News

‘Stranger Things VR’ Studio’s Next Project ‘Face Jumping’ Looks Like Another Patently Weird VR Experience

March 4, 2025 From roadtovr

Tender Claws, the studio behind Stranger Things VR (2024) and Virtual Virtual Reality (2017), announced they’re debuting another patently weird VR experience at SXSW this week, which is all about swapping perspectives by making eye contact.

The VR experience, called Face Jumping, certainly sounds like another one of Tender Claws’ wildly inventive experiments into virtual reality, as it’s debuting the experience on Meta Quest Pro alongside a host of others in the XR Experience Exhibition at SXSW’s Fairmont location next week.

The 30-minute experience is slated to serve up eye-tracked interactions that lets the player change perspectives by making eye contact with characters, animals, and objects. The studio says Face Jumping invites players to “reflect on the act of seeing and being seen, evoking questions about perception, consciousness, and how we connect to others through a glance.”

While most recently known for developing Stranger Things VR, the LA-based studio was also behind the mind-bending theatrical experience The Under Presents (2019), which included live performers interacting with at-home users.

It calls Face Jumping “a return to Tender Claws’ roots in experimental storytelling, multi-layered narratives, and absurdist explorations of technology and human connection.”

Tender Claws hasn’t revealed whether it’s releasing Face Jumping beyond the experience’s debut at SXSW, which will be open to badge holders on March 9th – 11th in Austin, Texas.

Since it primarily makes use of eye-tracking, it could hypothetically come to any number of platforms, including Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest Pro, and PSVR 2. We’ve reached out to the studio to clarify this, and will update this piece when/if we know more.

Online Dating Company Announces $20M Annual Fund to Accelerate “virtual intimacy” Startups

March 3, 2025 From roadtovr

Social Discovery Group, the company behind Dating.com and DateMyAge.com, announced it’s launched a venture studio that aims to “transform virtual intimacy into the new normal” by backing early-stage startups in AI-powered communication, XR advancements, and social discovery platforms.

Called SDG Lab, the group has pledged an annual investment of $20 million by providing a “straightforward” fundraising process, wherein entrepreneurs can secure seed funding for product development and additional capital for scaling.

SDG Lab’s most notable investments include virtual dating platform ‘VR Chat&Date’, and niche-based dating apps Kiseki, Flure, and AstroLove.

Led by Alex Kudos, former CMO of Social Discovery Group, SDG Lab is also providing startups building social discovery and connection technologies with resources, such as legal assistance, back-office support, tech infrastructure, and marketing expertise.

“Social interaction is evolving, and digital intimacy is the next frontier,” said Alex Kudos, CEO of SDG Lab. “At SDG Lab, we’re not just funding ideas—we’re co-creating the future of human connection. By investing in and partnering with bold entrepreneurs, we are building technologies that make meaningful relationships possible, no matter where people are in the world.”

“Virtual relationships and AI-driven connections are no longer science fiction—they are a fundamental part of our digital lives,” added Kudos. “SDG Lab is building the next generation of products that will shape how people connect, engage, and build relationships online.”

Play for Dream Expects to Adopt Android XR for Standalone OS and Bring New Focus to US Market

February 28, 2025 From roadtovr

China-based Play for Dream, the company building a Vision Pro-like standalone MR headset, says it expects to adopt Android XR as its standalone operating system.

The Play for Dream MR headset has been called a “Vision Pro knock-off,” given its close aesthetic similarity to Apple’s headset. But people who have tried it say it’s more than just a cheap look-alike, including a former Quest engineer who gave the headset high praise on execution.

While the Play for Dream MR headset is currently running its own flavor of Android as its underlying operating system, the company tells Road to VR that it expects to adopt Google’s own Android XR platform eventually. The company says it is “in ongoing discussions, but a definitive timeline has not yet been provided,” regarding the move.

Whether that means the Play for Dream MR headset itself would potentially be updated in the future with Android XR after launch is unclear. Alternatively the company could wait until a future headset to make its transition.

Given that the $1,900 headset is planned to launch at the end of the month, it’s unlikely Android XR would crop up before then. Especially considering that Google says Samsung’s Project Moohan headset will be the first headset to release with Android XR, and its release date still hasn’t been announced.

Play for Dream is relatively well established in China, but is little known in the US. In speaking with the company recently, we learned more about its background.

Huang Feng | Image courtesy Play for Dream

Play for Dream was founded in 2020 by CEO Huang Feng, who is also the founder of Wanyoo Esports, “Asia’s largest esports café chain;” and Bixin, “a leading gaming platform application in China with over 60 million registered players,” the company says.

Other key executives include Chairman Zong Yuan and CTO Yue Fei, while the company says it has more than 200 employees, and has not raised any outside investment.

While the company has sold several headsets into the Asia market, it says the Play for Dream MR headset is focused primarily on the US XR market.

Responding to criticism of the similarity of the headset (and its marketing) to Apple’s Vision Pro, a spokesperson said, “Our goal wasn’t to directly rival the Apple Vision Pro. We drew inspiration from its innovative design, focusing instead on creating an Android-based device that reflects our unique vision and approach.”

While there are significant similarities to Vision Pro in the look of the headset and its interface, one marked difference is that Play for Dream MR will support motion controllers.

The headset got its feet of the ground with a Kickstarter campaign that launched in September 2024, which raised roughly $300,000 from 215 backers, and ended in October.

While the campaign indicates that the first shipments of the Play for Dream MR headset are already shipping to backers, the wider release date for the headset is expected at the end of March, the company says.

Update (March 1st, 2025): A prior version of this article stated the headset’s price was $1,200, which was the price available during the Kickstarter. This has been corrected to the current price of the headset which is $1,900.

‘Meta for Education’ Program Exits Beta, Bringing Quest to the Classroom

February 28, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta announced its ‘Meta for Education’ program is now out of beta, allowing schools and educational institutions from all over to fill their classrooms with Quest headsets and use a variety of education-focused XR apps and software.

Initially announced last April, Meta for Education is a comprehensive solution for educators looking to bring XR into the classroom, which includes Quest headsets, XR management solution subscriptions with education-tailored device capabilities suitable for the classroom, and a variety of tools and apps built for admins, educators, and students.

Over the course of its beta, Meta worked with colleges in the US and UK to help refine the platform, with educators reporting that virtual and mixed reality enhanced student engagement and improved comprehension of complex topics.

Nick Clegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs and formed UK Deputy Prime Minister, highlights the transformative potential of immersive technologies in education, enabling students to experience otherwise inaccessible scenarios.

“Improving the life chances of children through education has been something I’ve been interested in throughout my career in politics and technology,” says Clegg.

“Of all the technological advances I’ve witnessed at Meta, immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality really caught my imagination because of the potential they have to transform the way we learn. My hope is that, through Meta for Education, we can make it easier for students to learn, practice, and apply new skills; feel a sense of presence with teachers and classmates; and visit places or experience things that would otherwise be impossible. Most importantly, I hope it helps teachers do what they do best: teach.”

Meta says data obtained from 43 Inspired Education Group schools, which already user immersive technology with teens in the classroom, reported 87% of students feeling more engaged and interested in their lessons, while 85% of teachers found virtual and mixed reality to be a valuable tool to enhance their teaching. Students also experienced a 15% improvement in their academic performance on multiple-choice assessments.

The program’s exit from beta follows a number of partnerships with institutions, such as Arizona State University, Imperial College London, and the University of Miami to integrate VR into their curricula.

Additionally, Meta and VictoryXR have developed over 30 “metaversities” with the Engage XR platform to create digital twin campuses for remote student interaction. Digital twin campuses are now available to students at The University of Leeds in the UK, University of the Basque Country in Spain, and University of Hannover in Germany.

Educators interested in learning more about Meta for Education can check out the program’s website, which includes a contact for applicants in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

Meta Reveals Next Generation Aria Glasses for Research and Experimentation

February 27, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta today revealed its next-gen glasses, Aria Gen 2, which the company intends to release to third-party researchers working on machine perception systems, AI and robotics.

The company revealed its first iteration of Project Aria back in 2020, showing off a sensor-rich pair of glasses which the company used internally to train its machine perception systems, ultimately tackling some of the most complex issues in creating practical, all-day augmented reality glasses of the future.

Since then, Meta’s first-gen Aria has found its way outside of company offices; early collaborations with BMW and a number of universities followed, including Carnegie Mellon, IIIT Hyderabad, University of Bristol, and University of Iowa, which used the glasses to tackle the a host of machine perception challenges.

Now, Meta has revealed Aria Gen 2. Like the first-gen device, Gen 2 doesn’t include displays of any type, though it now houses an upgraded sensor suite, including an RGB camera, position-tracking cameras, eye-tracking cameras, spatial microphones, IMUs, barometer, magnetometer, GNSS, and custom Meta silicon.

New to Aria Gen 2 are two new sensors embedded in the device’s nosepad: a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor for measuring heart rate and a contact microphone to distinguish the wearer’s voice from that of bystanders.

What’s more, Meta touts the 75g device’s all-day usability—making for 6-8 hours of active use—and its a foldable design.

The increasingly AI-rich device also features a slate of on-device machine perception systems, such as hand and eye-tracking, speech recognition, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) tracking for positional awareness.

Meta envisions the Aria’s SLAM tracking will allow users to internally map and navigate indoor areas that don’t have good or detailed GPS coverage—aka, a visual positioning system (VPS) that could equally help you get around a city street and a find specific item in a store.

The company isn’t ready to distribute Aria Gen 2 just yet, although Meta says it will share more details over the coming months, which is slated to target both commercial and academic researchers.

One such early collaboration was with Envision, which announced in October it was working with Meta to provide Aria with a ‘Personal Accessibility Assistant’ to help blind and low-vision users navigate indoor spaces, locate items, and essentially act as a pair of ‘seeing eye’ glasses.

Envision and Meta showed off their latest work in a video (seen above), revealing how Aria Gen 2’s SLAM tracking and spatial audio can assist a blind user to navigate a supermarket by following a spatially correct homing ping that the user perceives as emanating from the correct area, which guides them to the desired item, such as a red onion, or Granny Smith apple.

This comes as Meta continues its push to release its first commercial AR device, which not only needs all of those systems highlighted in Aria, but also the ability to display stereo-correct information in a slim, all-day wearable package. It’s no small feat, considering displays have much higher compute and power requirements relative to Aria’s various machine perception systems.

One of Meta’s biggest ‘light house’ moments was the reveal of its AR prototype Orion in September, which does feature those compute and power-hungry display, yet still fitting into an impressively slim form-factor, owing to its separate wireless compute unit.

Orion, or rather an Orion-like AR device, isn’t going on sale anytime soon though. The internal prototype itself cost Meta nearly $10,000 per unit to build due to its difficult to scale silicon carbide lenses, which notably feature a class-leading 70 degree field-of-view (FOV).

Still, the race is heating up to get all of the right components and use cases up to snuff to release a commercial product, which is aiming to supplant smartphones as the dominant mobile computing platform. Meta hopes to launch such AR glasses before 2030, with other major companies hoping to do the same, including Apple, Samsung, and Google.

MIT Reality Hack Has Become a Focal Point for US East Coast XR Devs & Entrepreneurs

February 26, 2025 From roadtovr

While the XR industry’s major hubs are concentrated on the West Coast of the US, the MIT Reality Hack hackathon has become a focal point for XR developers and entrepreneurs on the East Coast of the US. Now in its eight year, the event has expanded with new opportunities for industry discussion and networking thanks to the concurrently held EXPERIENTIAL Conference. Executive Director Maria Rice offers an overview of this year’s hackathon and winners.

Image courtesy Maria Rice

Guest Article by Maria Rice

Maria is the Executive Director of MIT Reality Hack. For the last eight years, she has been instrumental in positioning the Hack as the world’s leading experiential technology community through the development of programs like the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference, the Reality Scholars diversity fund, and the startup-focused Reality Hack Founders Lab.

From January 23–27, hundreds of top hackers-for-good—along with a roster of tech OGs and startup founders—descended on the MIT campus to attend the eighth annual MIT Reality Hack, the premiere hackathon for experiential technology.

The Hack was sponsored by a range of international players at the intersection of XR, AI, and deeptech. With AI development support from Lambda Labs, participants built functional prototypes using Meta Quest 3, Snap Spectacles, Qualcomm’s RB3g2 robotics kits, ShapesXR, Cognitive 3D, and STYLY.

One of the most notable characteristics of this year’s MIT Reality Hack was the introduction of new hardware kits, including MEMS-based AR lenses from Maradin, a haptic exoskeleton from Haptikos, and an array of neurosensing gear from OpenBCI, including the Galea biosensing headset.

With an unapologetic mission of hacking for good, MIT Reality Hack is most memorably distinguished by the dynamic energy generated by its participants and organizers. The five-day event stretched the hacking talents of some 600 participants to the limit, producing 78 innovative use cases and applications in XR and adjacent tech.

Winning projects included YEIGO, an AR tool for ensuring that mobility aids (like walkers) are used with correct posture; CAREGIVR, an immersive platform for preparing families and caregivers for end-of-life care; and Tac-Man, a haptic input device for sculpting in VR.

Check out the full list of the 2025 winners in all hardware and software categories.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference Expands MIT Reality with New Opportunities for Industry Discussion and Networking

Held alongside the MIT Reality Hack event, global attendees presented at the first-ever EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference at MIT; a one-day event envisioned as a ‘Davos of the spatial tech industry’. Cutting-edge research into the most challenging deeptech was demonstrated and debated within the context of learning innovation, vertical applications, and global development.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference was sponsored by IEEE Spectrum, Qualcomm, and Helsinki-based pioneer Distance Technologies.

In part to support the ‘hack-to-market’ initiative of the Founders Lab (one of Reality Hack’s community subprograms), EXPERIENTIAL featured two exciting company launches:

Limit Labs, founded by the leaders of VR/AR MIT, launched RoomSeed, a groundbreaking genAI tool informed by rigorous research.

Haptics company Haptikos launched with a new hand exoskeleton that brings a sense of touch to XR apps at a dramatically low price point with twice the precision of previous solutions.

Startup demos also included MIT spinout Three Space Lab and AI products from AUR+A, and Taiwan-based Meta Intelligence.

EXPERIENTIAL is shaped by the mandate set forth to extend Reality Hack’s inclusive technology focus beyond hacking and into the zeitgeist towards the promotion of creator economies. The program journeyed deep into the realms of both academic research and the business marketplace.

The conference kicked off with a fireside chat between two well known names in the industry: Tim Bajarin, founding analyst and Chairman of Creative Strategies and Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, who expounded over the course of an hour on the state of the XR industry, as moderated by AR pioneer Dan Cui.

Bajarin also participated as a first-time judge at the Hack and wrote up his thoughts on Forbes, calling his experience “one of the highlights of my career”, after 40+ years in the tech industry.

The EXPERIENTIAL keynote was give by Qualcomm’s Senior VP & GM of XR, Ziad Asghar who explored the growing synergy of AI capabilities in XR devices, and the importance of events like MIT Reality hack in incubating the ideas and talent that drive rapidly evolving industries.

Later in the conference a panel covering Global Initiatives Towards a Sustainable Future, saw MIT Senior Lecturer Ken Zolot moderate a conversation between keyholders representing the United Nations (UNICC), The World Bank Group, Inclusive AI Lab, and Qualcomm, and futurist & Global VP at HTC, Alvin Wang Graylin.

Panelists shared how they leverage experiential technology and hackathon initiatives to empower creator communities, drive economic growth, and enable new, more inclusive human experiences across industries and regions.

As noted by AWE co-founder and Reality Hack partner Ori Inbar: “XR is going mainstream, but to fully achieve this goal we need more seasoned XR builders and newcomers of all kinds to create diverse spatial experiences that matter to every single person on the planet. That’s how you conquer the mainstream!”

Companies interested in participating in the 2026 MIT Reality Hack and the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference may reach out to the conference by contacting me here.

Meta Connect 2025 Developer Conference Announced for September: What We’re Hoping For

February 19, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta announced its annual Connect developer conference is returning this year on September 17th-18th. While it’s probably still too early to speculate, there are a few things we’re hoping to hear about.

Meta typically fills out its speaker schedule closer to Connect, which may give us a better idea of what to expect come September. There’s also the long trail of leaks that inevitably crop up ahead of the event. So far, the company hasn’t provided any clues beyond the usual boilerplate:

“As in years past, we’ll share the latest and greatest in Meta Horizon updates, peel back the curtain on tomorrow’s tech, and give XR devs the tools they need to help build for the next computing platform today,” Meta says in the blogpost announce.

Still, Connect is typically the company’s premier event for its biggest announcements, and we’re already looking forward to a few.

At last year’s Connect, Meta revealed the October launch date of Quest 3S, the company’s latest mixed reality headset starting at $300. While we’re not expecting another Quest headset to launch this year, one thing we didn’t hear about at Connect 2024 was just when the rash of third-party headsets running Horizon OS will release, slated to arrive from Asus and Lenovo, in addition to an Xbox-flavored version of Quest.

Granted, it’s a seven-month wait until Connect 2025 kicks off, so it’s possible we could hear about those headsets sooner rather than later. Still, it’s a good bet Meta will put Horizon OS in the spotlight as it seeks to compete with Google’s forthcoming Android XR.

To boot, in January serial leaker ‘Luna‘ reported Asus may be the first out of the gate with a Horizon OS headset, which is reported to include eye-tracking, face-tracking, and displays which could either be quantum dot LCD with local dimming or micro-OLED, Luna reports.

Meta’s Orion AR Glasses Prototype | Image courtesy Meta

At Connect 2024, Meta also unveiled Orion, an internal AR glasses prototype that packs a laundry list of features, which notably may not make their way to a consumer pair of Meta AR glasses for some time—coming at least before 2030, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says. As the race to release an all-day pair of AR glasses heats up, we’re of course hoping to hear more at Connect 2025.

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are also another area of growing interest. Last year the company brought AI tools for reminders and the ability to scan QR codes and phone numbers using voice commands. The gen 2 version of Ray-Ban Meta released in October 2023, so it stands to reason the companies are looking to launch a new generation to capitalize on the thus far successful segment.

Notably, a recent Bloomberg report maintained we may see an expansion this year. Essilor Luxottica is reportedly working with Meta to create a sportier model in addition to a high-end model with a built-in display.

And although you might expect Connect to be all about AI this year, the company seems to be offloading this to a separate developer conference, called LlamaCon, kicking off on April 29th, which will be dedicated to its family of generative AI models.

That said, it’s a long leadup to Connect 2025. Meta typically confirms the actual dates in the summer, making this the earliest the company has ever announced the dev conference. Maybe there’s something bigger on the horizon? Whatever the case, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the Meta developer blog and the Meta Connect website to glean what’s next.

AWE 2025 Speakers Include Oculus Founder, Meta’s VP of Metaverse Experiences, & ILM Immersive VP

February 17, 2025 From roadtovr

AWE USA 2025 is set to include speakers from some of the biggest names in the XR industry, including Oculus & Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, along with Jason Rubin—one of the only remaining early Oculus executives—who is presently Meta’s Vice President of Metaverse Experiences. Also on the roster is Vicki Dobbs Beck, the vice president of ILM Immersive, the studio behind XR adaptations of Star Wars, Marvel, and more.

AWE USA is one of the largest and longest-running XR-focused conferences in the world, and has become our must-go XR event.

This year AWE USA will be held in Long Beach, California from June 10th to 12th, and it’s expected to be the biggest yet, with more than 6,000 attendees, 300 exhibitors, 400 speakers, and a 150,000 Sqft expo floor. Early-bird tickets are still available, and Road to VR readers can get an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to the event.

Among the 400+ speakers giving presentations at the event are representatives of a wide range of XR industry companies, including Palmer Luckey, Jason Rubin, and Vicki Dobbs Beck.

Palmer Luckey | Image courtesy Palmer Luckey

Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus, the startup acquired by Meta in 2014 to kickstart the company’s XR ambitions. After overseeing the launch of Meta’s first major XR headset, the Oculus Rift CV1, Luckey was ousted from Meta following political backlash for his actions pertaining to the 2016 US presidential race.

Years later, Meta made up with Luckey by inviting him to see a preview of its latest AR headset (Project Orion). This was followed by a public apology from Meta’s top XR executive, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, who said “I’m grateful for the impact you made [Meta] and in developing VR overall. Looking forward to showing you more of our work in the future.”

The ousting must have been heartwrenching for the Oculus founder who played no small part in making XR what it is today; but a tiny silver-lining did emerge… Luckey went on to found the military tech contractor Anduril, which has grown to its current valuation of around $18 billion—putting him in the very rare club of people who have founded more than one multi-billion dollar company.

Though his pivot to military tech appeared to take him far from his passion for XR, just last week Anduril announced it’s now spearheading the military AR headset project originally undertaken by Microsoft.

At the event we expect to hear Luckey talk more about this project and what it means for XR tech in America’s military forces.

Jason Rubin | Image courtesy GDC Showcase

AWE USA 2025 will also see a talk from Jason Rubin, one of the only remaining Oculus executives still at Meta, presently serving as the company’s Vice President of Metaverse Experiences.

Rubin joined Oculus in 2014 and was a key figure in guiding the early content investments and strategy following the company’s acquisition by Meta. Since then he has shuffled between quite a few roles within the company, with most pertaining to gaming content and partnerships.

At AWE we expect to hear Rubin talk more about Meta’s evolving vision for the metaverse.

Vicki Dobbs Beck | Image courtesy Lucasfilm

Rubin won’t be the only seasoned gaming executive present at the event. We’ll also hear from Vicki Dobbs Beck, the Vice President of Immersive Content at ILM Immersive, the interactive division of Lucasfilm.

As a co-founder of the division, Dobbs Beck has overseen the production of award-winning XR content that has brought huge IP into the immersive realm. That includes the likes of the Vader Immortal series and Marvel’s What If…? – An Immersive Experience, one of the first major productions to land on Apple Vision Pro.

During her talk we expect to hear more about what’s next for ILM Immersive and how the division expects story-driven immersive experiences to pan out with a growing number of standalone headsets in the market.

Road to VR is proud to be the Premier Media Partner of AWE USA 2025, allowing us to offer readers an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to the event.

PSVR 2 Holiday Sales Volume Grew Massively Year-over-year on Amazon

February 12, 2025 From roadtovr

A big sale on PSVR 2 pushed the headset’s holiday sales volume on Amazon US higher than might have been expected, selling nearly five times more than last year.

PSVR 2’s Black Friday and holiday sale brought a huge 42% discount on the Horizon bundle of the headset, dropping the US price from $550 to $350.

Predictably, the sale increased the sales volume of the headset, but by even more than one might have expected. PSVR 2 saw nearly five times the peak sales volume on Amazon US during the 2024 holiday season as it did in 2023.

Granted, it’s important to note that the headset didn’t get any particularly big sales in the 2023 holiday season. But still, one might be inclined to think that if you cut the price of something by 50%, then you would expect to sell 50% more than you would have otherwise. In this case, we can see that PSVR 2 has a far different relationship between price and sales.

In 2024, Sony started the sale ahead of Black Friday and kept it running well into the new year. The sale lasted so long that it seems the company may have been trying to sell off stock, perhaps because it has a new SKU on the way (like a new bundle or lower cost redesign). While some have suggested that Sony could be losing faith in the headset and trying to do a firesale before discontinuing it, we think it’s likely the company continues to offer the headset at least until its next console cycle, even if it doesn’t put much weight behind it in the meantime.

Meta CTO: 2025 is a ‘Make or Break’ Year for Meta’s XR Ambitions, Internal Memo Reveals

February 4, 2025 From roadtovr

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth released an internal memo to employees, stating 2025 is going to be “the most critical year” for the company’s XR efforts yet, Business Insider reports.

Titled “2025: The Year of Greatness”, the memo (seen below) largely takes an inspirational tone, urging Reality Labs employees to do “the best work of your career right now.”

Bosworth, who also leads the company’s Reality Labs XR division, offers hope and motivation for teams to succeed, stating the company needs to “drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR.”

Bosworth also puts emphasis on the success of Horizon Worlds, Meta’s cross-platform social XR platform, noting the mobile version of the app “absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.”

While inspirational, the memo also offers an existential warning:

“This year likely determines whether this entire [XR] effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” Bosworth says.

“On paper 2024 was our most successful year to date but we aren’t sitting around celebrating because know it isn’t enough,” he continues. “We haven’t actually made a dent in the world yet. The prize for good work is the opportunity to do great work.”

This follows news of a leadership shakeup at Reality Labs, announced by Bosworth last week in a leaked internal forum post obtained by Business Insider.

The post included info that Meta CTO Reality Labs COO Dan Reed is being replaced by Meta COO Javier Olivan, and that Reality Labs will work more closely with the company’s core business, as Bosworth stated the division has become “a positive driver for Meta’s overall brand.”

Late last month, Meta’s quarterly financial report revealed that Reality Lab saw its best ever Q4 revenue but, like in quarters past, it coincides with equally growing costs, which amounted to a record $1.08 billion in quarterly revenue, but also quarterly costs of $6.05 billion, making for quarterly loss of $4.97 billion.

Reality Labs is responsible not only for its Quest platform, its related services and research and development, but also Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, which are built in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica.

Now in its second generation, the device has proven successful it’s prompted Meta to not only extend its partnership with the French-Italian eyewear conglomerate into 2030, but also reportedly produce a premium pair of the smart glasses with a built-in display, tapped to launch sometime this year.

Here’s Bosworth’s full memo:

2025: The Year of Greatness

Next year is going to be the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs. We have the best portfolio of products we’ve ever had in market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don’t feel the weight of history on you then you aren’t paying attention. This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.

I’ve been re-reading “Insanely Great,” Steven Levy’s history of the Macintosh computer. If you haven’t read it the book chronicles the incredible efforts of individuals working in teams of 1-3 to build a device that more than any other marked the consumer era of personal computing. What I find most fascinating about it is the way that even people who left the program on bad terms (it was not particularly well managed) speak about the work they did there with an immense sense of pride. There was a widespread cultural expectation, set by none other than a young Steve Jobs, that the work needed to be “insanely great.”

On paper 2024 was our most successful year to date but we aren’t sitting around celebrating because know it isn’t enough. We haven’t actually made a dent in the world yet. The prize for good work is the opportunity to do great work.

Greatness is our opportunity. We live in an incredible time of technological achievement and have placed ourselves at the center of it with our investments. There is a very good chance most of us will never get a chance like this again.

Greatness is a choice. Many people have ben at the precipice of opportunity and failed to achieve. For the most part they failed to even challenge themselves.
You should be doing the best work of your career right now. You should be pushing yourself to grow where needed and doubling down on your strengths. When you look back on this time I want you to feel like you did everything in your power to make the most of it.

You don’t need big teams to do great work. In fact, it may make it harder. One trend I’ve observed the last couple of years is that our smaller teams often go faster and achieve better results than our more generously funded teams. Not only that, they are much happier! In small teams there is no risk of falling into bad habits like design by committee. You should be so focused on results that being in a bunch of docs or meetings is too frustrating to bear.

The path is clear. You don’t need to come up with a bunch of new ideas to do this great work. Most people in the organization just need to execute on the work laid out before them to succeed. It is about operational excellence. It is about master craftsmanship. It is about filling our products with “Give A Damn”. This is about having pride in our work.

I will close with an Arnold Glasow quote: “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” 2025 is the year. Let’s be on fire.

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