Hello! I’m Rick Lane, and you may recall me from columns like Reality Bytes, RPS’ former monthly exploration of the realm of virtual reality. I’ve been stuck for the past few years oscillating between the second and third dimensions, my flattened form eternally spinning to face the camera. However, RPS has retrieved its bicycle pump and reinflated me back into stereoscopic 3D, allowing me to share insights on the status of VR in 2026.<\/p>\n
And what a status it is! The news headlines are quite alarming. Shipments of VR headsets are decreasing. Prominent VR studios are either laying off employees or shutting down entirely. Meanwhile, VR’s previous biggest advocate seems to be distracted, admiring fleeting market trends with its questionable smart glasses.<\/p>\n
The all-in-one Steam Frame headset is anticipated to arrive soon\u2014if the rumors are accurate\u2014but to put it succinctly, things appear bleak. Yet, considering the overall state of the gaming industry is also dismal, it raises the question: why would VR, the most niche of gaming markets, be any exception? To genuinely grasp the situation of the VR landscape, we must strive to distinguish the generally unfavorable from the specifically unfavorable. Upon doing so, it becomes apparent that VR, in a broad sense, is not performing any worse than the industry as a whole, and in certain aspects at least, is doing better than one might expect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello! I’m Rick Lane, and you may recall me from columns like Reality Bytes, RPS’ former monthly exploration of the realm of virtual reality. I’ve been stuck for the past few years oscillating between the second and third dimensions, my flattened form eternally spinning to face the camera. However, RPS has retrieved its bicycle pump and reinflated me back into stereoscopic 3D, allowing me to share insights on the status of VR in 2026.<\/p>\n
And what a status it is! The news headlines are quite alarming. Shipments of VR headsets are decreasing. Prominent VR studios are either laying off employees or shutting down entirely. Meanwhile, VR’s previous biggest advocate seems to be distracted, admiring fleeting market trends with its questionable smart glasses.<\/p>\n
The all-in-one Steam Frame headset is anticipated to arrive soon\u2014if the rumors are accurate\u2014but to put it succinctly, things appear bleak. Yet, considering the overall state of the gaming industry is also dismal, it raises the question: why would VR, the most niche of gaming markets, be any exception? To genuinely grasp the situation of the VR landscape, we must strive to distinguish the generally unfavorable from the specifically unfavorable. Upon doing so, it becomes apparent that VR, in a broad sense, is not performing any worse than the industry as a whole, and in certain aspects at least, is doing better than one might expect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/havefunesports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}