In this year GDC State of the Industry Report – a massive, in-depth survey of game developers across all industry disciplines – respondents were asked to detail their current and future plans for their software across different platforms. Of course, this also includes virtual reality and augmented reality developers, who seem to largely coalesce around Meta Quest and Steam VR as the main landing zones for these technologies. This in itself is no surprise, since these two platforms also dominated the VR/AR 2024 list.
One notable dynamic shift, however, was a switch between the PlayStation VR ecosystem – including both the original PlayStation 4-compatible headset and its PlayStation 5 successor – and Apple visionOS – used exclusively for Apple’s Vision Pro headset. While last year the Vision Pro was trailing PlayStation headsets by 15-13%, in 2025, 26% of respondents said they were working on Apple visionOS software while 25% were putting effort into PlayStation VR/VR2 .
This is particularly strange since the PlayStation VR2 is a gaming-focused headset, essentially serving no purpose other than playing VR games, while the Apple Vision Pro is positioned as a multi-function productivity device. Apple’s headset website doesn’t even mention gaming until halfway down the page. Which is not surprising, since at $3,500, it is definitely the least common device. PlayStation VR2 is struggling in the market for separate reasons, says former PlayStation executive say he was “wrong” recently on the potential success of the device.
It seems unlikely that a VR device will be able to claim market share from Meta devices any time soon, as it remains the preeminent VR headset largely due to a cheaper, subsidized price and untethered form factor. It looks like the battle for mindshare between VR developers is slipping away for PlayStation unless something major revitalizes their VR brand in 2025.
