My interview with Play For Dream about their headset, Android XR, enterprise licensing, China, and more!

During my trip to China, one of the most interesting things was visiting the Chinese headquarters of Play For Dream (the company is actually based in Singapore, but has a strong presence in Shanghai). There, I have been able to ask the company some interesting questions about their present and their future. Among these questions, I have of course also asked about their possibility of migrating to Android XR. Do you want to know the answer? Then keep reading!

[Disclaimer: since now it’s trendy to make disclaimers, I have to inform you all that Play For Dream lent me a headset for a week to test and write a review (which I still have to publish) and then offered me a can of soda worth $1. The last one should of course make you doubt about the objectivity of this article… #sarcasm]

My visit to Play For Dream

Play For Dream is one of the headsets that is getting the most attention at this moment, after at CES it proved to be a very interesting product. This is why I was really interested in visiting them and speaking with them.

I really had a nice time while visiting the company. I was imagining visiting the basement of a startup, while actually I found a high building in which many floors were occupied by the company. In general, the venue is pretty cozy, and at the entrance, there is a little expo with some headsets, and a bit further down a corridor, there is even a small LBVR (Location-based VR) experience about Marco Polo.

Thanks to the kindness of the PR manager Arden Wang, I was able to visit the venue, have a first test of the headset, and then even have a short interview with him. This article focuses on the interview (but stay tuned for my impressions on the headset!), that we had on a nice sofa in one of the relax areas for the employees. There was me, Arden, and a wild Snorlax. During the interview, a few funny things happened, like the cleaning girl coming and starting to scream while on the phone, but in the end, everything went fine. I really want to thank Arden for his huge kindness in supporting my work as a content creator while I was there.

My interview with Play For Dream and my main takeaways

You can watch the integral version of the interview in the video below (I mean, semi-integral, I cut the screaming girl moments away…):

If instead you are not much into videos, or you are tempted to answer with “TL;DW”, keep reading for what I think are the most important takeaways I got while speaking with Play For Dream!

Play For Dream is an established group

As I’ve told you, in the beginning I thought that Play For Dream was a small startup, but actually it is even a group of companies, which in total have hundreds of employees. The Play For Dream group has actually three lines of business:

• XR hardware manufacturing
• Cybercafes (Arden said that they are actually a very important brand in the cybercafé space)
• Esports social app.

The group and all its related companies have been founded by Huang Feng, usually just referred to as “F”. The XR business was established in 2020, with the initial name of YVR. The company released two headsets YVR and YVR 2, before changing the name of the device to Play For Dream MR.

The specifications of the device

In case you missed them, these are the specs of the headset

• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2
• Display
  • Type: Micro-OLED
  • Resolution: 3840×3552 per eye
  • Pixel density: 3882 PPI
  • Refresh rate: 90 Hz
• Lenses
  • Type: Pancake
  • FOV: 103°
• Audio
  • Microphones: 4 Omnidirectional Microphones
  • Speakers: 2 Stereo Speakers
• Comfort
  • Weight: 650g
  • IPD: 51mm-78mm (automatic adjustment)
• Connectivity: WiFi 7, Bluetooth BT5.3
• Storage: 512GB
• Cameras and sensors:
  • Color Passthrough Camera
    • Passthrough latency: 14ms
  • Outward Tracking Cameras
  • Eye-Tracking Cameras
  • Depth Camera
  • Accelerometer
  • Gyroscope
  • Wear Detection Sensor

Arden highlighted the low latency of the passthrough cameras (only 14ms) and the fact that the tracking algorithms are developed in-house by the company.

PC VR

Play For Dream MR is a standalone headset, but you can use it to play PCVR games in a way similar to the Quest Link: you can connect the headset either via USB cable or via Wi-Fi to the computer to make it act as a PCVR headset and play SteamVR games. The untethered connection can happen via Wi-Fi 7.

The company has its own streaming solution, but recently, the popular streaming app Virtual Desktop has been made available on the Play For Dream Store.

It is actually also possible to play PC and console flatscreen games on a big virtual screen viewed inside the Play For Dream MR headset if you use an additional accessory called Dream Box.

Runtime and Android XR

Currently, the headset runs DreamOS, which is an operating system created from Android. I asked Arden if the company plans to substitute it with Android XR, and he answered, saying that the Play For Dream team is excited about Android XR and is already collaborating with the Android XR team. The news is that “perhaps the next-gen of the device will be Android XR compatible”. Notice the “perhaps”, which means that this is not official, yet. But it seems that this is the most probable route the company will take.

When I asked about this version of the headset staying with the current runtime, he answered “for now, yes”. So, in the short-term future, Play For Dream won’t use Android XR, but in the long term, it probably will.

Notice that with this statement, Arden has implicitly confirmed that a new iteration of the headset is in the works. This means that Play For Dream has plans to stay in our ecosystem and keep building headsets. This is great news.

Content

There is a dedicated store for content, the Play For Dream Store. There is also a dedicated SDK that interested developers can use to create content for this device. According to Arden, the content is the weak point of this device: being this headset rather new, especially in the West, of course, it has not the same breadth of content of the Meta Store. Play For Dream is interested in collaborating with developers to make them port content for their store. Probably implementing Android XR (potentially with the Google Play store) in the future may also help in this sense.

Next steps

Arden told me about some updates the company is working on. They are now improving the VST (Video See Through, basically the passthrough) SDK, and soon it will be possible to connect a real keyboard via Bluetooth and see a real keyboard while wearing the headset. They are also working to let the user customize the functionalities of the power button.

Talking about upcoming AI features, he mentioned AI-based text translation and a feature to turn 2D pictures into 3D, like it happens on the Vision Pro. All these features are still a work in progress, for now.

Price and purchase options

The Play For Dream MR headset is available for $1,999 on the Play For Dream website. The company claims the device ships worldwide, but I’ve been told the headset is still waiting for all the proper certifications for the EU market. If you are interested in buying it, you can follow this (non-affiliate) link: https://pfdm.ai/products/mr-headset

Enterprise version

For all of you who plan to use this very interesting headset for work, there is also enterprise licensing available. The enterprise edition comes for $2,699, with no licensing fees. The additional price comes with some advantages over the standard consumer edition:

• Accessories: extra forehead cushion for more comfort when wearing glasses; or magnetic prescription lenses, in case you want to avoid glasses
• A Western facial interface, to guarantee us Westerners more comfort and a bigger FOV
• 2 years extended warranty
• Enterprise APIs, customizable SDK, and an enterprise device manager to control multiple headsets with just one PC

Talking about the use cases for enterprise, Arden mentioned they usually work with education, workforce training, and healthcare. Some of these sectors choose Play For Dream also because of its integrated eye tracking (which is useful, for instance, to help in treating the “lazy eye” issue).

Meet the company

Do you want to meet Play For Dream and try its headset? Well, if you can travel to the US, you can meet them next week at AWE US in Long Beach! Otherwise, they already plan to be exhibitors at CES 2026. If you see Arden, tell him that Tony says hi!

And that’s it for this article about Play For Dream. I hope that it has taught you something new about this headset. And for whatever question or consideration, feel free to write me using the comments below or on my social media channels!

(Header image by Play For Dream)

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