Kluge Interactive today announced the launch of the Linkin Park Music Pack for Synth Riders, making it the VR rhythm game’s biggest paid DLC music pack to date.
The Linkin Park Music pack includes 13 of the band’s most iconic tracks which span the group’s entire career, from their breakout album Hybrid Theory (2000) to their most recent releases.
Check out the track list below:
In the End
Numb
Faint
One Step Closer
The Emptiness Machine (Radio Edit)
Bleed It Out (Radio Edit)
Breaking the Habit
Battle Symphony
Papercut
Castle of Glass
Heavy Is The Crown
Up From The Bottom
Over Each Other
“Linkin Park defined a generation of music fans, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring their music into Synth Riders,” said Kluge Interactive’s Sahin San. “Whether you grew up on Hybrid Theory or discovered them through their latest album, this pack is going to hit hard.”
Fun fact: the latest music pack is actually the game’s largest following the release of the Lady Gaga Music Pack in December 2025, which brought 11 of Lady Gaga’s most popular tracks to orb-smacking, note surfing game. Notably, since Synth Rider’s early access release in 2018 (full 1.0 release in 2019), DLC packs have typically hovered around 5-7 songs.
In the meantime, The Linkin Park Music Pack is available for purchase individually or as a full bundle, which you can grab starting today for Meta Quest, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.
Apple is hiking the price of essentially all of its devices, which includes the already very pricy Vision Pro standalone mixed reality headset.
The News
As reported by 9to5Mac, a host of Apple devices have just gotten significant price increases. The company previously confirmed this would be the case in response to the ongoing RAM and storage crisis, although it wasn’t certain when, or by how much.
Now, the full updated list of Apple device prices is here, which has revealed that Apple has effectively bumped the latest M5 version of Vision Pro to $3,700.
Apple Vision Pro (M5) | courtesy Apple
Released in October 2025 for $3,500, the M5 Vision Pro is essentially a hardware refresh of the original launched in 2024, which included the company’s M2 chipset and the same $3,500 price tag.
Other devices to see similar price hikes include MacBook, iPad, iPad Air, Apple TV, HomePod, and even MacBook Neo, which the company launched for $600 in March, now bringing it $700. You can check out the full updated list over on 9to5Mac.
Speaking to Reuters, Apple reveals it held out for as long as possible before giving into price hikes:
“We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple said in a statement. “We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.”
My Take
To the company’s credit, Apple isn’t the first to raises prices. In April, Meta announced it was hiking the price of Quest 3S and Quest 3, raising the price of them by $50 and $100 respectively.
Then, in May, Valve announced it was hiking the price of Steam Deck, which was sandwiched with the news that its was delaying both the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and rethinking its release and pricing strategy. To boot, Steam Machine is now available for pre-order for the princely sum of $1,050, which doesn’t particularly bode well for Steam Frame, its first standalone VR headset, which still doesn’t have a price or release date.
And although Apple isn’t the first to raises prices due to the current component crisis, it certainly won’t be the last. Any other holdouts in the market are likely soon to follow, if only because mighty Apple has justified it.
Apple isn’t actually the biggest drivers of these cost increases though, which are primarily due to the surging demand for AI data centers.
As it is, South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix, and US company Micron Technology produce 93 percent of the world’s RAM. And although Apple has historically leveraged its power to outbid other companies to secure components at cheaper prices, it’s the big players in AI right now—Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Anthropic—that are hoovering up the lion’s share of the RAM and NAND.
I’m actively resisting the urge to call Apple a victim in all of this, because there is no greater victim than the end consumer, although it is odd to see the world’s third most-valuable company essentially shrug as its market cohorts blow up the AI bubble yet further—all while sporting a little over 4 trillion dollar market cap in the process.
Now, for Amazon’s June 23-26th Prime Day sale, you can actually get Quest 3S for the same or better than its previous MRSP depending on what you pick, which includes both 128GB and 256Gb storage options and various game bundles:
Additionally, all of the choices above come with three free months of Horizon+, Quest’s subscription game service that lets you download and play a load of VR’s greatest games for as long as you’re a member.
As for the decidedly less cheap and cheerful Quest 3, Meta is still sitting on its regular pricing, although you can save $50 when buying a refurbished unit direct from Meta.
Notably, Meta’s permanent price increase in April brought Quest 3 (512GB) from $500 to $600, while Quest 3S now regularly starts at $350 (128GB) and $450 (256GB).
At the time, the company chalked up the increase due to increased costs of RAM, which have inflated by a wide margin starting late last year—an issue fans of Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame will likely encounter when the company finally releases pricing information for its first standalone VR headset, which will very likely follow Steam Machine’s eye-blistering $1,050 lead.
Flat2VR Studios announced during the VR Games Showcase today that Trombone: Champ Unflattened is getting a paid DLC pack next month that will bring six new Disney songs to VR’s silliest music game.
Coming at some point in July, Trombone Champ: Unflattened is getting a brand-new paid song pack featuring six beloved Disney classics, including:
“A Whole New World” from Aladdin
“Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid
“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story
“Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast
“Circle of Life” from The Lion King
“Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid
The pack also includes two new themed performance environments, an iconic kid’s room inspired by Toy Story and an underwater escape inspired by The Little Mermaid.
Flat2VR Studios says we can expect the paid Disney DLC pack to arrive on all supported headsets in July, which includes Quest, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.
Virtuix has finally brought native Quest support to Omni One, making it Quest’s first officially supported VR treadmill.
As Virtuix’s consumer-focused VR treadmill, Omni One launched in 2024 with support for Pico 4 Ultra Enterprise, as well as PC VR headsets, which notably included Quest if connected to a capable PC via Link.
In February, the company announed it was taking part in the ‘Made for Meta’ program though, which promised to bring Omni One support to a number of Quest games in addition to giving the omni-directional VR treadmill a spot in Meta’s official Quest accessory store, putting it alongside devices like bHaptics TactSuit Pro, Logitech MX Link stylus, and Roto VR Explorer Chair.
Starting today, that’s where you’ll find it, as well as direct from Virtuix, priced at $2,595, now boasting native support for both Quest 2 and Quest 3.
“Omni One for Quest is a major milestone for VR gaming,” said Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix. “Working with Meta to bring full-body movement to the Quest ecosystem creates an incredibly immersive and physically active gaming experience that takes VR to the next level. We’re excited to bring Omni One to millions of Quest users around the world.”
Granted, not all Quest games are supported on Omni One right now. Virtuix highlights a few that have been optimized, including VAIL, Forefront, The Boys: Trigger Warning, Star Trek: Infection, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, Men in Black: Most Wanted, Exoshock, and Zero Caliber 2.
Notably, Virtuix is bundling those last four games for free for a limited time with Omni One for Quest. The company says additional compatible games will be releasing over time; you can check out the evolving list here.
Valve today announced that Steam Machine is now available for pre-orders, starting at $1,050, and will officially launch on June 29th. While the announcement doesn’t include any direct details about Steam Frame availability, it offers clear hints about what to expect, including a randomized pre-order process.
The News
Courtesy Valve
Valve today announced availability of Steam Machine; the console-like gaming PC will begin shipping next week, on June 29th. Steam Machine is available for pre-order starting today:
At launch, Steam Machine is available in the US, Canada, UK, EU, and Australia. In Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Steam Machine will be available via KOMODO, a regional distributor.
In an effort to “improve the purchase experience and limit resellers,” Valve is using a randomized pre-order process. Basically, anyone that pre-orders between now and June 25th will be placed into a bucket, then Valve will generate a randomly ordered reservation queue from the bucket. Valve has an FAQ with more details here.
Valve also added some commentary about the pricing and availability of Steam Machine:
Since this has proven to be a weird time to launch hardware, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share more about how we got here.
Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.
Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.
My Take
Courtesy Valve
We finally have firm launch details on Steam Machine. While Valve hasn’t said anything further about Steam Frame, it’s almost certain that its launch will follow the same blueprint, including a higher-than-anticipated price and randomized pre-order.
In Valve’s explanation above, the company said of the increasing cost of computer components: “the overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable.” While Steam Machine and Steam Frame are two very different products, they both rely on PC components like a processor, RAM, and storage. Steam Frame is thus not insulated from increases in component costs, and is almost certainly going to be more expensive than Valve originally hoped for.
The randomized pre-order process is an interesting development which feels more fair to me. Lots of people are excited to get their hands on new hardware, but favoring those who can be glued to their screen and put in a pre-order within minutes of availability—or worse, bots and resellers who have a profit motive to be first in line—doesn’t seem ideal. But I’m curious to hear what everyone else thinks; is this a good system? Drop a line in the comments below.
We still don’t know the actual release date of Steam Frame, but Valve will probably follow the same formula as above: meaning a very short period between pre-order and availability. And I don’t expect to be waiting too long for the Steam Frame launch announcement, considering we already saw stock flowing into US warehouses starting earlier this month.
EssilorLuxottica and Applied Materials have signed a long-term joint development agreement, which the companies say will accelerate the commercialization of next-gen optical systems for AR and AI-powered smart glasses.
EssilorLuxottica has been a close partner with Meta over the past five years, having released multiple generations of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in addition to its first pair of display glasses, Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Now the Franco-Italian eyewear brand announced it’s partnering with Applied Materials, the US-based semiconductor equipment giant, to scale optics for consumer AR and smart glasses of the near future.
Details of the partnership are still thin on the ground, however the companies are slated to collaborate on R&D at a dedicated lab located on Applied Materials’ Silicon Valley campus, which is said to focus on advanced optical technologies, including waveguides, adaptive lens systems, and materials innovations.
Ray-Ban Meta glasses | Courtesy EssilorLuxottica, Meta
“Designing, building and scaling next-generation smart glasses will require deep collaboration across the technology ecosystem,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “By bringing together Applied Materials’ leadership in photonics and materials engineering with EssilorLuxottica’s expertise in lenses and smart eyewear, we are accelerating the development and commercialization of advanced display smart glasses that can create entirely new user experiences.”
Note: In general, waveguides are important because they allow for a lightweight, glasses-like form factors and transparent lenses, which come in contrast to birdbath optics, which tend to allow for a larger field-of-view (FOV), higher image quality, and greater optical efficiency, but at the cost of being bulkier overall and less discrete.
On the flipside, today’s generation of waveguides tend to suffer from lower light efficiency, requiring brighter, more energy-hungry source displays. They also tend to have a lower FOV than birdbath optics (see: XREAL Aura) and a smaller eyebox.
While still unconfirmed, optics manufacturers SCHOTT and Lumus are widely thought to be the manufacturers behind Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses. It’s unclear at this time whether this means EssilorLuxottica is looking to develop its own AR hardware relationships separate from Meta, although the competitive landscape is rapidly changing.
In late 2024, EssilorLuxottica and Meta announced they were extending their smart eyewear partnership to 2030, however since then Google announced it was partnering with a cadre of companies, including Samsung, as well as eyewear brands Gentle Monster, Warby Parker, and Kering.
And as the first wave of Android XR-clad smart glasses are expected to release sometime later this year, Apple is also reportedly working on its own smart glasses, as the company has allegedly accelerated its efforts amid a wider push for AI wearables.
More recently, Snap unveiled its first consumer pair of AR glasses, the sixth-gen Snap Specs, which are set to release sometime this fall for $2,200. The latest Snap Specs are said to feature a 51-degree FOV, although we’re still hoping to not only demo the company’s next big bet on AR, but also see the full specs sheet, which ought to include info on some outlying basics, such as resolution, brightness, and refresh rate.
