Thoughts on the State of VR 2026 Edition
quick note: I wrote this blog post before Meta’s Connect 2026 event. I’ll most likely make a short followup regarding that soon!
Man, oh man. Sigh. Well, I’ve done two previous versions of this post, talking in 2024 and 2025 about the state of VR as a gamer. So I figured I would continue the now annual tradition. Will this be the last one? Only time will tell!
So I went back and read my 2025 post to see how I was feeling about things back then. I used the word stagnant to describe things, and I think that was pretty accurate. It hasn’t been all doom and gloom since the previous year though. I broke down and bought a Quest 3, as they had a crazy good deal on refurbished systems. The Quest 3 is a super nice improvement over the 2, and I’ve really enjoyed using it. That meant that I WAS able to get some of the newer games that were getting developed on it, like Deadpool and TMNT: Empire City. I still haven’t gotten the Batman game yet, but Deadpool was a lot of fun, with crazy good action scenes and a lot of really funny moments. As big of a TMNT fan as I am, I’m a bit surprised I haven’t flown through this game, but I think the intro levels as you try each turtle kind of dissuaded me early on. I still haven’t figured out how to use Donatello, and him being my favorite turtle and all, that got me a bit frustrated. But Mikey plays well, and I’m sure I’ll figure Don out once I give it a bit more time. Graphically the game looks great, I’ll say that right away!
One more game I’ve really gotten into isn’t a new game at all, but I took the plunge with some new DLC it came out with. Walkabout Minigolf is often talked about as a VR game that everyone should play, and now that I’ve played it, I really agree. It’s such a fun way to jump into VR, play for a half hour, and jump out again feeling you’ve played a full game! And the controls are so intuitive I was genuinely impressed! The courses that come with the game all look and play fantastic, too. But the reason I finally bought the game, they came out with a Homestar Runner DLC pack. I am a huuuuge fan of Homestar Runner, and I love when he just shows up again for another cartoon, or mini game boy game, or a board game 20 years later! This DLC adds Strongbadia as a new golf course, and the attention to detail was great, so many little callbacks to old cartoons as you play through the course! You can also hang out in Strong Bad’s basement in VR and play with his Cheat Commando toys, or play a variety of Homestar themed minigames. There’s a lot of great content in it, and if you’re a fan of Homestar at all, it’s a must get!
Okay, that’s like, all the good stuff to say for VR, like at all, for the past year I think. Just like everything else in the video game industry, VR is imploding as well, as layoffs continue with every single big game studio. Meta shut down four studios it had previously purchased, including the studio that made Deadpool, like a month after the game came out. Rec Room, which was a huge social game, shut down out of nowhere. Last year I at least had said there were a couple big name games coming out in the next year, like Deadpool and TMNT. I don’t think I know of any games that are on the horizon that I’m waiting for this time. One interesting thing coming out will be the return of Altspace VR, which was another social game like VRChat and Rec Room. It was bought by Microsoft and eventually shut down, but the original creator has gotten the rights and is bringing it back next month, so we’ll see what that brings.
The one glimmer of hope I had for the future of VR was that Valve was once again interested in VR, with their new Steam Frame VR system coming out sometime in the next few months. And while I think it might generate some new interest, the whole ‘ramogedden’ situation the modern computer market finds itself in means that the system is going to launch at a much higher price point than originally intended, so I think it’s going to really hold back any major buy in from any but the most enthusiastic VR gamers.
So yeah, here we area year later, and while there’s been some highlights, I don’t know how many more highlights there will be in the future. Here’s to hoping that in 2027 I’m writing about what a fool my 2026 VR-loving self was. But I don’t know. If stagnant was how I described 2025, I’ll say 2026 is...decline? Dying? Fingers crossed for a VR miracle over the next year!