.jpg)
According to Bloomberg News, Meta is considering slashing its metaverse spending by as much as 30% in 2026 — although no plans are final yet — after meetings at Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound laid out a slimmer future for its namesake ambitions. For three years, the company tried to brute-force another new reality into existence: new name, new stock ticker, new keynote vocabulary about “presence” and “embodied internet.”
https://qz.com/meta-metaverse-cuts-mark-zuckerberg-reality-labs
Meta’s impressive, photorealistic digital replicas of real places built using its “Hyperscape” capture tech, which uses the cameras on a Quest 3 or Quest 3S VR headset to scan a room, have so far been solitary spaces. But beginning this week, Meta is rolling out the ability to share links that will let other people visit Hyperscape rooms with you in a Quest 3 or 3S VR headset or via the Meta Horizon mobile app.
https://www.theverge.com/news/825705/meta-hyperscape-social-links-capture-scan-metaverse
The new headset is called the Steam Frame, and it’s trying to do several things at once. It’s a standalone VR headset with a smartphone-caliber Arm chip inside that lets you play flat-screen Windows games locally off the onboard storage or a microSD card. But the Frame’s arguably bigger trick is that it can stream games directly to the headset, bypassing your unreliable home Wi-Fi by using a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless dongle that plugs into your gaming PC. And its new controllers are packed with all the buttons and inputs you need for both flat-screen games and VR games.
https://www.theverge.com/games/816118/valve-steam-frame-vr-headset-streaming-arm-steamos-hands-on
Valve, the company behind PC gaming platform Steam, has revealed a new console to rival Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation. In an unusual move, Valve has also announced further hardware – its Steam Frame virtual reality (VR) headset. The device is entirely wireless – and it described it as a "streaming-first" device – but it is also itself a PC running SteamOS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd679n9lnx5o
If mixed reality and virtual reality are still a big thing, you wouldn’t know it based on Meta’s Connect conference last week. There were no big Quest announcements (outside of maybe Hyperscape), no new Quest headset, and it felt like the only time Meta (traditionally the loudest and proudest purveyor of XR out there) really tackled XR and VR was through a surprise, and slightly out of place, fireside chat with… Avatar director, James Cameron.
https://gizmodo.com/vr-headsets-are-better-than-ever-and-no-one-seems-to-care-2000663098
We’ve made a tough decision and wanted you to be the first to hear that Adobe Aero will be shutting down permanently on November 6th, 2025. This was an incredibly difficult decision that we didn't make lightly.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-aero-discussions/announcing-adobe-aero-end-of-support/m-p/15450025
Meta laid off employees on Thursday in its Reality Labs division, which encompasses various virtual and augmented reality projects. The cuts impact employees within Oculus Studios, which develops apps and games for Meta’s Quest headsets. Reality Labs has been a massive cost for Meta, losing almost $5 billion in the last quarter of 2024 while generating about $1 billion in sales. Meta has reported billions of dollars in operating losses on Reality Labs each year since rebranding from Facebook and emphasizing its commitment to the “metaverse.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/meta-conducts-layoffs-in-oculus-studios-impacting-vr-exercise-app-supernatural/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon