That’s why I’m proud to announce that Road to VR is once again joining AWE USA 2026 as the event’s Premiere Media Partner.
In addition to our usual reporting from the event, we’ll be highlighting the most interesting sessions and exhibitors ahead of the show, and offering an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to AWE USA 2026. Super Early Bird passes are available until March 19th—there won’t be a better deal!
AWE USA 2026 will be held at the Long Beach Convention Center in California from June 15th to 18th, and it’s expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees, 3,250 exhibitors, 400 speakers, and feature a 150,000 sqft expo floor.
This year the conference is further growing its gaming and location-based entertainment (LBE) segments.
The gaming section of the show floor is not only growing to accommodate more exhibitors and attendees, but there’s a brand new LBE space dedicated to VR attractions, arcades, and activations.
Alongside the extra show floor real estate attendees can also expect a broader range of presentations and panels in the gaming & LBE track, with a full agenda coming soon. If you’re interested in featuring your game or LBE experience at AWE USA 2026, be sure to check out the upcoming webinar to learn more about the opportunities at the event.
nDreams, one of VR’s most senior game studios, announced plans to close two internal studios responsible for some of its most forward-thinking VR projects, which could also include a sizable number of layoffs.
While nDreams hasn’t officially shuttered Near Light or Compass at this point, the company says in a LinkenIn post that it could soon see a reduction of 78 roles across “all levels and multiple teams, including senior leadership.”
“Despite every effort to make our existing structure a success and avert this outcome, the VR games market remains challenging, making further changes necessary to ensure a commercially viable and sustainable future,” nDreams says.
nDreams spun up Elevation in 2022 to produce ‘AAA’ quality VR games. Elevation released its debut solo title Reach (2025) across all major VR headsets last year, making for a strong opening bid as the company’s remote-first studio.
That same year, nDreams acquired Near Light, a Brighton, UK-based studio known for virtual travel experience Perfect (2016) and single-player arcade shooter Shooty Fruity (2018). More recently, Near Light released PvP shooter Frenzies, which launched into early access in Quest in 2024.
In early 2025, nDreams opened internal an additional internal studio called ‘Compass’, which melded staff from both its nDreams Studio Orbital and nDreams Studio after a layoff round in late 2024 that affected 17.5% of the company.
Founded in 2013, nDreams has released a host of VR games over the years as both developer and publisher, including Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), Fracked (2021), Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord(2023), and Vendetta Forever (2024).
This follows wider turmoil in the VR games industry, most recently precipitated by Meta’s reorganization of its Reality Labs XR division and rash of first-party studio closures, which included the shuttering of Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR), and Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath).
Here’s nDreams’ full statement below:
Our team was today informed of proposals to restructure nDreams, including a significant reduction in overall staffing levels. These changes would impact all levels and multiple teams, including senior leadership.
Since 2024, our staff have been divided across three internal studios: Elevation, Near Light, and Compass. At the core of the restructured business will be Elevation, which currently has around 120 staff engaged on unannounced projects. nDreams will also retain a lean group dedicated to XR R&D. Together, we will remain focused on delivering world-class VR and XR games.
Regrettably, the proposals include the closure of the Near Light and Compass studios, and a reduction in our Facilities, Talent, Shared Technology, and Executive teams, with 78 roles at risk of redundancy. Despite every effort to make our existing structure a success and avert this outcome, the VR games market remains challenging, making further changes necessary to ensure a commercially viable and sustainable future.
We’re committed to exploring every option to retain talent and will now enter a collective consultation process with the people impacted by these proposals. We recognise that this will be stressful and challenging for everyone affected and will be offering support throughout the process.
Microsoft today announced the codename of its next Xbox gaming console: Project Helix. Details are very light, but the company says Project Helix will “play your Xbox and PC games.” Naturally that’s got us curious about whether or not PC VR games could be in the mix, but there’s no word yet.
Xbox’s newly minted CEO Asha Sharma today teased the company’s next-gen Xbox. She confirmed the device is codenamed ‘Project Helix’.
“Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games. Looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week!” she said on X.
Aside from this brief tease, it seems there’s no other official info being revealed, though we’ve reached out to the company for comment. The line about the company seeking to chat with “partners and studios” suggests this is the first time Project Helix is even being mentioned outside of internal conversations. Rumors suggest the console will launch in 2027.
So we have essentially no details yet on what the company means when it says Project Helix will be able to ‘play PC games’. But the possibility at least exists that this could open the door to compatibility with PC VR games too.
Granted, PC VR lives almost exclusively within the Steam ecosystem thanks to Valve’s ongoing support for the SteamVR platform. And while it’s technically possible that VR games could run on Project Helix without Steam (thanks to OpenXR), VR on Project Helix would be largely a non-starter if the console can’t somehow access the Steam library, because that’s the only active marketplace for the distribution of PC VR content.
If Project Helix can be ‘fully unlocked’ and operate like any normal Windows PC, there’s no reason to think that Steam and SteamVR content wouldn’t be able to run on the console. But if Microsoft plans to keep the system’s PC support locked down in some way, then practical support for PC VR content is unlikely without the company’s express interest in allowing it.
Microsoft has a storied history when it comes to VR. Not only did the company make a significant attempt at entering the market with its Windows Mixed Reality platform (only to abandon that project after several years), but back in 2016 the company officially said that its upcoming Xbox One X would include support for “high fidelity VR” gaming. By the time the console actually reached the market in 2017, those plans had been scrapped.
While we don’t expect an about-face on VR support from Xbox itself, it will be interesting to see if Project Helix retains full PC capabilities, and thus the ability to run PC VR content.
South Korea-based XR company NP Inc showed off a unique solution to combat employee fatigue at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week, combining a small pod with a VR headset.
The News
NP, developer of the MUA app for Quest, unveiled MUA’H (MUA Home) this past week, a single-person pod unit designed to provide an immediate “digital detox and psychological restoration right in the middle of the corporate workspace,” the company says.
It’s not just a small box with a Quest 3 headset though. NP says Mua Home uses “non-contact sensors” to monitor six vital signs in real-time, including Heart Rate Variability (HRV), heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature.
All of this pairs with a VR headset to deliver a customized XR meditation experience via data fed into NP’s own ‘MIND-C AI’, NP says.
Image courtesy NP Inc
What’s more, the Seoul-based company says its Mua Home platform will also let management identify stress levels and proactively manage employee burnout risks, albeit using anonymized data so a boss can’t essentially spy on their employees individual health or wellbeing concerns.
At MWC this week, NP showed off a prototype version of the VR-pod, which featured carpeted floors, cushions, and sliding privacy door. Check it out in action in this YouTube Short.
My Take
Like many places, burnout is a pretty big deal in Korea. Recent statistics maintain that around 30 percent of young Koreans suffered from burnout over the course of 2024. It’s a multifaceted issue spanning stuff like excessive workload, bad company culture, perceived fairness, etc—but one of the common denominators in almost all modern offices is the open floorplan.
Open floorplan offices are supposed to create better flow, allow coworkers to collaborate more efficiently, and give managers more direct supervision. In practice though, they could even be counterproductive, as they tend to create noisy environments that lack privacy—two things that can reduce productivity and cause constant stress.
Sadly, the question isn’t how companies can reorganize their offices for better mental health outcomes from the start—if that were the case, open floorplan offices would be a thing of the past—but how they can make the largest impact with the smallest investment. That’s where our slightly dystopian cube comes in, which is actually trading on the idea of how small it is, and how simple it is to construct and place in an unused corner.
Image courtesy Amazon
Granted, NP isn’t the first company to think of ‘mindfulness nooks’. Many companies, including Google, Apple and Nike offer employees quiet rooms for things like mediation, naps, and silent prayer. Enclosed pods however color the issue in a slightly more malignant light. Amazon tried telephone booth-style pods back in 2021, and was widely mocked for essentially creating cheap ‘cry closets’, as the company is know for high burnout rates and some of the most draconian employee performance metrics.
Even in the context of a cramped Korean office, I’d consider these sorts of compact pods essentially a band-aid to a larger problem. To Mua Home’s credit, it at least has the ability to simulate a larger area while focusing on worker health and wellbeing in the process. Still, the optics are objectively terrible, as it conjures up images of stressed workers climbing into what is essentially a capsule hotel for their company-mandated mood correction. It’s all maybe a little too Severance for comfort.
Resident Evil Requiem (2026) hasn’t been out for more than a week, and there’s already a basic PC VR mod waiting in the wings.
While Capcom may have “no plans” for VR support, VR modder ‘Praydog’ has released a Resident Evil Requiem mod that lets you play the entire game with a PC VR headset— albeit with a few caveats.
While Praydog’s REFramework supports motion controllers across a host of Resident Evil games, the VR mod for Requiem is still a gamepad-only experience for now. Notably, early players, such as YouTuber ‘Beardo Benjo‘, liken it to a “first pass.”
Praydog has developed their mod suite to work with all games running on the RE Engine, so it’s likely the Requiem mod will see a fair amount of tweaking in the coming days. It’s still probably best to wait if you plan on playing it from start to finish in VR though.
It’s pretty basic for now, essentially only allowing you to play in first-person VR without much more VR-native considerations made, including menus, motion controls, or immersive affordances for cutscenes. Provided Praydog smooths out those issues, like they did with Resident Evil Village (2021) andResident Evil 7 (2017), it stands to become the most immersive RE game to date.
In the meantime, you can nab the mod for free over on Praydog’s RE Framework GitHub and following along with all of the nightly updates too. Additionally, you can support Praydog via their Patreon page.
Check out the VR mod in action, courtesy Beardo Benjo:
Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth detailed why he thinks he might have failed VR gaming fans, and why some people are angry, noting that it’s probably because the “gravy train has come to a stop.”
The News
Bosworth took to Instagram for another one of his weekly Q&As, where he fields questions from followers. In yesterday’s session, Bosworth answered this: “Do you feel that you have failed VR gaming fans? With so many sunsets and studio closures?”
“It’s really up to the people to decide whether I failed them or not,” Bosworth says. “I suppose it does raise the age-old question: ‘is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?'”
Quest 3S (left), Quest 3 (right) | Images courtesy Meta
“Many of the people who might say I failed them would say so because they loved things that I gave them, and are mad that the gravy train has come to a stop. But I still respect that,” Bosworth says.
But it’s not the first-party studio closures and near full-stop on VR game funding that Bosworth thinks is the failure: it’s customer acquisition.
“I don’t think I failed them because obviously they’re already fans. They love the work. The people that argue that I’ve failed are not yet VR gaming fans, who I think could be—who we hoped would be by now, but who aren’t.”
The failure, in Bosworth’s eyes, is not having created the right product for people who haven’t already adopted VR.
“And I haven’t built the right thing, or the right software to get them into the ecosystem. That is the failure. That is what we’re trying to attack in new and different ways: is to grow the base, to make this thing sustainable.”
My Take
Essentially, Bosworth’s statement reads me like this: be glad for what I gave you, because you’re not getting any more. You have to realize that the only thing we can do now is try to get more people in… somehow.
But who are those people that Meta hopes to reach? And if they don’t want big, expensive single-player content that pushes the boundaries of standalone gameplay, what do they want? Meta’s strategy is too opaque to say for sure, but here’s my best guess at what’s happening.
For years, Meta funded big, polished single-player titles to prove standalone VR could deliver console-style gaming. That bought goodwill with core enthusiasts, but didn’t materially expand the addressable market, or drive recurring revenue at scale. That’s the only thing Meta is focused on now it seems, as the “gravy train” has effectively stopped.
Asgard’s Wrath 2 | Image courtesy Sanzuru Games, Meta
In that context, Bosworth’s “failure” comment makes more sense. It’s not that the existing fans weren’t served—they were. It’s that the strategy didn’t convert enough non-fans into regular, paying users. That, and Meta has always been the ones to ‘show’ other studios how to build VR games—what with best practices and all—but for the past few years it’s been less about best practices and more about being the only company with deep enough pockets to create prestige content for Quest.
But before running off to compare Meta’s pullback to Sony’s vis-Ã -vis PSVR 2, there are at least two rumored headsets on the horizon: codename ‘Griffin’, expected to arrive sometime in 2027 and possibly succeed Quest 3, and a slim and light, puck-tethered headset codenamed ‘Puffin’ or ‘Phoenix’, also expected in 2027.
That said, kids have been big revenue drivers since the release of Quest 2, which has directly translated to Quest 3S. As it is, Meta announced last year that younger users were helping to push a new emphasis on free-to-play content, which in turn has helped drive in-app purchases. Last week, Reality Labs VP of Content Samantha Ryan revealed in-app purchases increased by 13% year-over-year, which notably didn’t even coincide with a new headset launch. Quest has no real competitor in the West, so Quest 3S is likely going to be around for a few more years so younger players have an easy entry point and continue to drive in-app purchases.
And at the same time, Meta has effectively decoupled Quest from its Horizon Worlds social platform, which was dead weight on Quest. This has essentially left the Quest platform re-focused back on VR gaming, albeit created solely by third-party studios and not Meta itself. So, Quest is back to gaming without the Horizon Worlds faff mixed in, but it won’t have any new first-party sponsored content either.
In all, this feel less like abandonment and more like a tactical retreat. Meta is investing in VR more than anyone, not to mention upcoming AR glasses and possible quick follow-up to Meta Ray-Ban Display. Games will still come, and some may even benefit from Meta funding to some extent, albeit not at the same scale as before. At least as Meta presents it, the long-term vision is still there; it just needs more sustainable spending and a different model to scale.
Meta has finally brought VR’s favorite block-slashing rhythm game to its Horizon+ subscription service. If you were hoping to jump into Beat Saber’s (2019) massive swath of DLC content though, you’ll still need to toss out a few bucks.
The News
Horizon+ subscribers probably already know the score. Meta says in its terms and conditions that apps in the 100+ catalogue only include the base games themselves, and not free access to paid DLC, in-game currency, etc.
Normally priced at $30, the base comes with 62 free songs which arrived from its eight OST Music Pack drops, Extras, and Camellia Pack. Excluding the 26 purchasable Mixtape and Music Packs released over the years, Meta has brought a total of 239 paid songs to the game—effectively making the bulk of Beat Saber’s content paywalled.
Notably, Horizon+ members must keep paying the $8 per-month subscription price (or $60 annual) to retain access to games. Still, it’s not a bad deal—especially considering every new Quest 3 and Quest 3S purchase comes with a three-month trial.
Popular titles included in the 100+ catalogue include Ghosts of Tabor, Job Simulator, Red Matter, Cubism, Pistol Whip, Moss, Walkabout Mini Golf, Demeo Battles, and Asgard’s Wrath 2.
It also benefits from monthly game drops, with March including Arizona Sunshine Remake and The Pirate: Republic of Nassau. You can see the full list here.
My Take
Meta is essentially making Beat Saber free to all new users, many of whom probably would have bought the game anyway. Granted, that’s through a three-month trial, although it may be enough for users to personally figure out whether the calculus of Horizon+ shakes out in their favor.
It is slightly more insidious than that though. Once you buy a DLC pack for a Horizon+ game like Beat Saber, the sunk cost fallacy takes over. You need to either buy the game once the trial ends, start paying for Horizon+ indefinitely to keep the game and access to DLC, or part ways entirely—knowing you have DLC for a game you don’t actually own, (and will never get a refund for).
By putting its most popular first-party game in Horizon+ though, it says to me that not only is the game possibly nearing end-of-life (or at least end of any heavy-hitting DLC), but that Meta is attempting to make Horizon+ into its biggest revenue streams moving forward—because it’s certainly not funding games like it used to.
That said, Meta announced last month that Horizon+ had topped over one million active subscribers throughout the course of 2025. Nobody really knows how Meta defines “active,” or whether that includes users on the three-month trial, but the company doesn’t tend to reveal user numbers/sales volumes unless they reach significant milestones, making it a first any way you slice it.
This year the conference is further growing its gaming and location-based entertainment (LBE) segments.
Alongside the extra show floor real estate attendees can also expect a broader range of presentations and panels in the gaming & LBE track, with a full agenda coming soon. If you’re interested in featuring your game or LBE experience at AWE USA 2026, be sure to check out the upcoming webinar to learn more about the opportunities at the event.
