Introduction: Big Promises, Small Reality
The euphoria was immense: Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, a „spatial medium“ that was supposed to usher in a new era for movies, series, and immersive short-form content. Meta (formerly Oculus) partnered with studios like DreamWorks, promising the next evolutionary leap in audiovisual storytelling.
Yet years later remains Virtual Reality a niche phenomenon in the entertainment sector. Content is scarce, user numbers are modest, and the cultural impact is low. Why is VR failing in an area where immersion seems tailor-made for it?
VR as a Medium – A Grand Vision with Limited Implementation
Apple's media promise remained vague
Apple not only staged the Vision Pro as a work device but also as an experience platform for new media formats. The keynotes emphasized immersive 3D films, panoramic documentaries, and volumetric content. However, what is actually available remains limited.
Instead of an extensive catalog, there are a few experimental short films and stereoscopic clips. Even though Apple provides the infrastructure, there's a lack of scalable, regularly updated content that will engage a broad audience long-term.
But producing this content was expensive, and the target audience remained small. Meta shut down the studio in 2017 – officially, to focus on promoting third-party content. Inoffically, the reason was clear: The In-house-Producing narrative VR experiences was too expensive with too few user bases. Google also tried immersive storytelling with Google Spotlight Stories, but discontinued them in 2019 for similar reasons.
Meta's (Oculus) Ambitious but Unfinished Content Push
Meta, then still under the name Oculus, originally had high ambitions to establish virtual reality as a new narrative medium. The company's own Oculus Story Studio produced elaborately designed short films such as Henry, Dear Angelica or Lost, which broke new ground both technically and narratively. The response from industry professionals was positive – Henry even won an Emmy.
Over time, Meta increasingly focused on the gaming sector – understandable from an entrepreneurial perspective, as this is where the greatest revenue potential lies. This is clearly evident in today's Meta Quest Store: where there used to be categories for narrative or artistic content, games now dominate almost exclusively. This strategic narrowing has resulted in cultural or experimental content receiving hardly any visibility or distribution opportunities.
Missed opportunities in distribution
Platform exclusivity prevents reach
VR content is mostly tied to specific headsets or platforms. Cinematic VR content that runs on Meta Quest is not necessarily compatible with Apple Vision Pro or SteamVR. This fragmentation prevents true reach.
There is a lack of an open, cross-platform distribution structure comparable to Netflix or YouTube. As long as VR content is tied to closed ecosystems, access for users and producers remains limited.
High-quality VR films require stereoscopic or volumetric recording, 3D post-production, and often real-time rendering. These processes are expensive and technically demanding. At the same time, the return on investment is low – the audience is small, and monetization opportunities are lacking.
Elaborate production – little return
The consequence: Studios continue to rely on conventional formats, even if they recognize the potential of VR. The production costs simply aren't worth it in the current market situation.
Ergonomics: Why a VR headset becomes a hindrance when watching a movie
Weight, heat, and battery life disrupt long movie nights
Especially when it comes to movie consumption, a problem that easily gets overlooked in technical data sheets emerges: ergonomics. Even modern headsets like the Meta Quest 3 Or the Apple Vision Pro will remain devices that you put on your face for 90 minutes, two hours, or longer. I myself own an Apple Vision Pro – and this is exactly where a significant usability barrier lies for me. The weight and pressure on the face become noticeable during longer sessions. The largely closed system generates heat and requires ventilation; I sometimes feel the air flow in the area around the eyes as unpleasant and even irritating during longer use.
Then there’s the battery life. With a long film, I really don’t want to have to worry about whether the external battery will last until the end of the film or whether I have to plug the headset into the power outlet during the movie. Compared to a TV or projector, that’s an additional hurdle before the actual movie-watching experience even begins.
That's exactly why they could XR glasses in eyeglass format Becoming more interesting for entertainment. Manufacturers like XREAL or Rokid are hiding parts of the technology from view. Meta is pursuing this approach even more rigorously with Meta VR GlassesThe glasses weigh around 100 grams, while computing power, battery, and storage are housed in an external compute puck. Less weight and less heat directly on the face could be more important for a two-hour movie than the next increase in computing power. If VR glasses are eventually worn more like glasses than like a headset, the acceptance of VR as a film medium could also change.
Social Isolation – A Misunderstanding?
VR isn't inherently antisocial?
Virtual reality is often perceived as isolating. However, especially in multiplayer gaming, the opposite is true: cooperative games, voice chat, shared worlds. Here, VR is highly social – comparable to other online platforms.
So social experiences are possible in VR, but dependent on the context of use.
Watching movies together: technically possible, economically absurd?
With linear media consumption, the social situation is more complicated. Platforms like Bigscreen allow for shared movie-watching in virtual movie theaters. Apple takes it a step further with SharePlay: on Vision Pro, multiple users can experience movies and other content simultaneously; since visionOS 26, two Vision Pro users can also connect in the same room to share a shared spatial experience. The idea is compelling because it addresses one of the biggest problems in VR entertainment: a movie is often appealing precisely because it is shared.
Cinema as a collective experience
Even though people rarely speak in the cinema during a film, the shared experience creates connection. This emotional synchronicity, which works even without direct interaction, is missing in most VR environments. The feeling of „seeing something together“ is difficult to simulate.
Apple Vision Pro as a technical experiment
The problem is less the idea itself than its practical requirement. To allow two people in the same household to watch a movie together on Vision Pro, you need two of these very expensive devices. With a headset that starts at this price point, a seemingly plausible social feature quickly becomes a luxury scenario. With significantly cheaper and lighter devices, however, the same approach could become much more interesting.
The price is therefore not just a barrier to purchase for the individual user. It also prevents usage scenarios that truly work with multiple devices. Especially with the Vision Pro, the cost factor makes many technically impressive ideas difficult to put into everyday use.
Many viewers already find 3D cinema with simple glasses to be a bothersome technology. Consequently, their willingness to put on a full headset for a standard film is low.
Conclusion on the Social Use of VR in Entertainment
VR fundamentally has the potential for social media experiences – especially in the interactive realm. In the context of shared movie experiences, it has so far failed due to technical, ergonomic, and economic hurdles.
Artistic relevance meets limited reach
VR as a cultural medium
Despite all market problems, virtual reality has long been part of contemporary media art. Festivals such as the Venice Biennale (Venice Immersive), SXSW, Tribeca, or Laval Virtual showcase immersive works of high artistic quality.
Many of these works offer narrative depth and visual innovation – whether in the form of 360° films, volumetric environments, or interactive story worlds.
Visibility remains a problem
This content is often awarded and valued in professional circles, but it hardly reaches the public. Distribution is limited to festivals, museums, or specialized platforms like the Museum of Other Realities. A functioning, permanent distribution channel is missing.
VR content doesn't compete with arthouse cinema, but often exists in a parallel cultural space – a creative bubble with limited market impact.
The gaming sector as a positive outlier
VR Gaming Shows Market Potential
Unlike the film industry, gaming has managed to establish itself as a viable segment within the VR world. Titles like Beat Saber, Half-Life: Alyx, or Walkabout Mini Golf combine immersion with interaction—and generate considerable user numbers.
The crucial difference: these contents utilize the strengths of VR, instead of imitating traditional media forms. Gaming therefore remains the only field to date in which VR functions economically.
Conclusion: A strong medium with structural weaknesses
Therefore, whether virtual reality can establish itself beyond its niche in the entertainment sector depends not only on better films. What is crucial are more practical and lightweight devices, lower prices, open distribution platforms, socially integrated usage scenarios, and better accessibility for producers.
In 2026, at least in terms of hardware, it will become clear where the journey could lead. Meta VR Glasses move the processor, battery and memory into an external puck and reduce the weight on the head to around 100 grams. Also other XR glasses in eyeglass format We follow this basic principle. For movies, this very ergonomic development could be more crucial than additional computing power.
Virtual Reality remains a powerful immersive medium – both technologically and artistically. Gaming already shows that VR can work economically when content takes advantage of the medium’s unique strengths. In contrast, in film, VR competes with an extremely convenient usage scenario: turn on the TV, sit down, watch. By contrast, while a headset is heavy, warm, expensive, and requires a power source after a few hours, this additional hurdle remains relevant.
Lighter glasses could change that equation. A virtual IMAX theater is technically possible now. The crucial question is no longer whether VR can produce an impressive film; the decisive question is whether the hardware becomes so commonplace that one would actually want to wear it for an entire film. This is exactly where the new lens formats could give VR entertainment a second chance.
