Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024) just got its ‘Game of the Year’ update that brings a host of new features, including three new maps, an ‘Extreme’ difficulty setting, and a new permadeath mode.
Camouflaj released the game’s 1.4 update to celebrate its recent Game of the Year win at the annual D.I.C.E. Awards last month, where it took home the Immersive Reality GOTY category.
Released in October 2024 shortly after the launch of Quest 3S, Batman: Arkham Shadow now has three new maps inspired by classic Arkham games, including Arkham Origins, Arkham City, and Arkham Asylum.
Quiet Reflection (inspired by “Quiet Waters” from Arkham Origins)
Architect of Fear (inspired by “Natural Selection” from Arkham City)
Stalking TYGER (inspired by “Silent Knight” from Arkham Asylum)
You’ll also find a new Extreme difficulty setting, which you can select both in the campaign and existing Challenge Maps.
There are also some new modes too, including an ‘I Am the Knight’ permadeath mode—a variant on New Game+ that puts you on Extreme difficulty, restarting your campaign every time you get a game over. Beat it, and you’ll unlock a gold-accented Batsuit variant called ‘The Prestige’.
‘Crane’s Nightmare’, an infinite combat mode, is also here, inspired by the classic ‘Scarecrow Nightmare’ extra content from Arkham Asylum.
The 1.4 update also brings six new ‘Echo’ collectibles, looping haptics while gliding, and alternating leg animations when mantling. The studio says 1.4 also comes with over 500 bugfixes; you can check out the changelog here.
Meta is discontinuing Move, Quest’s fitness tracking feature, at the end of the month.
The feature first arrived as Oculus Move over four years ago, just after the launch of Quest 2. If enabled, it tracks your movements in the headset to list fitness statistics like calories burned, minutes spent moving, and intensity of workouts, both totaled and broken out by app.
Fitness has been an unexpected breakout use case of standalone headsets, with apps like Supernatural, Les Mills, and FitXR building a userbase of paying subscribers, and rhythm games like Beat Saber and Pistol Whip are used for workouts too.
In 2022 Meta added support for viewing your Move data in the Quest phone app and syncing it to Apple Health, then in 2023 to Android Health Connect too, integrating your VR/MR workouts with your existing fitness tracking setup.
In an email to Move users, Meta announced that it will discontinue Move, both in the headset’s Horizon OS and in the phone app, on March 31.
Meta claims this is happening because Move “relies on legacy technology, which limits our ability to introduce new innovations for Quest users”. According to the company, discontinuing Move will allow it “to deliver more advanced features to enhance the Quest experience”. Whether or not this is teasing a revamped Move arriving in the future is unclear.
The Move discontinuation announcement comes after Meta recently removed the in-headset interface for viewing Achievements. This removal of core system features is now a trend, suggesting shifting priorities at Meta as it slowly begins to transition its VR/MR business towards eventual profitability.
Our latest XR News Round-Up is live, bringing you a few more stories that caught our attention this week.
The news didn’t stop coming this week across VR. With hardware, PlayStation VR2 got a major price cut as one leaker claimed Valve’s Deckard headset will launch this year at $1200. With gaming, Batman: Arkham Shadow got its last major update. Devolver Digital revealed GORN 2, while Not Like Us is now in Beat Saber. Mannequin went free-to-play, there’s a release date for Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate, and Orion Drift entered early access.
Gran Turismo 7 Adds New Commercial Truck On PS VR2 With Update 1.56
The latest regular update for Gran Turismo 7 is now live on PS5 and PlayStation VR2. Update 1.56 adds a new base color for the MAZDA 3 Gr.4, a new Peugeot-themed café menu, three new world events, a new Scape, and three new cars: the BMW Z4 3.0i ’03, the Mercedes-Benz Unimog Type 411 ’62, and the Peugeot 205 GTI ’88.
Ember Souls Goes Underground In New Update
Following its Quest launch back in November, hack-and-slash action game Ember Souls recently received a new ‘Underground‘ update that we initially missed two weeks ago. That adds a new biome for Raids, a redesigned first boss fight, 60 achievements, new enemies, bug fixes and visual tweaks, while VirtualAge also promises improvements to combat and the parkour.
VR/MR Sandbox DigiGods Goes Cat Crazy In Latest Update
Free-to-play VR/MR sandbox DigiGods has released its latest ‘Cat Crazy’ update, collaborating with Neko Atsume Purrfect for its Nekomania anniversary event. That introduces a new cat avatar called Noodle, alongside feline-themed “cosmetics simulations, decorations, toys,” and cat companions.
VR Strategy Game Underworld Overseer Is Now Available On Pico
Following recent news that both Deisim and Underworld Overseer are coming to PlayStation VR2, Myron Games also released the latter on Pico earlier this week. The Dungeon Keeper-inspired VR strategy game previously launched on Quest and Steam last year, earning 4/5-stars in our review that you can read below.
Attack On Titan VR: Unbreakable Kicks Off Global Challenge Event
Following its full release in December, Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable has kicked off the new “Global Challenge – Thunder Spear Unlock” event on Quest. Ending at midnight on March 10, this tasks the community with taking down Titans to unlock the weapon. While co-op mode is normally restricted to those who own part 2, that’s temporarily available in the base game until March 16.
Other Updates
For more stories, here’s everything else we’ve seen this week.
Codebreakers VR is a “chaotic” action shooter, and a PC VR demo recently went live on Steam.
Zero Caliber 2 showed off an early gameplay tease for the upcoming PC VR port.
If you’d like to inform us about a VR game we should know about for this article or future updates, you can use our contact page or email tips@uploadvr.com with details.
AMD’s latest graphics cards now have a release date and prices.
AMD first announced RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT at CES 2025 in January, seemingly in response to Nvidia launching its RTX 50 series, but didn’t reveal the price or any details beyond the VRAM: 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on both cards.
Now, the company says the two cards will ship on March 6, next Friday, for $550 and $650 respectively.
Clock (Boost)
VRAM
Bus
TDP
MSRP
Nvidia RTX 5070
2.16 GHz (2.51 GHz)
12GB GDDR7
192-bit
250W
$550
AMD RX 9070
2.1 GHz (2.5 GHz)
16GB GDDR6
256-bit
220W
$550
AMD RX 9070 XT
2.4 GHz (3.0 GHz)
16GB GDDR6
256-bit
304W
$600
RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT are designed to compete with NVIDIA’s RTX 5070, rather than taking on its higher-end cards. For the same price it offers 4GB more VRAM with a 256-bit bus width, compared to 192-bit for NVIDIA. But the tradeoff is that this VRAM is the older GDDR6, not the newer faster GDDR7.
Both cards introduce AMD’s new RDNA 4 architecture and are built on a 4nm process, down from 5nm on the previous RX 7000 series. They also introduce AMD’s second-generation AI accelerators which power FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4), AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s DLSS 4. But like Nvidia’s DLSS, FSR 4 also isn’t supported by the majority of VR games.
For native PC VR headsets, the RX 9070 series also supports DisplayPort 2.1a, which could support future 4K per eye headsets with 120Hz refresh rate or above.
Do you plan to get an RX 9070, or are you more tempted by Nvidia’s RTX 5070? Let us know your graphics cards plans in the discussion below.
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 $1,200 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.”
Image courtesy Play For Dream
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.
Farming Simulator VR is out now, available on Quest headsets.
Created by Giants Software, Farming Simulator VR is a brand-new farming experience instead of an adaptation of an existing entry. It involves using virtual recreations of equipment from official agricultural manufacturers like Case IH, CLAAS, Fendt, John Deere, which require regular maintenance, repairs, and even powerwashing.
0:00
/1:05
Alongside sowing and harvesting crops across the fields to produce corn, wheat & soybean, greenhouse farming offers a wider vegetable selection like tomatoes, eggplants, and strawberries. These crops can then be picked up by hand using motion controls, then placed into crates for selling.
If you follow VR on social media, you’ll no doubt have seen a PC VR enthusiast claim that what VR “needs” is “just” more high-end PC VR content.
In a rare response on X, the developer of Boneworks and Bonelab explained why studios don’t build VR games to require high-end PC specifications.
When you say PCVR what min spec are you thinking? Quest 3 matches the cpu, ram, gpu, and exceeds the drive speeds of 2016 PCVR min spec, so I assume you’re thinking way beyond that. But what would you suggest the target be in 2025?
In the posts, Brandon J Laatsch explains that for a game to even target Quest 3 & Quest 3S and above, excluding Quest 2, a studio could justify a $10 million budget at most. This hypothetical game would need to sell 416K copies at $40 to break even, which “very few” games of this sort are achieving.
Even with the shifting winds of the open store and Horizon Worlds push, most developers still see the majority of their revenue from Quest. Not supporting it at all would mean the budget of the game would need to “proportionately come down”, Laatsch explains, leading to a game with reduced scope, scale, and fidelity. Laatsch calls this “a challenging puzzle to maximize”.
Currently less than 2% of Steam uses a VR headset in a given month, or less than 3% if adjusting for Chinese users, and this number hasn’t notably shifted for years now. For high production value VR games to be built around PC VR, without funding from a platform holder like Valve, that number would need to significantly increase. Some had hoped that a new Valve headset might drive it up, but rumors of a $1200 price have taken many by surprise.
Mystery. Murder. A magnifying glass. And of course, that corkboard where you pin bits of evidence and connect them with string. Does Detective VR’s alibi stand up to scrutiny? We put the clues together.
The Facts
What is it?: A mixed reality narrative game where you investigate a murder mystery. Platforms: Quest 3/3S (played on Quest 3) Release Date: Out now Developer: Studio CHIPO Y JUAN & VALEM Studio Price: $29.99
Detective Work
As Detective VR’s namesake but as a nameless detective, it’s your job to unravel the mystery of why the arrogant artist Richard Hue has gone missing. There’s an array of plausible suspects: his resentful partner, his sleazy benefactor facing financial troubles, and more.
The entire game is set up for hand tracking, which works great. Action is split between crime scenes and your back office. You play the crime scene in VR, surrounded by the suspect’s apartment which you can traverse via teleportation to search for clues. Your back office is experienced in Mixed Reality: the detective’s evidence-bearing corkboard appears floating in your actual VR play space. Successfully connecting two items produces a VHS video reel where the suspect in question appears life-size to explain themselves, occasionally divulging something incriminating or, at least, narrative-progressing.
Time Trial
The moment you’ve collected enough evidence from the crime scene or corkboard, you’re prompted to advance to the next stage. This produces a tension, but not the narrative tension the developers likely intended: It prompts my gamer instincts to kick in. I want to speedrun.
At the crime scene, my camera has infinite film; it’s faster & easier to aggressively fire shots, hoping to trigger the game’s acknowledgment that I’ve spotted a clue, than it is to slowly and deliberately canvas the venue for curiosities.
Once I’ve collected all the evidence from a crime scene, I’m prompted to return to shop — even if I was in the middle of watching a narrative unfold.
Testimonials from suspects which advance the plot produce a highlighted lanyard string and a green check mark, regardless of my actual attentiveness.
Before long, I step back and wonder: I’ve certainly developed my in-game skill set – hand gestures for my camera to take photos, the rapid cycle through the blood, fingerprint, and text magnifying glass filters in my back room. But… do I have my own strong opinions about the suspect and motive? Particularly, since everyone’s a suspect, which characters do I really care about?
Technical Marvel
The essential context for considering and consuming Detective VR is that it’s a product of a minuscule team of 3-4. That’s made evident throughout their website and promo material. It’s one thing for Meta, with its overwhelming resources, vast workforce, and utter disregard for annual profits, to produce a mixed reality demo like First Encounters.
It’s something else entirely to imagine the team that brought Detective VR to life, and the various tradeoffs & challenges overcome. Studio Chipo y Juan navigated narrative design, gameplay design, technical development, casting, translation, and the infinity of other details to bring a project like this to life.
There’s still room for improvement: I noted occasional grammar errors, while the magnifying glass gameplay loop is skilless and boring. Of course the phone one character was touching has their fingerprints; of course the bloody shirt has blood traces. Finding the last 1–2 pieces of evidence in a room can be tricky — which, as a true detective, of course it should be! There’d be no work or gameplay fun if the scene presented the gun, still smoking, on the table in front of you.
That said, I wish it required more skill and would therefore feel more rewarding to find that last bit of evidence: say, a suspect seems fixated on a locked drawer, innocuous when you arrive at the scene but obvious from paying attention as it unfolds. Evidence discovery often feels more like solving a Where’s Waldo, where persistence beats deduction.
Yet: it’s monumentally inspiring to consider what small, impassioned teams can accomplish in this space, given the Chipo y Juan team’s success with Detective VR.
Immersive Theatre
One great promise of the headset medium is “immersion” — obliterating the barrier of a stage or TV screen, radically dialling up one’s sense of intimacy. It’s undeniably cool that Detective’s suspects appear life-size in my kitchen. However… I wish Richard, Agatha, and the rest of the cast made more eye contact with me, or otherwise engaged or acknowledged my “physical” presence in the “room” with them.
In Detective VR, I want to embody the Detective, not just the witness. What would it mean, and how would it feel, if Agatha tried appealing to me personally? There’s no in-game currency, but if there was, how would it feel if Karl looked me in the eye and tried to pay me off?
What’s Detective’s next move?
The premise is primed for episodic format. With the upfront work developing core gameplay & technical capabilities behind them, Studio Chipo y Juan seem ready to deliver new mysteries, settings, and characters evoking the production schedule of, say, James Patterson’s books or Walkabout Mini Golf’s DLC courses. If they can manage that, the game’s (and genre’s!) future success is no real mystery.
Detective VR – Final Verdict
Detective VR is fun! It’s inspiring! Suspenseful. While there’s room for improvement with the gameplay, it’s an impressive effort from Studio Chipo y Juan that’s a delight to play, with so much room for more to come. If you want to catch a murderer in mixed reality, I’d recommend picking this one up today.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
Meta says that over 70% of time spent on Quest headsets is now in free-to-play apps.
Alongside a new developer blog focused on monetizing in-app purchases across the Horizon platform, Meta shared the 70% figure in an X post while posting the blog. Though this statistic isn’t mentioned in the actual blog itself, Meta advised its suggested monetization strategies are “reflected in the fact that we’re seeing a significant shift in time spent on free-to-play apps on the platform.”
Little else is said about this subject in the developer blog, and it’s not especially surprising news when it’s been clear that Meta’s actively pushing a free-to-play strategy on Quest. While free-to-play platforms like VRChat have been available on Quest for years, that’s been more prominent recently with Meta’s heavier focus on promoting Horizon Worlds, likely as a means of boosting headset retention.
However, that focus has led to increasing criticisms from developers who believe this approach has significantly harmed discoverability of paid apps. In our recent Quest to Horizon report, nearly two dozen developers expressed frustrations that this shift has created a significant impact on sales across 2024. Other prominent concerns included last year’s App Lab merge and curation.
Soon after our report went live, Meta released a blog post from Samantha Ryan, VP of Metaverse Content, aiming to address these concerns. Detailing the rise of in-app purchases and free-to-play content, Ryan claimed that the “total payment volume on the platform rose 12% in 2024, driven by significant growth of in-app purchases.”
“We don’t think F2P will replace premium apps — both models are likely to coexist,” Ryan wrote at the time, suggesting this increase can be attributed to “young people” and a “growing share of new users.” You can read Meta’s previous response in full below.
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.
Image courtesy Meta
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.
