Tech Giants Have Spent $120 Billion To Own The Future Of Virtual Reality & XR – Ian Hamilton

Apr 14, 2026

Ian Hamilton, longtime XR journalist and founder of Good VR, traces the history and politics behind the industry's big bets. He explains how platform fights and decade-scale standards slowed XR progress. He contrasts Apple’s Vision Pro priorities with Meta’s price ceiling and explains why hardware choices shifted the market. He also highlights simulation, enterprise use, and why wearables may still win over time.

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INSIGHT

Platforms Are Blocking XR's Open Ecosystem

Platforms are playing for keeps, slowing interoperability and stalling XR's open ecosystem progress.
Ian argues OpenXR/WebXR move on decade timescales while companies fiercely protect platform control, blocking cooperative standards.

INSIGHT

People Detection Is A Key Differentiator

Apple Vision Pro introduced people detection and co-location as a differentiator other headsets lacked.
Ian notes Vision Pro pops users out of experiences when someone enters the room, a fundamental social sensing milestone.

ADVICE

Target Simulation And Training To Grow XR Commercially

Invest in simulation and training use cases because they lower cost of high-end systems and have clear enterprise value.
Ian highlights potential to bring $30k–$100k sim systems down to $5k–$10k markets.

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Ian Hamilton spent years as editor in chief of Upload VR before launching his own Substack, Good VR, and podcast at goodvirtualreality.com. He is one of the few people covering XR longer and more deeply than Charlie Fink, and his perspective spans platform architecture, business strategy, and genuine on-the-ground journalism since the DK1 days.

This conversation traces why the XR dream has taken longer than anyone expected. Ian and Rony Abovitz reconstruct the moment the ecosystem forked — when Meta's Oculus acquisition closed off the open, Valve-led platform path that Magic Leap and everyone else had been building toward. Ian argues the platforms are now playing for keeps: OpenXR moves on decade timescales, and that friction is what keeps real transformation just out of reach.

On hardware, his case is sharp: Meta's self-imposed $200–$600 price ceiling makes OLED and eye tracking impossible at mass market — exactly the features Apple bet on as the mandatory baseline — and that contradiction is why Bosworth ended up pivoting to AI glasses.

In AI XR News You Should Know: Anthropic's Mythos AI model reportedly escaped the company's own containment. Charlie and Rony debate whether calling the consequences "unintended" is even credible given decades of published warnings. Also: a Hollywood Reporter and Otis School study found AI is not the primary driver of empty LA sound stages — runaway production and tax incentives are the main story.

Key Moments:

[00:01:00] – Charlie's new vertical melodrama "Linda's Last Podcast" and why generative AI is already good enough for social media storytelling.
[00:04:52] – Rony on Anthropic's Mythos: the compute to cure cancer, aimed somewhere else.
[00:11:47] – Half of Gen Z holds a negative view of AI. Charlie on the Brown grad who turned down an AI studio internship on principle.
[00:36:00] – Rony and Ian reconstruct the Valve/Oculus open platform — and walk through exactly how that future closed.
[00:47:00] – Meta's price ceiling, OLED as a strategic forcing function, and why Bosworth landed on AI glasses.
[00:52:00] – Ian on the Apple Vision Pro mid-flight: why the headset is a personal computer, not a wearable.

Ian's long view: we're about ten percent of the way through the total investment required to reach a billion users. The supply chain is better than ever, the software has found its footing in simulation and training, and the next five to ten years could be the most interesting window yet — if the platforms decide to let the ecosystem breathe.

This episode is sponsored by Zappar, the team behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop.

Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.

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