The launch of Steam Frame has grown tantalizing close following the publication of documents from the FCC showing the headset has cleared required regulatory certification.
We still don’t have an exact release date for Steam Frame, but now we know it’s one huge step closer to actually launching: regulatory documentation and approvals from the FCC were published in the last 24 hours.
The FCC is tasked with certifying products with electromagnetic emissions to be safe and compatible with regulations. Products utilizing radio, WiFi, infrared, etc. need certification before they can be distributed for sale. Certification by the FCC marks one step closer to the launch of a consumer electronics product.
Testing documentation for Steam Frame, which goes by the model number 1015, was submitted beginning in May. But it was only made public following the official stamp of approval from the FCC, called the ‘Grant of Equipment Authorization‘, which occured in the last 24 hours. Steam Frame could not legally be sold in the US before receiving these approvals, though it isn’t clear if this was the thing blocking the headset from launching any sooner.
We’re still waiting for Valve to make an official announcement about the launch of Steam Frame, which we expect will roll out similarly to the launch of Steam Machine last month.
While we’ve had extensive hands-on time with the headset and know the major specs and details, the one big unknown is how much it will actually cost. This might be your last chance to make a guess on the price of Steam Frame in the comments below, and lock in your “I told you so” claim for all to see.
The team behind SideQuest, Quest’s alternative app library, announced it’s bringing Microsoft’s social VR platform AltspaceVR (2015) back from the dead.
The News
Initially released in 2015 and then acquired by 2017 by Microsoft, Altspace was one of the first successful social VR platforms, launching across PC VR headsets, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, and both Quest and Quest 2.
In early 2023 however, Microsoft announced it was shuttering Altspacein a bid to shuttle resources to its cloud-based mixed reality collaboration platform, Microsoft Mesh, which was subsequently deprecated in 2025 and parted out to Microsoft Teams.
Now, SideQuest CEO and founder Shane Harris reveals in a Reddit post the company has acquired the rights to the Altspace name, noting it will be “a brand new Altspace” for a modern audience as well as “a spiritual successor to the Altspace we know and love and capture what made it great.”
Check out Altspace’s final moment below, courtesy ‘Vitua Zone’:
Harris reveals SideQuest will be re-launching Altspace with many of the same features and functionality the app had circa 2016-2017, further noting he’s assembled a team of previous Altspace staffers and “some of the most prolific OG players” to help shape the platform.
One such re-hire is Christian Boe, the original concept designer behind the original robots in Altspace, which were discontinued in favor of human-only avatars, which means the new Altspace will most definitely feature robot avatars of some sort in addition to custom avatars, Harris says.
Harris maintains we’ll hear regular updates and developer insight in the coming weeks and months.
My Take
Altspace likely shut down for a myriad of reasons, although one of the biggest is it never actually monetized; in its eight years of existence the platform never featured an in-world economy or creator marketplace, and its avatar system was decidedly much more ‘off the shelf’ than something like VRChat, which lets you upload, sell, or style your avatar in any way imaginable.
Starting Altspace back up, and importantly employing those people who helped define the platform in the first place, is a giant win, although being able to pick up where they left off and find an economic model that benefits both players and creators alike will be a tall order.
Still, there must be some contingent of VR-using Rec Room refugees out there looking for a platform that isn’tVRChat, and Altspace may try to fill that gap. Whatever the case, getting back to its roots means putting on a lot of events to attract regular users.
For all of the team’s know-how though, relaunching Altspace is roughly like starting from scratch with the new generation of younger players, as even in 2023 Altspace had waned a lot since its heyday in 2016-2017. I’d like to hope they can also attract back a bulk of the OG users too looking for that socially tame sweet spot Altspace seemed to fill so well.
Social VR platform Somnium Space is rolling out its biggest update yet, which aims to bring major improvements across the entire platform ahead of its planned release on Steam Frame and Apple Vision Pro.
The News
Somnium Space’s v3.1.6 update is slated to rollout today, bringing to the social VR platform a number of quality of life features that could put it more on par with its main competitor, VRChat.
Arguably the most important feature to the update is how it handles World Instances, which now supports a wider degree of privacy, including friends instances, friends+ private instances, paid instances, and PIN-protected instances. Previously, Somnium Space was largely built around a persistent shared world. That essentially means instead of every event existing in one open space, communities can now have private concerts, classrooms, meetings, paid events, and moderated gatherings.
You can check out all of that and more in Somnium Space’s v3.1.6 update video below:
The update also includes a major creator upgrade with server-side scripting, which aims to lower the barrier for creators by removing local installation requirements.
A big chunk of the update is however dedicated to the much less glamorous task of smoothing out essential infrastructure. The v3.1.6 update redesigns a host of systems, including friends, favorites, bubble chat, moderation tools, blocked users, global chat, and improved voice reliability.
Meanwhile, desktop support seems to be getting a lot more focus, as the update includes better onboarding, movement, sprinting, controller support, and Inspector functionality, which seemingly aims to expand Somnium Space beyond its hardcore PC VR audience.
Notably, Somnium Space is slated to launch on Steam with full Steam Deck support in the near future, with versions for Steam Frame and Apple Vision Pro set to follow. The Steam re-release, which comes after more than five year’s of absence on the store, is also slated to include the company’s signature user ID system, which ensures all users are verified as being over 18.
My Take
TL;DR: Somnium Space is looking to cement itself further as an alternative to VRChat for niche adult communities. The platform’s crypto ambitions are still unclear though, since re-launching on Steam will mean it needs to comply with Valve’s blanket ban on NFTs and crypto.
I don’t know anything about Somnium Space’s financials, so it’s difficult to tell whether the update and eventual rollout on Steam means it’s at crossroads or not. Companies can push right along with planned releases and features one day, and then the next say they have to close up shop due to lack of funding, like Rec Room did, which closed in June. That’s more of a warning that the space as a whole is dangerous right now, and not an assumption of what Somnium Space is or isn’t facing internally.
What is certain: Somnium Space isn’t Rec Room, or VRChat for that matter, as the app prides itself on verifying the identity and age of each user to ensure absolutely no children are allowed. Its planned release on Apple Vision Pro and Steam Frame will also be its first version available for standalone devices—notably missing is a dedicated Quest version.
Also certain: For a time, Somnium Space was all about cryptocurrency and NFTs. In October 2019, the platform auctioned off virtual land in an initial NFT offering, leading to the release of the platform’s token CUBE a year later. With the platform allowing for free, private instances, all of that means a lot less than it used to, especially since the platform is making a bid to return to Steam after its delisting amid Valve’s crypto games purge in 2021.
And it will be interesting to see how the platform detangles from this overtly crypto-forward architecture when that day comes.
In the meantime, the next challenge is attracting and retaining enough creators and users to take advantage of the improvements seen in v3.1.6, which nowadays could be harder than ever.
Love it or hate it though, Somnium Space is one of the most technically ambitious PC VR social platforms out there. That, and it’s strong creator tools and a team that so far hasn’t let up on its continuous development, could mean it’s looking to further cement its lead as the premier ‘no kids’ social platform as enthusiasts become a bigger relative percentage amid consumer slowdown.
A user setup video has reportedly surfaced of Meta’s long-rumored thin and light VR headset, suggesting we may see its official unveiling at Connect in September.
The News
The images below reveal a blurry look at what is unmistakably Meta’s upcoming puck-tethered VR headset, which has been referred by number of internal codenames over the years: Puffin, Loma, and now Phoenix.
First discovered by X user ‘ToastConcern‘ in Quest’s firmware, the images above are actually screenshots of the device’s initial setup video, captured in full by ‘NoriDoesVR‘. See the full video below:
I managed to get the updated device fit and eye tracking setup to work on my headset!
As confirmed in the work-in-progress video, Phoenix features a slim, almost glasses-like profile, independent lens spacing, removable nose clips for individual user comfort, and built-in hand and eye-tracking. More importantly, it’s said to feature a tethered compute puck, which offloads the bulk of the weight from the user’s head.
While those images of Phoenix are intentionally blurry, it’s very similar to a render generated by data miner and serial leaker ‘Luna‘, which was based off their impressions of the device.
Meta “Phoenix’ render | Courtesy ‘Luna’
Considering Meta is now just including user setup content in Quest’s firmware, it looks increasingly possible the company is hoping to unveil it at its annual Connect developer event.
Connect is set to kick of on September 23–24, 2026. While the company teased what seems to be a new pair of smart glasses, the event is also focusing on “the latest in VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI.”
My Take
TL;DR: Meta has taken its past failures and largely translated them into wins, although I’m still skeptical that the component crisis hasn’t introduced more friction in VR hardware development than Meta can reasonably stomach.
According to a previous report from The Wall Street Journal last year, Meta was internally hoping to price Phoenix somewhere under $1,000. Considering both RAM and storage have skyrocketed since this time last year, and now Qualcomm chips are getting a price hike too, Meta’s next premium VR headset may be particularly premium, which could be setting the company up for another uphill battle.
That said, higher component prices are a new level of friction is affecting almost every company right now hoping to release something that doesn’t cost the equivalent of a black market kidney, Steam Frame included.
Anyway, here’s how Meta’s strategy stands today, at least according to previous rumors and reports: in addition to Phoenix, Meta is still reworking its Quest 4 strategy, which could conceptually put the two devices in different segments—a high-end device for prosumers and professionals (Phoenix), and the lower-end console for consumers (Quest 4). This is essentially the same strategy Meta tried when it first offered Quest Pro, but failed at fairly quickly, so it’s not without risk.
Quest Pro | Courtesy Meta
Don’t get me wrong. Quest Pro was a great first-gen device for 2022, but it was expensive at the launch price of $1,500. Meta eventually realized this, lowered the price to $1,000 and accelerated the launch of Quest 3, which not only subsumed a lot of Quest Pro’s abilities (minus the eye-tracking) but did it at a third of the price. It turned a failure into a quick win.
With Phoenix though, Meta has an opportunity to offer a real productivity device, owing to its small form-factor and focus on long-term user comfort. But if Meta can’t capitalize on Phoenix, it’s possible consumers may not see the downstream effects like it did when Quest Pro gave up the ghost and Quest 3 and Quest 3S took its place.
Can Meta pull it off again? I’m skeptical. Meta could decide tomorrow it simply doesn’t care about consumer VR headsets, cancelling any affordable Quest successor and favoring productivity-focused VR from now on. I certainly hope that isn’t the case, although it’s pretty evident at this point we’re in the middle of a VR winter in terms of content development, which could stymy consumer engagement and attraction in the future.
That said, Meta has proven itself agile enough in the past to make it work either way. The company has a history of releasing VR devices that typically take on multiple purposes after the fact, and end up serving their next hardware strategy, “failure” or not.
Oculus Quest (left), Rift S (right) | Courtesy Meta
Some increasingly ancient-feeling history: released in 2019, Oculus Rift S was a marked improvement over the original Oculus Rift CV 1, which had arrived three years prior. Rift S not only allowed Meta (then Facebook) to appeal to upgraders looking for a new headset within the same PC VR ecosystem, but also extract as much money from Rift’s back catalogue of apps before giving up on PC VR gaming entirely, as the company moved on to largely concentrate on developing its Quest standalone platform. Whether that was the intention or not doesn’t really matter; the company had a strategy that allowed it to capitalize on the launch of one piece of hardware to benefit the next.
The same happened with Quest. Launching alongside Rift S, the original Oculus Quest performed well enough, although it lacked power, couldn’t play the same games as Rift without a tether, and was priced at $400 for the 64GB—three areas Quest 2 would immediately improve upon a short year later, culminating in the company’s best-selling VR headset to date. The original Quest was a glorified developer kit.
Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn something about Meta’s future VR strategy at Connect in a few weeks, and possibly sooner, as the company has a pretty terrible track record at keeping anything but its most sacred one-off prototypes under wraps.
Besides being the world’s biggest smartphone chipmaker, Qualcomm is also the number one supplier of processors for nearly all standalone VR headsets on the market today. According to a Bloomberg report, those chips could be getting a lot more expensive.
The News
According to email seen by Bloomberg sent to customer on Friday, Qualcomm is slated to raise chip prices by a percentage in the double digits, set to take effect September 1st, 2026.
Qualcomm explained in the letter that, despite its best efforts to secure alternative components from new sources, the company can no longer absorb higher costs from suppliers.
This adds to the already beleaguered RAM and storage crisis largely caused by the uptick in AI data center construction, which has seen consumer electronics skyrocket in price.
Courtesy Valve
As Bloomberg points out, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has become the major chokepoint, as the it’s a major provider for outsourced chipmaking, with customers including Qualcomm, Samsung, Xiaomi, and Meta.
Outside of Apple Vision Pro, which is based on Apple-developed silicon, most standalone VR headsets rely on Qualcomm chips, including a slate of upcoming devices.
Valve’s Steam Frame is likely to be affected alongside other standalone VR headsets centered around Qualcomm SoCs, with Pico’s ‘Project Swan’ compute puck-tethered headset and undoubtedly also Meta’s next headset in the crosshairs too.
My Take
With rapidly raising component costs now including mobile processors, consumer VR is probably going to be even more difficult to price aggressively in the near future. Most worrying to me is Steam Frame, which Valve still hasn’t given a price or release date yet.
It’s impossible to say whether Qualcomm’s price hike is the main reason why this is the case, but you can bet Valve is now having to think long and hard about how to rolls out the headset, which could be any day now.
I see it going one of a few ways: Valve could eat the cost and make a little less money. Valve could raise its internal price target (again) and sell at its new expected price target. Valve could also raise the headset’s price shortly after launch with a big “sorry guys, we tried” letter to the community. Whatever the case, Frame’s bill of goods has effectively just increased a few more dollars thanks to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
That’s in the near term. In the longer term, I’d expect the price hike to touch smart glasses, AR glasses, as well as in-development VR headsets—with all constituent companies probably now having to weigh whether they really actually need a cutting edge processor to meet market expectations.
XR startup Immersed announced it’s nearing launch of its long-promised work-focused standalone VR headset, Visor.
The News
Immersed sent out an email (courtesy Reddit user ‘aline-works’) to pre-order customers over the weekend announcing that the company is locking in shipping timelines.
Next month, the company says we can expect an update that will “cover where we are on the production ramp and what to expect next for your pre-order.”
The company says that due to the global component crisis, which has seen RAM and storage skyrocket in price, Visor is raising its floor price of $500 (Standard 4K Edition) to $700 for pre-order customers and purchasers after July 31st.
As a work-focused standalone VR headset based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, Visor boasts dual 4K microOLED displays, hand & eye tracking, color passthrough, 6 DoF tracking, and an included three-hour extended battery.
Pre-production unit (circa 2024) | Courtesy Eric Liga
Notably, the $800 Founder’s Edition, which will see the same $200 bump later this month, is said to ship “6 months before Standard Visor 4K,” the company maintains on the headset’s pre-order page, which could point to at least those customers receiving headsets in the near future.
That price however doesn’t include the required ‘Visor Plus’ subscription, which is an additional $40 per month for a 24 month period, or $60 per month for 12 months. This also includes access to the company’s own ‘Curator Professional AI Assistant’.
The shipping update has been a long time coming. Immersed began taking pre-orders in September 2023. In October 2024, Immersed said the hardware was largely complete, but it wanted more time to improve quality control and polish the overall experience rather than rush Visor.
Then, in March 2025, In the company issued its second shipping update wherein Immersed said the shipment of the more expensive Founder’s Edition Visors would be “another month or two,” as the fulfillment schedule was then on “the order of weeks, not quarters.”
That post was subsequently edited, walking back the shipping quote, instead noting that “[p]rogress continues on Founder’s Edition deliveries as we work through fulfillment.”
My Take
Immersed has attracted a bulk of its $38 million runway from pre-IPO crowd investment, with only $4.5 million coming from traditional VCs. That’s a substantial amount of good will in Immersed’s ability to deliver, or at least enough people who believe they’re getting in on the ground floor of the next big thing.
But now approaching late 2026, the landscape is changing. Sometime this year we’ll be getting Valve’s Steam Machine, admittedly not a work-focused thin and light headset like Visor. And at some point, Pico will also release its Project Swan puck-tethered thin and light headset; rumors also allege Meta is cooking up its own puck-tethered competitor for release in 2027, codenamed ‘Phoenix’.
Besides Steam Frame, Pico and Meta’s headsets are likely gunning for the productivity segment too. And even if either company markets more toward gaming, the overlap in function between them is bound to draw direct comparisons, which simply wouldn’t have been the case in 2024.
Still, and it’s unfortunate to say, in the current VR funding hellscape, now more than ever, we really need to see it to believe it.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is set to unveil its first pair of smart glasses at next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
The News
Codenamed ‘N50’, Apple’s smart glasses were reportedly meant for a late 2026 reveal, with launch targeting early 2027. Now Gurman maintains that WWDC, which is set to take place in June 2027, won’t be the device’s actual launch day; consumer release is expected sometime by the end of 2027.
The delay is said to essentially be a two-fold issue, centered on both refining the product from an engineering standpoint, but also a marketing challenge of defining the device’s messaging around privacy.
Ray-Ban Meta glasses | Courtesy EssilorLuxottica, Meta
Like Ray-Ban Meta and the company’s cheaper Meta Glasses, which notably don’t feature any EssilorLuxottica branding, Apple’s smart glasses are said to include two camera sensors; one for photo and video capture and the other for computer vision tasks.
“That’s meant developing features and policies that can address the concerns swirling around competing products from Meta Platforms Inc,” Gurman says, noting the teams developing glasses within Apple’s Vision hardware group and elsewhere in the company see privacy as “priority No. 1.”
And similar to Meta’s audio-only smart glasses, Apple’s N50 hardware isn’t expected to include a display of any kind, instead relying on cameras, speakers and microphones for things such as phone calls, AI queries, listening to music, and capturing images.
My Take
Has the well already been poisoned by creeps? Will fashionable smart glasses with more stringent privacy laws be enough to rehabilitate the segment as a whole? Honestly, I think it’s way too early to frame it that way. Despite some impressive sales figures from Meta and EssilorLuxottica, smart glasses are still very much a niche item; most people own several pairs of sunglasses and likely zero smart glasses at this point.
Some of that might come down to its currently being led by Meta, which has a poor track record on privacy and user surveillance. Some of it may be price sensitivity, although Meta’s $300 no-brand glasses should put a dent in that. In the end, I think most people don’t know why they’d even want a pair in the first place, which Apple will probably vaunt since the company’s top-tier phones and accessories typically start out as status symbols anyway.
Gentle Monster Smart Glasses | Courtesy Google & Samsung
Personally, I don’t own a part of audio-only smart glasses because I’m a text-based person living in a very not-text-based world. I don’t talk to AI because I can’t stand the long-winded answers. I can easily skip over the tropey, Silicon Valley-flavored social lubrication and get to the meat of the answer by reading and typing for clarification than I can by having a stilted conversation out loud. The cameras are also basically at the level of mid-range smartphone from a couple of years go, although the speed to snap a life moment is decidedly quicker despite being objectively worse quality than basically any new smartphone today.
Despite this, there’s clearly money in it now, and it’s also a relatively easy way for Apple/Google/Samsung/Meta to gain a foothold in the soon-to-come AR glasses segment of the future.
Apple is however hoping to avoid Meta’s missteps, it seems. Notably, Meta landed in hot water following the revelation that in March the company was accused of sending private smart glasses camera footage to a Kenya-based subcontractor for manual review to train its AI models. The company has also been accused of baking in facial recognition into its smart glasses, although that feature hasn’t been activated.
That said, it’s clear even Meta is looking to tighten up their act as bigger competition comes online, as the company has finally closed the hardware loophole that allowed motivated users to physically drill out the capture LED, which notifies others when a user is actively taking photos or video. Now, Meta Glasses users who have in some way deactivated the capture LED (already in addition to simply covering it) are no longer able to record video or take photos.
Samsung and Google are also set to release a fleet of smart glasses this year from Warby Parker and South Korea’s Gentle Monster, the latter of which is making a large concerted push into the North American and European market with its smart glasses at the forefront. And that cadre, along with Apple and Meta (which admittedly released its prosumer Meta Display Glasses) also ostensibly has multiple consumer display models in the works too, although I’d expect the bulk of those to be at the very least a device generation away, maybe even further.
(@noridoesvr) 
