I’m pleased to announced that longtime Editor Scott Hayden is stepping up to become Road to VR’s new Executive Editor.
After starting with Road to VR as a freelancer in 2014, becoming a contributor in 2016, and then Editor in 2019, Scott Hayden is now the publication’s new Executive Editor. As such, Scott is responsible for all editorial decisions and strategy, and for upholding the standards of reporting that Road to VR has been dedicated to over the last 15 years.
There’s no way I’d miss my last opportunity—as the one with the final say on editorial—to use this photo of Scott!
And in the 12 years since, he’s gone from a strong writer to a great reporter with incredible versatility; Scott has handled it all: daily news, reviews, interviews, international conferences, editorial insights, and, much more. And, importantly, he knows how to make the tough editorial calls that ensure Road to VR’s coverage remains journalism rather than marketing.
Beyond his dedication to the Road to VR mission, Scott is also a very intelligent, very curious, and very kind person whom I’m fortunate to have as a colleague. I can think of literally no one better to maintain this publication’s values as it continues to evolve with the world of XR over the coming years.
A Welcome Letter From Scott
In early 2014, I bought a used Oculus Rift DK1 off eBay. At the time, I felt like I was late to the game. I wasn’t an original backer of the 2013 Kickstarter. I wasn’t a developer, and I had no real intentions of becoming one. But I could own something that I knew was a piece of the future. Something I could strap to my head to experience a multitude of worlds outside my tiny Italian apartment.
I started a VR-focused blog, which is now defunct (and cringey to look back on), but it was a place where I could exercise my thoughts and learn how I do best: by writing. Soon after, I started working as a freelancer for Road to VR under Ben Lang and Paul James, who took me, as a recent history undergrad already very comfortable with research and writing, and gave me the mentorship and public forum to cover history as it happened.
Over the years, that sporadic experiment in writing turned into a career I never really planned on having. I watched the industry mature, learned how to report on it, and eventually found myself doing as much editing and shaping of the publication as I did writing for it.
Now, after 12 years, a few job titles, uncountable press room coffees, and many late nights, that passion has only grown.
I’m excited and deeply honored to lead Road to VR as executive editor. I think I’ve interacted with Ben for so long now that I almost have a miniature version of him inside my head. As you’ll read from Ben further below, he’ll still be here to help, but his focus is shifting toward improving the reader experience with fixes and new features. Where he does still contribute occasional writing, he not only agreed—but actually insisted—that he won’t cover anything that would involve a conflict of interest with his new role.
As I’d hope our long-time readers can attest, Road to VR’s values are clear: we practice journalism, and we don’t do cheerleading. Some of that comes from the knowledge that the XR industry doesn’t need us and will thrive on its own merits. That’s the lens I’ve used when covering VR games, hardware, and the companies who make it all, which sometimes would rather we signal-boost a press release than ask why.
Sometimes you need to go against your best interests to cover a story independently. I’ve done that for the last decade and expect anyone who commits their name to a Road to VR byline to do the same.
As VR changes and grows, we’ll continue following the road toward perfectly indistinguishable virtual reality—that’s the actual road we’re on, by the way. There will be plenty of crossroads along the way, and I’m excited to help navigate them.
At least on the immediate horizon, AI is disrupting both traditional journalism and the ways we consume news, while XR is becoming increasingly intertwined with the same AI-powered technologies.
As we thread these challenges, Road to VR will continue as it always has: by being intensely human, not only in the stories we write, but in the curiosity and skepticism our readership expects from us.
Ben Lang Becomes Road to VR Business Director Alongside XR Industry Role
With Scott taking my place as Executive Editor, I’m shifting to the new role of Business Director. After 15 years of being responsible for editorial strategy, alongside the entirety of Road to VR as a business, this new role gives me the opportunity to rebalance my time and focus on some underserved areas of Road to VR, specifically: the reader experience and media platform side.
Road to VR is a completely different beast compared to when I started it as a little hobby blog back in 2011. The world of online media has changed considerably, and so have the expectation of readers. With this new focus, my goal is to bring Road to VR—as a platform—into the modern era.
The work is already well underway.
Earlier this year we launched Road to VR 5.0 which brought a massive improvement in speed, a vastly improved responsive and mobile experience, and clearer organization of content to help readers go beyond just the front page. Behind the scenes it also streamlined the writing process, improved our ability to serve inline video content, and plenty more.
Since then we’ve also rolled out a ‘dark mode’ (which you can toggle in the top right of the menu bar), and piloted interactive content in our articles (like the timeline here). And there’s more in the works that you’ll see over the months to come.
While I’m excited about what’s in the works for Road to VR, my total time as Business Director will be kept to part-time status, making way for my new full-time focus as the Head of Strategic Partnerships at VITURE.
I’m excited to take the leap from reporting on the industry to being part of the industry proper, and what we’re building at Viture. I’ll be happy to talk more about that over on my personal Twitter or LinkedIn, but Road to VR’s editorial surfaces have never been a place for marketing, and that isn’t going to start now.
Quite the opposite, actually. Conditional on my acceptance of VITURE’s offer, the company signed an agreement that completely insulates it from any efforts to use my position as leverage to influence decisions made at Road to VR.
I expect I will still contribute some writing to Road to VR here and there—after all, you don’t go from 15 years studying this space closely to suddenly having zero opinions about it—but my writings will never be about Viture or matters in which my position with the company would create a conflict of interest.
And with the Executive Editorship in Scott’s hands, I feel confident that Road to VR will retain the editorial independence that we’ve worked to maintain over all these years.
Meta is partnering with ESPN to offer select live, 180-degree immersive college football games all season long via Quest’s TV app. When Meta VR Glasses release next spring, Meta says there are also 100+ live sporting events on the horizon.
Live games will be streamed in 8K with Dolby Atmos, and 180-degree views so user can see the entire field. Additionally, users will be able to catch up with immersive full-game replays and highlights on demand, which will be accessible for a full week after the game.
Meta hasn’t released the full scheduled yet, although the ESPN partnership is set to bring immersive games to the TV app every week through the regular season. That’s set to include Conference Championship Weekend and the College Football Playoff, including the 2027 CFP National Championship in January.
As announced at Connect 2026 last month, Meta plans to offer 100+ sporting events in 2027 as a part of its ongoing partnerships with MLB, NBC Sports, TNT Sports, and UFC.
Granted, the company has hosted a fair number of live sports streams in the past on Quest, with its biggest commit coming alongside the Quest 3S launch in 2024, which brought 52 immersive livestreamed NBA games to the platform.
That said, it seems Meta is going for a broader content strategy than it has before, possibly providing more types of sports than games as such. We’re likely to learn more next year as the company pushes out specific schedules and inevitably chums the waters to attract would-be upgraders and new users alike to VR Glasses.
Meta says VR Glasses are a different product for a different market. Quest isn’t dead, but it has been relegated, as the company has pulled back from games, shut down a number of studios, and is ostensibly building on its next chapter around something else.
VR Glasses
Meta VR Glasses are a compute-puck-tethered mixed reality headset that’s going on sale sometime in Spring 2027, priced at $1,300.
They use the same operating system as Quest, which means the same games as Quest 3. Although it’s a hand-tracking-first device, it can pair with Touch Plus motion controllers to play the full back catalogue of Quest titles. Check out our hands-on for the full details.
VR Glasses aren’t really a straightforward Quest replacement though, as they’re substantially more expensive, less immersive due to a lower field-of-view, and are being positioned around productivity, communication, and casual media consumption rather than gaming.
Courtesy Meta
When asked why VR Glasses aren’t a Quest Air, Quest 4, or Quest Pro 2, Meta’s Vice President of VR Ryan Cairns explained VR Glasses are a part of the company’s glasses continuum.
“The thing we wanted to signal with the product is: it’s a different product for a different market. It reads like glasses, so we wanted to have it in the spectrum of glasses that go from audio to full immersive VR Glasses.”
To their credit, VR Glasses are sleek and light, and are basically what Apple Vision Pro should have been in the first place. They’re also taking some of the best bits from Quest, repackaging them as new, and selling them to a new audience. But they aren’t Quest, at least not according to Meta.
A Stepping Stone to AR
Anyone who’s followed Meta/Facebook can attest to how erratic its VR strategy has been over the years. So, even with the new, more grownup version of its VR ambitions on display with VR Glasses, it’s difficult to say exactly what the company’s product strategy is right now.
What is certain, though: Meta has shown it can easily cast away years of brand recognition in service of The Bigger Picture, and drastically redefine its hardware ambitions.
Oculus Quest (left), Rift S (right) | Courtesy Meta
In 2021, the company retired the Oculus name, which up to that point included Oculus Rift DK1, Oculus Rift DK2, Oculus Rift (oft referred to as CV1), Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift S, and Oculus Quest 2—making Oculus nearly synonymous with VR. It even changed the name of its most successful VR headset to date mid-generation, retroactively applying the Meta name to Quest 2 that year.
We may be seeing another rebrand, if a quieter one. But it looks more like a broad bet on augmented reality.
VR Glasses are light and hand-tracking-first, and they also have a more limited field-of-view, making them a natural bridge to the AR glasses Meta is clearly working toward, and more similar in function to Orion AR glasses prototype unveiled alongside Quest 3S in 2024.
The VR Pullback
Let’s rewind a bit. It all started earlier this year when Meta shut down three of its most-important internal VR studios: Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR), and Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), all of which were actively developing premium VR content.
Meanwhile, Meta also pulled funding from a number of partner studios, which allegedly led to the cancellation of a Harry Potter Quest game from Skydance Games, VR veteran Cloudhead Games, and a “major project” from Moss developer Polyarc. The cancellation left Polyarc in bad enough shape that the studio was forced to shut down last month.
Asgard’s Wrath 2 | Courtesy Sanzaru Games
It’s fairly clear the company was reacting to an underperforming games market and reining in a multi-million-dollar spending spree on content for a platform that still wasn’t turning a profit after seven years of Quest headsets.
Shortly after Meta announced Reality Labs was pivoting to wearables and AI, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth acknowledged the shift, saying the “gravy train has come to a stop.”
It’s an accurate, if indelicate, way of describing the situation. Millions of dollars put toward content was turned off like a spigot, but the fallout went beyond the individual games shelved mid-development.
Hard-won expertise, which Meta worked to attract and shape over the years, had to look elsewhere. Schell Games, the studio behind the VR hits Until You Fall, Among Us VR, and the I Expect You to Die trilogy, has been one of the most ardent opponents against layoffs. Only now has the studio conducted its first layoff in its 24 years of existence.
“There was a time when headset-based VR was 80% of our work, but at the moment it is more like 30%,” said Schell Games CEO Jesse Schell. “We are doing more and more work that is VR-adjacent, such as projects involving interactive projection for location-based entertainment, which we think is a growing trend.”
Mighty Coconut, developer of hit golfing game Walkabout Mini Golf, has been through its second round of layoffs.
“Due to the current state of the games industry and especially VR, Mighty Coconut will need to downsize, and over the next several months we will be saying goodbye to 10 talented people who have helped make Walkabout what it is,” CEO Lucas Martell said last week.
Closing studios, upending a highly-specialized developer ecosystem, and cancelling multi-year projects isn’t generally something you do if you plan to launch another console-class headset anytime soon.
Metaverse Lost
The pullback goes beyond VR games too. Meta has since shuttered Horizon Workrooms and disentangled Horizon Worlds from Quest entirely, making it a purely non-VR social platform.
Horizon Worlds | Courtesy Meta
And it doesn’t seem to be a temporary correction to Meta’s games budget either; more like a broader redefinition of what Quest, or rather VR Glasses, is supposed to be, as the metaverse simply isn’t company’s spiritual anchor anymore.
With VR Glasses for grownups coming next year, Meta is also planning to release VR avatars for grownups too, which feel more like a sober Zoom meetings than a magical metaverse full of people and things to do. It’s a decidedly Apple-like move, and I suspect it’s aimed at beating the Cupertino Fruit Company at its own game.
No Assurances of Quest 4 at Connect
Bosworth is a polarizing figure, but is also one of the more open windows into Reality Labs. He regularly hosts Q&A sessions on Instagram and runs the ‘Boz to the Future’ podcast. Few other Meta execs speak as regularly and as candidly about Meta’s XR direction.
Meta is constantly spinning up (and down) XR prototypes, so almost anything can be explained away. But when it comes to actual products, the company seems only talk about one device generation at a time.
Meta VR Glasses | Photo captured by Road to VR
It’s understandable why they wouldn’t talk about Quest at the unveiling of VR Glasses. Even so, VR fans looking for a flagship gaming device will have to wait longer than ever. Quest 3 is now three years old, which was the same age Quest 2 was before it came along and replaced it.
When asked whether there will be a future Quest headset specifically focused on gaming, a Meta spokesperson said this to Road to VR:
“We are continuing to explore a robust roadmap of VR devices tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures.”
Notably, that doesn’t promise a gaming-focused VR headset.
But Maybe…
None of this means Quest is dead. And I wouldn’t expect Meta to announce it either if it were the case. It’s probably more nuanced.
It’s pretty clear Meta is no longer positioning Quest to be the future of everything. It can easily remain a relatively affordable gaming platform, with a large enough install base and an established ecosystem for it to continue to make sense to Meta to keep the lights on and dole out nominal developer support for third-party developers.
So maybe Quest isn’t doomed. Maybe its stays commercially viable enough to survive even despite being strategically relegated inside Meta, which is undoubtedly looking at VR Glasses to help bridge the gap to its AR glasses. Those will likely be less gaming-focused, with a smaller field-of-view, and be all about agentic AI. Just like VR Glasses.
That said, VR Glasses’ success is not entirely assured. How well it does next year may determine whether Meta continues its gaming-focused Quest line, or coasts until Quest 3 and 3S stocks runs out. I certainly hope it isn’t the latter.
The Norwegian government announced it’s aiming to introduce a temporary ban on smart glasses in a number of public locations, citing privacy as the main concern.
While the government says the temporary ban is a high priority, it must still be introduced as legislation and approved by Norway’s parliament, so its passage—and the scope of any eventual ban—aren’t yet certain.
Still, the temporary ban could prohibit the use of smart glasses (called ‘AI glasses’ in the official bulletin) in a number of public locations in the country, such as parks, beaches, museums, shopping malls and public events.
Norway’s Ministry of Digitization and Public Administration maintains the temporary ban could extend to a number of other spaces as well.
Places and events for children, such as schools, kindergartens, playgrounds and leisure clubs are possibilities. The ministry also says health institutions and training facilities with changing rooms and showers, in addition to universities, colleges and other educational institutions are currently under consideration as well.
Gentle Monster Smart Glasses | Courtesy Google & Samsung
Notably, Norway’s government says it’s not proposing an outright ban on smart glasses and other wearables; those devices will still be allowed in certain places in addition to purely private use, for example if you’re traveling somewhere that doesn’t inherently include the risk of filming or photographing other people without their consent.
“I am concerned that new, powerful technology is being introduced where people risk being photographed, filmed or audio recorded without their knowledge,” says Minister of Digitalization and Public Administration Torgeir Micaelsen. “We will therefore propose a temporary ban on AI glasses in selected places. This will give us time to conduct a thorough investigation and have an informed debate that can lay a good foundation for lasting regulation.”
Additionally, Micaelsen maintains the ban is effort to curb the creation of a society “where people are concerned about hidden audio recordings, photography and filming in places and situations where they are used to being without being monitored. Such a society can be experienced as unsafe and make us withdraw.”
Meanwhile, a special council will be established to look at permanent national regulation of wearable technology. It’s not clear at this time whether that includes audio-only smart glasses as well, like those introduced by Meta late last month.
This comes amid growing scrutiny over smart glasses privacy. New legislation earlier this year in number of US states and cities, including New York state and Philadelphia, has effectively banned camera-equipped smart glasses from a range of public government buildings in those regions.
Meanwhile, other companies are now producing competitors to Meta’s slate of smart glasses, which will soon include Google’s Android XR hardware partners Gentle Monster and Warby Parker.
Meta has acquired a number of Sony patents, including some related to XR headsets, suggesting Sony is significantly pulling back from its XR ambitions.
The News
As first reported byZDNet Korea, a recorded transfer of 43 U.S. patent properties took place between June and September 2026, which include virtual, augmented and mixed reality headset patents.
The patents cover things such as information processing specific to XR applications, head-mounted displays and various XR glasses types, filed by Sony from 2010 to 2022.
According to the Confirmatory Assignment agreement signed by the two companies in December 2025, a total of 419 global patents are expected to be subject to transfer, ZDNet reports. Of these, 180 are U.S. patents. The remaining 239 are patents filed in Japan, China, Korea, Europe, and other regions.
Sony’s broad transfer of patents to Meta may suggest the company is materially scaling back its XR hardware ambitions. Neither company has issued a statement on the subject.
My Take
PSVR 2 headset launched in February 2023. A few months before release, rumors in the developer community alleged the company wasn’t committing the same developer dollars to creating content for its next-gen VR headset, which is an excellent VR hardware in its own right.
Indeed, relatively few anchor titles arrived on PSVR 2 to inaugurate its launch: Horizon Call of the Mountain, Firewall Ultra (now defunct) and some VR modes for Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4, and Gran Turismo 7. Granted, many of my favorite games are available on PSVR 2 today, but at the launch price of $550—notably $150 more than the original PSVR—it proved to be a much tougher sell than either PS5 owners or developers looking to support the platform could stomach.
Courtesy Sony
Then, a little over a year later, the company cut PSVR 2 loose from PS5 by selling its PC VR adapter, allowing PSVR 2 users to play SteamVR games via VR-ready PCs—a move not only patently antithetical to its position as walled garden console, but indicative that Sony was done pitching PSVR 2 beyond enthusiast circles.
PSVR 2 isn’t the only XR headset Sony makes, although it is its most important. The company also sells an enterprise mixed reality standalone, built in collaboration with Siemens, in addition to being one of the largest makers of head-mounted displays before the consumer VR revolution kicked off in the mid-10s, which include some of the earliest reported HMDs on this site.
While I doubt the patents will materially change Meta’s broader hardware plans, it does conceptually knock out a potential rival, as Meta continues on to develop more XR headsets and glasses like its newly announced slim and light Meta VR Glasses, coming in Spring 2027 for $1,300.
This month Road to VR celebrates its 15th year of bringing you the most important news across the XR landscape. To mark the occasion we’ve put together an interactive timeline of major industry events and how our coverage has evolved over time.
Most Popular Articles & Milestones
Published Articles
When I started Road to VR as a college student back in October of 2011, I had no idea that it would become my full-time career and define the next 15 years of my life. It was well before the clash of trillion-dollar companies posturing to dominate the XR market. It was before the huge range of headset and glasses that consumers and professionals now have at their fingertips. It was even before the Oculus Kickstarter—the spark that reignited the modern XR landscape.
Truthfully, Road to VR started before there was any notion that VR was going anywhere other than where it was: a technology largely thought “failed” and forgotten.
It’s truly wild to think back on where this all started and how much has happened since. To mark the occasion, I turned to the data to help tell the story.
On the left side of the interactive timeline above is a (definitely incomplete) list of industry milestones like headset reveals and launches, as well as the most popular Road to VR article in a given year. On the right is the number of articles we published each year. Click to zoom into any year to see the same data month-by-month.
Road to VR has published more than 10,000 articles over these 15 years, chronicling the risings and fallings, the twists and turns, and the people, products, and companies that have made it all happen. My heartfelt thanks goes out to my colleagues Scott Hayden, Paul James, and all of our contributors and guest authors over the years who have made this journey possible.
And a question for you, dear reader: at what point did you become part of this timeline, and how? Was it the purchase of your first headset? The moment you started an XR company? Or maybe it was some specific game or application that first piqued your interest and led you down the rabbit hole? For some of you, I’m sure, your journey began well before the first year on our timeline, and I’d love to hear about it!
, and drastically redefine its hardware ambitions.
