{"id":45019,"date":"2025-08-04T17:02:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T17:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45019\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T17:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T17:02:06","slug":"vr-is-in-a-really-bad-place-right-now-and-smart-glasses-are-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45019\/","title":{"rendered":"VR Is in a Really Bad Place Right Now and Smart Glasses Are to Blame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember VR? It\u2019s that thing where you put on a headset and\u2026 You remember VR, right<\/a>? If you don\u2019t\u00a0remember VR, you couldn\u2019t be blamed, because things have taken a turn since way back in 2023, and right now, VR seems to be on the back burner, cold, with the heat turned off, while its sister tech, XR\/AR is front and center, getting all of chef\u2019s Michelin-starred attention.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not just a feeling, either; there are numbers to bear that trend out<\/a>. Year over year, Meta said last week that Meta Reality Labs sales were down from $440 million in Q1 of 2024 to $412 million in Q1 of 2025. That drop, by Meta\u2019s own admission, is due in large part to tanking Quest sales<\/a>. What makes that trend interesting isn\u2019t just the precipitous drop in Quest sales; it\u2019s the fact that at the same time, sales of its increasingly popular Ray-Ban smart glasses<\/a> seem to be through the roof. According to Meta CFO Susan Li, Reality Labs\u2019 revenue loss was \u201cdue to lower Meta Quest sales, which were partially offset by increased sales of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.\u201d That increase in revenue, by the way, is apparently threefold year-over-year.<\/a><\/p>\n

If I\u2019m reading into Li\u2019s breakdown, Quest sales are tanking, and smart glasses are saving the day. Or, I guess that\u2019s one way to look at it. Another way to see that trend is that VR is skidding out, and smart glasses (and the potential for XR\/AR inside them) are picking up the pieces. That may sound sensational, but it also makes perfect sense in other ways.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I actually like VR\/XR headsets; I think the Quest 3S<\/a> is the perfect headset for the moment because it\u2019s light, affordable, and still offers a full-featured XR experience that will satisfy established XR\/VR fans and impress beginners. That being said, they\u2019re still a burden. Strapping a headset to your face is inherently invasive and not exactly what most would call a pleasant time. Even the Quest 3<\/a>, which is lightweight and generally comfortable compared to the competition, wears on your eyes, your face, and your poor, sweaty skin after a while.<\/p>\n

\"Meta\u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban are stealing the show. <\/p>\n

As much as I love the Quest for what it could be, it\u2019s hard to reconcile that with what it is right now. Smart glasses, on the other hand, don\u2019t share those problems. Sure, Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban glasses don\u2019t do even half of what we want them to at this point in time\u2014they don\u2019t even have a display in them yet\u2014but they\u2019re a light touch. If you want a taste of smart features like Bluetooth audio, a voice assistant, and some (very hit-and-miss) AI, then you can snag a pair, slap them on your face, and wear them for hours without feeling like you\u2019re wearing anything other than a regular pair of glasses.<\/p>\n

The lesson here is that it\u2019s better to do a little of what you would expect (enough to qualify as a good start) than try to do everything\u00a0at the cost of a clunky form factor, and that\u2019s shining through when it comes to smart glasses versus VR headsets. Not only that, but smart glasses, though still very much a work in progress, are also potentially a lot more useful in your day-to-day. Because of their light form factor, you can actually bring them into the real world and use them for real stuff like taking pictures or calling your mom. Which is a reminder: you should call your mom, smart glasses or not.<\/p>\n

No matter where your priorities or allegiances lie, the tides, as they often do in emerging tech, seem to be turning. On top of that, all of the latest rhetoric<\/a> around smart glasses and XR\/AR from Apple\u2019s Tim Cook and Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg should give you some indication of which way those waters are flowing. If you\u2019re a fan of smart glasses, you\u2019ve got nothing to worry about, but if you were excited to realize our full VR future, you may have to wait a while longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember VR? It\u2019s that thing where you put on a headset and\u2026 You remember VR, right? If you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[49,48,31694,2060,61,260,261,262],"class_list":{"0":"post-45019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-meta-quest-3","11":"tag-smart-glasses","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-virtual-reality","14":"tag-virtualreality","15":"tag-vr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}