South Korean eyewear giant Gentle Monster announced its long-awaited Android XR smart glasses are on their way this December, which are built in collaboration with Samsung and Google. And Joaquin Phoenix will be heading the marketing blitz starting later this month.
Gentle Monster revealed a snippet of a soon-to-release short film starring Joaquin Phoenix, which will ostensibly highlight all of the interesting things you can do with a pair of Android XR smart glasses. Like translating foreign (or possibly alien?) languages.
Gentle Monster’s first Intelligent Eyewear collection ⠀ Joaquin Phoenix stars in a short film directed by Jonathan Glazer—a cinematic journey between reality and dream. Full film releasing mid-November. ⠀ The collection launches this December. ⠀ Register for the collection… pic.twitter.com/UBv6pdHWSW
Academy Award and BAFTA winner Jonathan Glazer is directing the short film; Glazer is best known for his work on films The Zone of Interest (2023), Under the Skin (2013), and Sexy Beast (2000). Glazer was also behind a number of iconic music videos throughout the ’90s and ’00s from Blur, Radiohead, and Jamiroquai to name a few.
There’s no word yet on when exactly the glasses will launch, which, alongside similar frames from Warby Parker, will be some of the first to support Google’s Android XR operating system.
One of three Gentle Monster smart glasses models | Courtesy Google & Samsung
Much like Meta’s range of camera-clad smart glasses, the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster frames will include onboard cameras, microphones and off-ear speakers for doing things like taking calls, listening to podcasts, and interacting with Google Gemini.
Samsung has said the first generation of smart glasses will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chipset, a single 12MP front-facing camera with indicator LED, and up to 9 hours of use per charge, with a portable charging case providing extra charge.
No pricing or launch date has been announced yet outside of the new December release window, however both companies have debuted their first sets of styles, which you can see here: Warby Parker smart glasses – Gentle Monster smart glasses.
PAYDAY finally got its first VR-native entry into the storied franchise. While it’s not the royal flush I was hoping for, it certainly wasn’t offsuit seven-deuces either.
Developer:Fast Travel Games Publisher:Fast Travel Games Available On:Quest,SteamVR (Frame version incl.) Reviewed On:Quest 3 Release Date:November 5th, 2026 Price:$25
Gameplay
There’s a cohesive story in here somewhere. Somebody named Jupiter is bad. Something something gotta steal stuff from bad man. It’s been forever since I played Payday 2 (never 3), so I can’t say whether this is a continuation, or what’s actually going on.
That’s about as much as I think you should be expected to absorb though, which is just fine for a Payday game. The key isn’t the filler backstory, but really the uniqueness of each mission and its various environmental puzzles. And I’m happy to say that missions are indeed unique, and multilayered enough to make them worth coming back for more. In short, Payday: Aces High is basically what it says on the tin, and I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading here.
That said, drilling in a bit deeper, the game isn’t without its flaws, some that may even urk dyed-in-the-wool Payday fans, which I get into a little later below.
Courtesy Fast Travel Games
As it is, there are some standard puzzle bits you’ll see in each of the game’s six mission: four-digit door codes and combination lock codes, both of which require you to hunt around the level for random post-its in a back office or wall somewhere, but there’s also gear-based stuff like hacking laptops using your special watch, and calling in a drone-mounted drill that is something of a minigame to distract you as your buddies will need to defend you while your back is turned.
But there are also puzzles specific to each mission, which include everything from timing based challenges to defending various capture points. It’s the sort of thing that requires team-based planning, which is great if you have a good group of three other people by your side.
Now, this may go without saying, but co-op games are almost always more fun with friends, and also people who are earnestly trying to cooperate. That’s most definitely the case with PAYDAY: Aces High, as it serves up mostly the same well-worn shooting and heisting experience you know from its other main branch titles throughout the years, which makes it a great framework for drop-in, drop-out fun.
That said, if you can’t manage to get some friends together, or find a decent quick match—which isn’t too tough right now since the game just launched—you will have to play solo. And I don’t recommend it at all.
When playing solo, or in a silent/uncooperative group (basically solo), you really start to notice just how blindingly dumb the game’s AI is. Baddies come in waves once you’ve blown your cover by donning your mask, or by bumping into a civilian, or being detected in a restricted area. That’s mostly fine. But they’re so inept that the term ‘bullet sponges’ doesn’t do them justice—real quantity over quality stuff.
Courtesy Fast Travel Games
As it is, you’ll find yourself in a room full of enemies of different types, all of which are randomly shooting (and missing most of the time) without any apparent tactic or instinct to take cover. Even the most powerful mini-gun dude with armor is an un-reactive moron on the default Normal mode.
Again, you might not immediately notice this when things are fast and the bullets are flying in good online co-op match, but eventually it’s will become something you just can’t unsee. And higher difficulty only seems to give enemies better armor and shooting ability, and not much else. That is, without a doubt, the biggest flaw in Payday: Aces High right now.
It’s a bit of shame too, because it’s one of the best-looking games on Quest right now, pushing a little higher visual fidelity on PC, but not by much. And Fast Travel Games (re: not the original devs Starbreeze) have translated the Payday heisting experience into a true VR native.
Immersion
Seeing a civilian aimlessly walk in a circle, or a cop who lets you get in his face and think nothing of it really hammers home that the experience isn’t about actually doing a heist. These are lifeless drones that serve more as moveable puzzle pieces, which is fine for the genre. It’s just not terribly immersive.
It essentially boils down the experience to a series of checklists, which is usually capped off with a massive firefight against endless waves of baddies. Make the bad men fall, complete the objectives to best of your ability, get the cash, buy new gadgets, and play any mission again. Maybe even the same just to farm more cash, which me and good group did for about a half-hour before people lost interest. That’s Payday for you. It’s not an indictment of the franchise, just something you should be aware of.
Courtesy Fast Travel Games
The game’s comparatively minor transgressions feel artificial, but not as artificial as its objectively terrible AI. For example, glass only breaks when you shoot it. Why? You have to hold loot items in your hands and crush them until they magically disappear. Because of reasons? Many of the door codes/combos repeat across multiple locks. That’s just bad op-sec. I think all of that can be mocked, but also forgiven in the defense of making the overall experience work for players.
On the bright side, gun handling is actually pretty good, as it allows for manual reloading by popping out a mag with a button press, pulling a mag (or shotgun shells) from behind your back, loading and charging manually. Here, I appreciate sacrificing ease of use when it’s in service of realism.
The inventory system is also smart, putting your guns in defined spots on your body, and extra items in a three-slot pop-up inventory that you can call up by pressing Y/B. Gamey and not immersive, sure, but also well designed enough to give you the import bits when you need them most, and out of the way when you don’t.
Level design is also a strong suit, as large complexes easily swallow lagging team members, offering up a good mix of open and closed-quarter spaces for different types of firefights.
Comfort
For its flaws, Payday: Aces High is a very comfortable game, as it follows all of the well-worn comfort conventions that Fast Travel and other veteran VR developers have accrued over the past decade.
It can equally be played standing or seated, with seated gameplay unencumbered by the inventory system, which doesn’t interfere with arm rests, so you can sit back and play just as easily as standing.
‘PAYDAY: Aces High’ Comfort Settings – November 5th, 2026
Steam Frame has only been out for a little over a month now, and is still heavily backordered. Still, Valve’s latest Steam Hardware Survey shows the headset is already off to a strong start.
The opt-in, randomized monthly survey now shows Steam Frame at fifth place on the platform, making for 5.49% of all headsets in use on Steam.
Courtesy Valve
Considering Steam Frame is still heavily supply constrained, as shipments now reach into 2027, immediately taking fifth place is a surprisingly fair result.
Some of this could be explained by Quest 2’s sizeable loss of 3.57% since the September survey, which could suggest some portion of Quest 2 users upgraded to Frame.
Notably, Valve changed its survey methodology in March 2020. Previously, the VR hardware detection system was based on headsets connected at the time of survey. Now, the survey uses SteamVR records of headsets connected during the preceding month, making for a more fair picture of headsets used.
Some of that feels like it might come down to price, but I’m not so sure. Valve Index launched in late 2019 at $999 for the full kit, including headset, two controllers, and two SteamVR base stations. In terms of inflation, that’s around $1,300 today.
Valve Index | Courtesy Valve
And that’s the same price as the most expensive Steam Frame 1 TB model, which notably doesn’t need a VR-ready gaming PC—although you’d probably be better off with one considering the comparatively small number of Frame optimized games.
The wrinkle in that calculation though is Index users had the option to upgrade piecemeal from other PC VR headsets, allowing them to purchase Index alone for $499 if they already owned HTC Vive controllers and SteamVR base stations.
Whatever the case, Frame has proven to be popular enough to surpass Index very early in its existence. And I’ll be charting its performance, so make sure to check back for more.
Valve has released a SteamVR beta update that brings improvements to streamed image quality to all supported standalone headsets.
Steam Link is SteamVR’s dedicated streaming app, letting you play your Steam library games on your Meta Quest, HTC Vive Focus, or PICO consumer headset by wirelessly streaming over Wi-Fi.
Now, in a SteamVR blog post, Valve announced the new 2.19.1 beta update brings sharper text, clearer colors, and better detail to VR streaming to those headsets—undoubtedly thanks to the company’s effort to improve Steam Frame’s wireless PC streaming function.
Notably, improvements are said to benefit all streaming VR applications, the SteamVR interface, desktop streaming, third-party overlays, and the theater screen.
Additionally, Valve says Steam Link now defaults to a higher recommended render resolution for streamed PC VR, targeting 1.4 × the headset’s panel resolution.
Color clarity was also improved, using higher-quality filter to downsample color before encoding, preserving fine colored details, Valve says. You can find the full changelog here.
To get the update, users need to opt into the SteamVR beta. To do that, simply follow the instructions below:
With Steam running, navigate to your library.
Right click on “SteamVR” in your library list, then click “Properties” in the context menu.
Select the “Game Versions & Betas” tab on the left.
Select “Beta – SteamVR Beta Update”
If you’re familiar with Steam Link, you likely already have a VR-ready PC. To find out if your PC can handle SteamVR streaming, click here to follow our handy guide.
Meta announced it’s finally sunsetting Quest 2 and Quest Pro, which are slated to receive their final OS update early next year.
Meta VR Glasses is coming next spring, so the company announced it’s pruning HorizonOS development to finally move away from the Quest 2 and Quest Pro hardware.
In a developer blog post, Meta says feature development for Quest 2 and Quest Pro will end with v213, which reaches all Quest 2 and Quest Pro devices by March 2027. As the final OS release, v213 is also the last supported SDK version for these devices.
Moving forward, new OS features, platform capabilities, and APIs released after v213 will only be available on Quest 3, Quest 3S, and newer devices, Meta says. Notably, Quest 2 and Quest Pro were discontinued in 2024.
Based on images courtesy Meta
Quest 2 and Quest Pro will receive security patches and critical bug fixes through the end of 2027. New apps that support Quest 2 or Quest Pro will no longer be accepted after December 2027 however. New titles can still launch on Quest 3, Quest 3S, and newer devices, but they just won’t be offered on Quest 2 or Quest Pro, Meta says.
Still, existing apps supporting both can get bug fixes, content drops, and seasonal events. Cross-play multiplayer also doesn’t have a clear end date either.
Released in 2020, Quest 2 was one of the best-selling consumer VR headsets to date, having sold an estimated 20 million units over its lifetime. Since launch, Quest 2 was also the principal driver Quest Store revenue, with Meta announcing in 2023 the ecosystem had then topped $2 billion in revenue.
In 2022, Meta announced it was releasing its next headset, Quest Pro, which included eye-tracking, a more capable Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chipset, double Quest 2’s 6GB RAM, pancake lenses, and full color passthrough for mixed reality gameplay.
Despite its advancement over Quest 2, Quest Pro struggled to find a compelling use for its new mixed reality capabilities. Coming in at $1,500 at launch was also widely seen as a major obstacle for adoption, essentially relegating it to an expensive developer kit.
To Meta’s credit, the company eventually reduced the price of Quest Pro to $1,000 a year later—the same year Meta released Quest 3, which sported many of Quest Pro’s most impressive features at about half the price, making it the obvious choice for consumers and developers alike.
Sony appears to be winding down PSVR 2 sales, as the company has removed its PS5-compatible VR headset from the PlayStation web store.
The News
PSVR 2 stock is drying up, as the headset has recently gone missing from both Sony and online retailers across the web.
At the time of this writing, Sony no longer sells PSVR 2 its PlayStation Store in the US or Japan.
Some regions still show the headset in stock, including the EU and UK. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the PlayStation Store simply points to third-party retailers.
Road to VR has collected a timeline of data from multiple pages showing that Sony began removing PSVR 2 from its direct.playstation.com store starting around mid-October.
Created by Road to VR
Additionally, Amazon availability of the PSVR 2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle and the PSVR 2 non-bundle began to waver earlier this year, but have now all but flatlined. The chart above shows Amazon US availability of the non-bundled PSVR 2 SKU.
At the time of this writing, the only remaining stock for PSVR 2 at stores like Best Buy and Walmart is being sold at sizeable markups ($750 at Best Buy), which is notably only available via third-party resellers.
We’re only about three weeks away from Black Friday. Companies typically reserve large stocks of popular items around that time so they can advertise nation-wide discounts across multiple retail channels.
That only works when a company is confident in their product’s future, which doesn’t really seem to be the case for Sony heading into the 2026 holiday season.
Is this the death knell for PSVR 2? If it is, I wouldn’t find it particularly shocking. While Sony hasn’t spoken officially on the matter, it’s rumored the company never resumed production of PSVR 2 after its initial pause in March 2024, which was reportedly done as a result of low sales volumes following the headset’s launch in February 2023.
Courtesy Sony
Even if the rumor isn’t true, it’s pretty clear Sony wrote off PSVR 2 long ago. Just one year after launch, Sony shuttered its London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reduced headcount at Firesprite, the studio behind PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Schell Games, the veteran VR studio behind spy-themed puzzle series I Expect You to Die and Among Us 3D, confirmed it has laid off 40% of staff in effort to stay afloat.
“We’re very sad to say that due to this challenging time in the game industry, Schell Games has found it necessary to lay off a significant number of employees in order to ensure a sustainable future for our studio,” the studio announced in a LinkedIn post on Saturday. “While this will enable us to stay stable moving forward, it is incredibly painful as we are losing some fantastic talent.”
CEO Jesse Schell later confirmed the studio has laid off “about 40% of the studio.” While the exact number of employees affected is still unknown, this follows a layoff round in August—the studio’s first in its 20+ years in existence—which saw a 10 percent reduction of staff.
Although the studio hasn’t specified the exact number of employees affected, this follows a layoff round in August—the studio’s first in its 20+ years in existence—which saw a 10 percent reduction of staff.
At the time, Schell said that about 125 staff remained, suggesting 50 employees were involved in the most recent round, leaving the studio at 75.
Multiple positions at the studio have been affected, including Unity & Unreal Engine Engineers, Game Artists, Game Designers, Sound Designers, Producers, Game Marketers, IT Support Specialists, Educational Game Researchers, Quality Assurance Specialists, and Product Managers.
Schell Games is best known addition for the I Expect You to Die trilogy and Among Us 3D (previously Among Us VR before adding flatscreen support). The studio was also behind rogue-like hack-and-slash Until You Fall, horror-themed VR puzzle game Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, and Project Freefall, a free-to-play party game featuring both VR and flatscreen support.
Recently, the studio announced it was releasing Dragon Grove, a mixed reality gardening sim for Quest 3/3S and Meta VR Glasses, slated to arrive in Spring 2027.
VRChat is currently weathering a sizable backlash among users due to a controversial decision to not label AI-generated content.
The News
VRChat released a survey earlier this month asking users whether the social VR platform should in some way label AI-generated content as a way to fight back against low-quality slop.
The survey in question polled over 21,000 users. While results are no longer viewable online, Japanese outlet Automaton reports that around 95% of survey responders indicated they wanted VRChat to add an AI-generated content label, which would simplify filtering out AI content.
In a statement last week, the studio announced it won’t be implementing the change, maintaining the move may cause more harm than good:
“We’re not adding an ‘AI-generated’ label or AI filters. While we think some creators would honestly label their content, we think others would try to pass off generative or assisted work as completely authored by hand,” VRChat says. “Likewise, we could see this creating ‘sleuthing’ behavior, where folks would attempt to sniff out ‘AI’ content or might harass other creators, even if they are genuinely not using any AI tools in their workflow. We think this potentially creates negative behavior spirals we don’t want to encourage.”
Instead, the company has vowed to ban what it calls “AI-generated inaccurate thumbnails” used to advertise worlds. It’s also adding a way to like and dislike worlds, and a way to provide feedback on worlds within VRChat.
Courtesy Valve
While an obligatory ‘AI content’ label is not longer in question, the studio says it’s still debating on whether it will offer an optional ‘Human-authored’ mark that creators can apply when publishing:
“We haven’t decided yet. If we do, it’d be optional, it’d only show on the world’s detail page, it wouldn’t affect discovery ranking, and a missing mark would never be an accusation or something you can report. We lean toward a ‘Human-authored’ mark over an ‘AI-generated’ label. As it stands, saying you used AI can feel like a confession.”
As a consequence, users have taken to Steam to ‘review bomb’ the app. At the time of this writing, VRChat now has a ‘Mostly Negative’ review rating of ~4,000 users, putting it at a 33% positive rating over the past 30 days. This has pushed its overall lifetime rating from ‘Mostly Positive’ to ‘Mixed’.
The current rash of negative reviews however pales in comparison to the studio’s 2022 decision to add anti-cheat software to prevent users from using modified versions of VRChat. That resulted in over 33,000 negative reviews in July 2022, according to SteamDB info, with ~8,000 more added in the following month. You can read more about that here.
My Take
Making content generation easier is a blessing and curse. Creatives can jump in and make something without needing all of the requisite knowledge of how to use Unity or Blender, which can result in something that otherwise wouldn’t exist. That also unfortunately means a rush of slop, AI-generated or otherwise, which VRChat users know has been an issue for a while now.
And VRChat’s creators are a big part of its identity. For many of the long-term users, it’s not just about what avatar you have or what world you built, but how you actually got those things.
For some, AI-generated content devalues this; it erodes what made the OG users attracted to the platform in the first place, because human-made things feel more earned, and the communities that grow around them feel more authentic.
For others, AI is simply one of many tools they use to create their art, and painting them with the same brush as someone who knowingly creates slop is unfair.
It’s not binary, although whatever your stance, world generation will eventually become even easier—Google’s Genie 4 is attempting just that. And VRChat is probably considering the long-term consequences of forming a stance on AI too early in its development, raising the question: how long will an ‘AI-generated content’ label really be relevant when AI is in everything?
EXOSHOCK is a Halo-inspired co-op shooter for up to four players that we’ve been waiting on since it was announced last year. Now, you can find it on Quest and PC VR headsets.
Last we heard, Exoshock was initially targeting a Fall 2025 launch, although developer POLARITYONE was admittedly only a two-person team at the time. It’s had a number of open betas and playable demos, which has helped shape the game to what it is today.
Exoshock is a hybrid game, where VR and PC players are able to play together in the same game, offering up firefights in a gritty sci-fi universe. Here’s how the studio describes it:
You are a Division 9 operative, owned by the Basilisk Group. Board starships in transit, sabotage systems, steal data, and eliminate targets. Gear up, complete your Contract, get out, and return for another.
Enemies flank, suppress, and push your squad. Reload under fire, strike with melee, and cover your teammates. Find an opening and turn a desperate fight around.
The action is set across three starships of varying sizes, including “some of the largest maps ever built for VR,” the studio says. That includes semi-procedural objectives, six Resistance levels, and Contract Complications, meaning no two runs are the same.
The studio says its road to 1.0 is currently focused on making the initial experience deeper, richer and more replayable, with plans to expand the game through Weapons 2.0, deeper Characters and VR Embodiment, expanded environments, additional enemy factions, an evolved Combat Director, new cooperative objectives, expanded progression, and further improvements to audio and world building.
Estimated to be in early access for 12 months, the studio says it additionally plans to continue improving multiplayer, performance, stability, quality of life and overall polish throughout development.
You can find Exoshock in early access over on Steam for PC and PC VR headsets and on the Horizon Store for Quest 3/3S, priced at $20.
Legendary movement shooter Titanfall 2 (2016) has been available in VR for almost a month now thanks to CircuitLord’s unofficial VR mod. With a recent update, you’ll also now be able to go head-to-head with other hardcore VR fans in online multiplayer too.
Created by mod maker CircuitLord, the Titanfall 2 VR mod already included a list of near-VR-native tweaks for its single player campaign when it released late last month. Pretty impressive for a free VR mod—available through CircuitLord’s mod installer.
Now, CircuitLord’s Titanfall 2 VR mod is running an open multiplayer beta, which includes both NA and EU servers. You can check it out in action below:
The Titanfall 2 VR mod has already received high praise for its comprehensive reworking of game’s controls for VR, including interactive weapon reloading for every gun in the game, a gesture-based reload for weapons like the Wingman, and a good translation of its admittedly intense locomotion, which lets you wall-run, dash-slide, and swing your way around the map with a grappling gun.
What’s more, the Titanfall 2 VR mod is free: just bring your own copy of the game, make sure your have a VR-ready PC in addition to basically any PC VR headset that supports OpenXR.
A new emulator may finally make it easy to not only play Quest exclusives on PC for better performance, but on any PC VR headset out there.
The News
Called Venture, the Quest emulator is designed to be easy, which means no mucking with GitHub repos like with Android XR Bridge or Refract, two similar projects that have been in the wild for about a month now.
With Venture, users can download an executable for Windows, sign into their Meta account, download games to a local PC, and play with any OpenXR supported PC VR headset.
Behind the scenes, Venture says it’s using OpenGL ES through Google’s an open-source graphics abstraction library (ANGLE), allowing games to render on your PC’s GPU.
Older Oculus VR games work without modifying the games themselves, as Venture supports games built on the legacy Oculus VrApi, allowing them to run through OpenXR. That includes older 32-bit ARM titles too, not just newer 64-bit games.
There’s no recommended specs available for PCs yet, although Venture says using an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and Nvidia RTX 5090, rendering at 2,800 × 2,856 per eye, it’s capable of beating the competition by a fair margin across a number of games.
If you’re interested in learning more before downloading, Venture also runs a Discord channel (invite link).
My Take
Meta’s walled garden doesn’t seem to have much of a gardener anymore now that the company is basically no longer funding big games, so why does it need a wall at all? That’s one question you might ask yourself.
That said, I’m not advocating you download Venture right now because I am not entirely certain that 1) this won’t completely bork your computer, 2) it won’t break Meta’s ToS, or 3) won’t expose your personal information in some unintended way.
The fact remains you that Venture asks you to sign into your personal Meta, which could expose your account to security risks; there’s no guarantee that Meta won’t ban your Quest account either, which essentially puts all of the games you bought down the drain. So emulate at your own risk.
It’s not very often we get insight into Valve’s thought process, as the company tends to let actions speak for themselves. But at a ‘Steam Indie Connect’ event in Korea, the company says it still believes in VR, and outlined some of the challenges ahead.
The News
As reported by Korean tech outlet Inven, Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson from Valve’s Steam business team mostly spoke to the small crowd of eventgoers about AI, and how the company has acknowledged the influx of low-effort, AI-driven content on Steam and how developers can navigate the changing landscape. You can read the full report in English here.
Giardino, who has been with Steam’s business team since 2012, also fielded questions from VR developers, who wanted to know what the company is doing about curation, visibility, and policies for VR games, given the company has just releases its first standalone VR headset, Steam Frame.
Note: The information in this article, including direct quotes, are machine translated from Korean. No video of the event appears to be available at this time, however we’ll update when/if that changes.
There doesn’t appear to be many concrete answers to those questions, although one such developer echoed anxiety among VR fans that Valve might be abandoning VR.
“We still believe in virtual reality,” Giardino said. That said, Giardino noted Steam Frame users are mostly now playing standard flatscreen games rather than VR titles.
Courtesy Busan Indie Connect Festival
One of VR’s biggest challenges is a ‘chicken-and-egg’ dilemma, Giardino said: developers wait for the VR market to expand, while players wait for more VR games. Meanwhile, flatscreen games continue to grow more diverse and compelling, making it more difficult to justify making VR games. That, and expensive, popular flatscreen games launch every week, which is the biggest hurdle facing VR developers, Giardino said.
Valve sees Steam Frame as just one piece of the VR ecosystem; the company has put significant effort into the Steam Link app for Meta Quest, as well as support for the OpenXR standard so users of any headset can play games via SteamVR.
The component crisis is still a factor though, Giardino said, noting that rising prices for RAM and memory ultimately led to Steam Frame being more expensive than the company initially hoped. This, in turn, made it less attractive to new users.
“Moments where we could have welcomed many new customers became reasons to hesitate or wait on VR,” he said, adding, “We feel sorry to VR developers.”
My Take
As many have speculated, it seems Valve is hoping to sustain the VR market by framing Steam Frame as a non-VR device, which just so happens to be able to play VR games.
Ostensibly, the hope is if enough people buy Steam Frame, or standalone SteamVR-supported devices like it in the future, then is may seem more prudent for developers to target VR headsets, since the install base will naturally be much higher than if the device were solely aimed at VR fans.
That said, Valve isn’t making it any easier on the content side. The company developed Half-Life: Alyx (2020), which is still one of the best AAA VR games out there, released shortly after its PC VR headset, Valve Index. And although we got a standalone version of HLA with Frame last month, it’s not doing very much for people who’ve already played, and want something else equally compelling to go along with their new Steam Frame.
Fallout: Factions is a physical 1v1 tabletop game that launched in 2024, and now it’s getting an XR version next month.
Fallout: Factions is a turn-based skirmish warfare game set in the Fallout universe, which, much like its physical counterpart, combines squad-level tactics and strategy.
The XR game, which is set to launch on Xreal Aura next month, also includes immersive 3D maps and gesture controls so you can roll dice, move characters, and select attacks. Check it out in action below:
Here’s how creators Mirrorscape and Modiphius Entertainment describe the game:
Compete with friends around the table or around the world as you play as one of three Factions seeking to dominate the devastated landscape of Nuka-World. Each Faction has a unique set of weapons and abilities, creating nearly endless replay-ability. War never changes, but now it’s in your hands!
While the game is slated to launch on Xreal Aura in time for its first wave shipments, set to start sometime in mid-November, it will also be available on Android XR, which ostensibly means it will also support Samsung Galaxy XR.
Additionally, the studio says a Steam version is “coming soon” as well, although it’s unclear if this is a VR-supported version, or solely a traditional flatscreen release.
In the meantime, you can follow along and learn more on the game’s website.
