XR Developer News - January 2025

Pieter Siekerman

— 4 min read
XR Developer News - January 2025
Meta Quest Pro is no longer available

I was expecting December to be a quiet month in XR development, but then Google dropped its Android XR bombshell. Turns out however that everyone decided to take it slow in January instead. So, this month is by far the shortest edition so far, as we wait for the ramp up to developer conference season in Q2 to begin.

For my readers in The Netherlands, don't miss the next edition of the in-person XR Creators Connect meetup which I co-organize on February 12th in Hilversum. Details and registration here.

Meta

  • Matching the v72 update of Horizon OS in December, Meta released v72 of its various SDKs to match it. A notable task in progress appears to be improvements to room scanning.
  • Meta added some functionality to make working with compositor layers easier to its Meta Quest Developer Hub (MQDH) app.
  • Quest Pro is no longer for sale from Meta, as it previously announced.
  • Robert Coviello put together a video covering the improvements to colocation in the v71 SDK.

Other XR hardware, software and news

Introducing New Ways to Get Rewarded and Find Success For AR Creators and Developers
We want to be the most developer-friendly platform in the world and empower developers to invest in building amazing Lenses
  • Snap also announced that it's cutting the price of Spectacles 5 in half for educational uses, to around $600 / €660 per year.
  • Niantic on the other hand decided to increase costs for developers, introducing pricing for its VPS and various Unity SDKs. Various aspects of it seem notably pricey, such as private VPS locations and the monthly fee for its Unity SDK (of which v3.11 was released). The pricing is apparently still under construction, but for now this is all the information that's available.
Pricing — Niantic Spatial Platform
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Niantic Spatial Platform
  • Google responded to concerns about its long term commitment to Android XR. Trust of course is earned through actions, not words, so let's see how this all holds up.
Google Responds to Developer Concerns About Long-term Commitment to Android XR
Google’s announcement of Android XR last month was largely met with excitement, but there was a notable undercurrent of concern about Google’s long-term commitment to the platform. The company has a storied history of launching new products and platforms, only to drop them a few years later—often leaving third-party developers in the lurch. Google has …
Road to VRBen Lang
  • The yearly State of the Game Industry report had some interesting data on XR development, including the percentage of developers working on VR/AR (35%, which seems unlikely to be correct) and the interest in the various platforms (unsurprisingly with Meta Quest in a strong lead).
Meta Quest remains the platform of choice for VR developers
A survey shows that Meta Quest is still the dominant VR development platform. Other platforms are far behind.
MIXED Reality NewsTomislav Bezmalinovic
  • Godot outlined the XR updates in its first Godot 4.4 beta.
  • TikTok released Effect House v4.10.
  • Magic Leap released v1.12 of its OS and the related SDKs. It's unlocking all previously enterprise-only features to all headsets.
  • three.js r172 was released.

Upcoming XR events

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, interesting 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.

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