Meta exec hopes VR teens will stick around

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a publication on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and leisure, syndicated only for The Verge subscribers as soon as every week.

“It is a pretty rough time for the game industry.”

Meta Reality Labs director of video games Chris Pruett didn’t mince phrases when he returned to GDC for his annual speak on the state of VR gaming this week. “I have been in the industry for almost 30 years at this point,” he stated. ”This is the roughest interval I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s rough for everybody,” Pruett stated. “It’s rough for VR. We are not immune.”

Pruett made these remarks two months after Meta minimize greater than 1,000 VR-related jobs and considerably reduce on first-party recreation improvement. “We shut down several of our studios,” Pruett acknowledged. “And make no mistake: Those were top-class studios.”

Meta’s important cutbacks have led to unease amongst VR builders, particularly since many third-party studios have had layoffs of their very own. Granted, income within the Quest retailer was nonetheless up barely in 2025, based on Pruett. However, a lot of the medium’s progress has been pushed by free-to-play titles like GorillaTag and UG, that are standard with younger teens with little disposable revenue.

Even older hardcore VR avid gamers “are not spending as much as they used to,” Pruett admitted. However, he did have a message of hope for determined VR builders: Those GorillaTag gamers gained’t keep 14 without end.

“As you grow older, start to become an adult, you are looking for things that are more challenging to you,” Pruett stated.

At the identical time, these gamers probably gained’t hand over on VR altogether. “They have been playing it since they were 12,” Pruett stated. They’re used to a special sort of gameplay with a much bigger emphasis on social interplay, and likewise lots much less susceptible to movement illness than older gamers.

“We’ve never had young adults that were VR native,” Pruett stated. And whereas arduous knowledge on what these gamers could do sooner or later doesn’t but exist, he prompt that older gamers could also be into video games that retain a few of the whacky physics and social parts of video games like GorillaTag and UG, however with way more polish.

“I suspect that they remain a core group of players,” Pruett stated. “But the games they play are going to change, and the amount of money they’ll have to spend will change too.”

In addition to those older teens, Meta can also be betting on 30-something shoppers to find VR over the subsequent few years. “They watch a lot of movies, they watch a lot of sports, they watch a lot of Netflix shows,” Pruett stated. “But they don’t identify themselves as gamers.”

Pruett prompt that quite a lot of these shoppers gained’t purchase VR headsets for gaming, however as private TVs, and gadgets to look at 3D content material. Meta has labored for a while on courting this viewers, and reportedly has a light-weight headset with an exterior compute unit in improvement that’s anticipated to ship a while in 2027. The firm even struck a partnership with James Cameron to kick-start 3D content material manufacturing for that system.

Pruett prompt that these older shoppers will nonetheless play quite a lot of video games, even when they wouldn’t self-identify as avid gamers. Catering to them could require various kinds of video games, together with titles that may be performed sitting down. “It’s a low-friction, relaxing experience for them, not a workout,” he stated.

And whereas Pruett didn’t straight touch upon the upcoming headset, he did strongly urge builders who need to goal that older viewers to embrace controller-free interplay. “These guys are going to be basically hand-tracking only,” he stated. “They aren’t likely going to own controllers, or use controllers.”

Meta isn’t the one firm trying to adults with extra disposable revenue as a brand new target market for immersive computing. Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro is optimized for shoppers who’re interested by media consumption and seated experiences, and Google and Samsung seem to focus on the same viewers with their $1,800 Galaxy XR headset.

The massive caveat: So far, there’s little proof that these audiences are literally large enough to maneuver the needle for VR. Apple has reportedly minimize the manufacturing of the Vision Pro following lackluster gross sales, with IDC estimating that the corporate bought solely 45,000 headsets final quarter.

Pruett admitted himself that Meta was taking a wager on older gamers, calling them “a large looming audience.”

“They don’t exist on the platform today,” he stated.