The perfect XR ecosystem is accessible, social, and curated — here’s what that looks like to me
The fight for dominance in the XR platform wars is increasingly becoming about the ecosystem.
In his column "Gaming In Focus", MIXED guest writer Jamie Feltham regularly looks at current developments and shares his experiences from over 10 years in the XR industry.
Apple is prepared to sell a very expensive headset that few will buy as it fleshes out visionOS with new features, as will probably be the case with Google, Samsung, and Android XR later this year. Meta, meanwhile, spoonfeeds cheaper headsets to a wider audience to test out Horizon OS, pushing its Worlds app on customers or removing features like its Move fitness tracker when it deems them of no further use.
None of these approaches are quite ‘there’ yet when it comes to offering a robust, accessible platform with the same features and ease of use of, say, smartphones. But what does ‘there’ really look like?
Here’s my Fraken-pitch for what a great VR ecosystem could offer, cobbled together from what works on other platforms, and some new ideas.
A robust, managable hub with worlds at your fingertips
There’s been a lot of different attempts to create compelling ‘homes’ for VR headsets so far, and none of them have really stuck. Oculus Home for Rift offered many great features, but overwhelmed users when it came to applying all of it. Oculus Rooms had some interesting ideas on small scale games and co-viewing, but never made it past Gear VR. SteamVR Home still exists, but does anyone actually use it?
Oculus Home had some great ideas for an XR Home space, but it was all a little overwhelming. | Image: Meta
In today’s Quest Home environment, you can’t do much of anything, aside from stare out into the distance where some blurry JPEGs try to trick you into believing you’re nestled in an idyllic mountain range.
I’d love to see a VR/MR Home environment that brought back interactivity but focused on genuinely engaging activities that are simple and seamless to jump into. Imagine selling licensed boardgames not as an ‘app’ that you have to separately load up, but right there on the Home layer where you can pick up and play straight away.
The potential here is huge: TVs, Time Crisis cabinets, retro games consoles, table tennis, air hockey. These are activities that don’t require artificial locomotion, work both in VR and MR and, more importantly, can be enjoyed with friends (more on that in a bit).
Rather than push for user-generated worlds, these activities would give developers new ways to engage with their core offerings. Companies like SEGA could sell arcade cabinets, whereas traditional apps could include bonus Home activities as purchase incentives. Imagine buying Walkabout Mini Golf and unlocking a miniature ‘at home’ course in MR, for example.
Crucially, all of this has to be within reach as soon as you boot up your device. People don’t want sprawling mansions for billionaires to teleport around aimlessly. They want ease of access and to be able to do what they want instantly. Activities don’t have to have permanent fixtures in an increasingly cramped virtual living room but could easily be switched on the fly so you can use them when and where you want via a quick menu or, for the more inclined, a haunted house-style revolving wall.
Social at the heart
It’s becoming increasingly apparent over the past 10 years that social is the heart of VR. Today’s most popular apps and experiences are those that let you play and collaborate with friends. And yet none of the core headset operating systems have put this central for their home experiences thus far.
Instead of taking cues from dystopian novels on how to approach this, platforms should look at the apps thriving in today’s XR landscape.
Oculus Rooms had some great ideas for small-scale social activities that we could learn a lot from. Is it time to bring it back? | Image: Meta
So let's say you’re in your home environment, practising your table tennis shots or racking up high-scores on House of the Dead. Someone on your friends list then ‘Knocks’. You open the quick menu and let them in. They’re able to be the player 2 in that table tennis match or pick up the other controller for House of the Dead. It doesn’t matter that they don’t own these items in their own home — but they’ll need to buy them separately if they do want to play them there.
Social also runs through every other aspect of the platform. So when it’s time to boot up a dedicated app – some experiences are too big for your home – you’re able to launch together into the specific level or mode you want directly from the Home interface. Want to pick up on that 2,000-piece monster in Puzzling Places? Select it from the Home menu and dive right in. Finished that puzzle and fancy a round of golf? Bring up the overlay menu, select the Walkabout course you want from a Quick Start section, and seamlessly transition over.
Each app would need to support these features where applicable to make the overall ecosystem as cohesive as possible. No more fractured layers making each lobby a nightmare to locate, and no convoluted friends systems beyond just simply adding a username to your list. That means tight collaboration with a handful of trusted partners to really get the platform’s vision across, especially in its infancy.
App categorization and curation
Some would argue that, for any new headset to be competitive in the market, they’d need to catch up with Meta’s overwhelming library of games and apps as soon as you get the chance. But this approach is expensive, time consuming, and ultimately didn’t even work for companies like Pico.
Store curation is one of the hottest topics in XR right now. | Image: Meta
I’d instead argue that a new ecosystem needs to identify maybe 20 to 30 key apps and work closer with those developers to bring their games to the platform on a much more considered basis. That means a version of Walkabout Mini Golf that lets you seamlessly jump into a certain level with friends from the Home environment, and then effortlessly hop over to a game of Eleven Table Tennis after finishing a round.
My pitch for an XR storefront is one that focuses on that connectivity, whilst providing plenty of opportunities for experienced users to go deeper. So if you’re a Gorilla Tag player that loves the crazy intensity that app brings, there’s a category for you. If you’re a more traditional gamer that loves the spectacle of AAA titles and wants to spend more time in structured stories or multiplayer, there’s a category for you. Or if you want to use a headset to workout, be productive or just watch something with a friend, there’s a category for that too.
Here’s how that looks:
- Key Worlds: This is the ‘starter’ category for new users. These are the retention-heavy apps and games that best represent XR’s core strengths. They’re mostly social, always comfortable, and entirely graspable for new users. So, no, it’s not where you’ll find Gorilla Tag – an app that many would find nauseating on their first go in VR and one that more engaged users will easily find in other categories – but it is where you might find Walkabout, Eleven: Table Tennis, Rec Room and others.
- Arcade: Arcade is where things loosen up a little. This is the place to play much more intense games and apps with friends. It’s the category that would be headlined by Gorilla Tag, Animal Company and Yeeps — games that new users shouldn’t jump straight into but where many of VR’s younger users will know to go as soon as they boot up the headset.
- Adventures: Adventures is where a carefully curated selection of AAA games live. These will be big, wish-fulfilling IP like Star Wars: Vader Immortal and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners live, as well as big new releases from studios like Vertigo Games and nDreams. They’ll promote comfort or at least have compelling comfort options, and feature a mix of multiplayer and single-player experiences that most people can pick up and play.
- Playground: Playground is the ‘App Lab’ of this ecosystem. It’s where experimental apps and games made by small teams, students, and others go, with the potential to join the more curated categories if there’s precedent. So players in the Arcade category might spend time exploring here between games of Gorilla Tag, or those hoping to join Adventures or Key Worlds might put early builds of their apps here instead. Crucially, this can be found in-headset, not hidden away, but in its own dedicated category for those that know how to navigate the store.
- Office, Gym & Theater: These more self-explanatory categories are for the different types of apps we’ve seen spring up over the past 10 years. Gym is the hub for all the various workout apps that have really dug into the ecosystem, Office focuses on productivity, and Theater features VoD platforms and more passive VR experiences.
Over time, as your device learns the types of apps you like to engage with most, you might find curation pushing you towards your most-used categories. But onboarding for new users would keep the initial focus on Key Worlds to ensure that people’s first-time VR experience is a good one. Experienced users could opt out of this in the setup and jump straight to Gorilla Tag or Ghosts of Tabor.
Overall, I think of an approach like this as a sort of ‘reset’ for XR. It takes the learnings of the past 10 years and encourages developers to go deeper with their social integrations, without the threat of leaving them out in the cold when it comes to a potential user-made metaverse on the distant horizon. It also doesn’t distance more traditional apps and games for older demographics, and lays the groundwork for other categories set to grow the audience in the years to come.
So, if any other billion-dollar companies want to take a stab at XR, feel free to steal my ideas. Royalties would be nice, but I’d prefer to see someone get it right sooner rather than later.
What do you think of Jamie's ideas? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
For feedback, topic suggestions, or other ideas, please email us at hello@mixed-news.com.
Jamie Feltham has 10+ years of experience working in VR, first covering the industry for a number of publications including UploadVR, where he created the UploadVR Showcase. After handling biz dev for HTC Vive and global PR & marketing for Fast Travel Games, Jamie founded the VR Games Showcase, the premiere digital showcase for VR game announcements and updates. You can follow @VRGamesShowcase on YouTube to get ready for the next VRGS events. Jamie can be reached at jamie@thevrshowcase.com.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
