XR Developer News - January 2026
Strangely this month was a slow one in which a lot happened.
Obviously the big shift was Meta's Reality Labs course adjustment, which had several immediately visible effects: firing a lot of people, closing game studios, ending its enterprise push, killing Workrooms, and shifting Worlds to mobile. On the other hand, looking at it from an XR developer's point of view outside of Meta, most of those things don't have an immediate impact.
It's in the mid- to long-term where the real questions lie. How much were the teams working on the fundamental technology (Quest hardware, Horizon OS, the various Meta Quest SDKs) affected? Will we see a gradual slowdown of new developer features and a longer hardware iteration cycle? How will Meta position itself with regard to subsidising future Quest hardware and what will that do to market growth?
In a way it's interesting to see that there are limitations which even with tens of billions of dollars you can't buy your way past. The diminishing returns of spending infinite money I suppose. Standalone VR/MR headsets are still pretty much (amazing) bricks to the face, even with 10 years of heavily funded evolution since the Oculus and Vive days. And developing great experiences for them is still a complicated process. It's easy to forget that the fact that we're even at this point is primarily a result of the smartphone revolution which was leveraged to get there, but that we might need a few more such external revolutions to get significantly further.
Meta seems to have come to terms with the fact that the limitations of the current state of science and manufacturing can't be moved fast enough just through sheer force of budget to make such investment levels sensible. Sometimes you need to let time do its work instead.
The popular narrative of 'Meta finally killed its metaverse thing' is just plain lazy though. Meta still dominates the XR space, still spends the most, and nothing I've seen this month makes me think that they're planning on giving up that position in any way. It feels more like moving from a 'push at all costs' to a 'push hard' approach.
My bet would be that for the broader market this is a good thing, as it makes it at least somewhat feasible to try to compete with Meta. Google might have a chance with Android XR, where it made no sense for Microsoft to continue with HoloLens. XREAL might have a shot with Project Aura, where Magic Leap floundered, just because there's some air left in the room as Meta behaves a bit more rationally in its spending.
The next turn of the wheel of course is glasses. The challenges there in science, in manufacturing, in optics, compute and battery, are even harder than in VR/MR. The potential to affect our daily lives seems significantly larger as well. We're starting to see the beginning of that wave appear and Meta definitely seems to be in 'push at all costs' mode there, perhaps even more than a few months ago. It'll be fascinating to see how it all turns out.
All of the above notwithstanding, it was actually quite a slow news month, as everyone seems to be recovering from the crazy busy last quarter. There was a bit of regular news, so as we all recover from Meta's seismic tremors, I'll take you through it. Hope it is useful!
Meta
And of course, we're still starting with Meta.
- Meta pushed out a big update of the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, launching a few previously announced capabilities such as handwriting. Interested and want to buy a set? Tough luck. They're in such high demand that getting them is hard, especially internationally as a lack of supply has forced Meta to hold off on starting to sell them outside of the USA.
Lisa Brown Jaloza- If you're working on extending your existing Android app to run on Quest and adding some Spatial SDK features, your life as a developer might just have gotten a bit easier as Meta announced its Spatial Simulator, so you can test outside of real physical devices.
- If integrating a Quest app with AI capabilities is more your cup of tea, Meta has you covered there as well, as it released as open source a new sample app called Spatial Lingo. And Meta Developer Advocate Dilmer Valecillos released a video about the AI building blocks in the Meta SDK.
- A while back the Meta Start Developer Program opened up a bit more, and it seems like they published a whole bunch of videos from the last few years that used to be behind closed doors. Perhaps there's something in there that interests you, so check them out.
Other
- Snap released a January update to Snap OS running on Spectacles. No big new features, just a lot of quality of life improvements.
January Snap OS Update - Teleprompter Lens Released + Improvements to System UI, SIK, & Fleet Management
by u/Spectacles_Team in Spectacles
- Lynx announced the Lynx-R2, its second attempt at launching an XR headset. Although it's a very likeable company, its track record and troubled history (including the surprising break with Google's Android XR recently) make me very hesitant to hope for too much. They have a lot to prove and a lot of trust to earn back, but I hope they manage to ship this edition and that it's a good product.
- If you're deep in the weeds of Unity performance on standalone XR headsets, check out this forum post.
- Might the intricacies of OpenXR be your cup of tea instead? The Khronos Group has you covered! Same if you're into glTF and gaussian splats.
- And while we're in the open technology realm, Bastiaan Olij has a new video about XR in Godot up.
- We've covered a few troubled XR initiatives above already, so 8th Wall will fit in nicely. Its planned shutdown at the end of February is starting to draw near, and you can now export your projects to keep them running by self-hosting. Unless they depend on VPS or Maps, in which case you're out of luck. And the core tech is only released as a closed source binary, which won't be maintained anymore, so be aware that this does not have a real chance as an open source project with a potential future, and is not suitable for new projects. Still decent that they're at least doing their best to help out as many existing users as possible to keep things alive.
Jan 21, 2026 . 1 min read . Announcements
- Let's say you've finished this newsletter and are still itching for more XR-related content... you're in luck! Gabriele Romagnoli just expanded what he's doing with his excellent XR AI Spotlight newsletter and interview series by adding a paid tier with extra features. His stuff is pretty awesome, so if you can, support him by becoming a paying member and help keep his great content coming!
Gabriele Romagnoli
Upcoming XR events
- February 2-4, 2026 - AWE Asia in Singapore.
- April 8-10, 2026 - Laval Virtual in Laval, France.
- June 15-18, 2026 - AWE USA in Long Beach, California.
- June 23-25, 2026 - Immersive Tech Week in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
A bit about this newsletter
Each month I try to round up all the interesting developments in the XR developer landscape. New hardware and software releases, events, tooling, etc. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, for instance if I missed anything which definitely should be in this monthly round up next time. Want to know more? Check out the about page.
And if you need expertise in the XR space, know that we offer exactly that at DNA.inc where I'm Head of XR, so don't hesitate to get in touch!
