XR News Round-Up: SXSW 2025, Thief Simulator VR, Wet & More
Between Thief Simulator VR reaching over 300k sales to the SXSW XR Experience, we're highlighting a few more stories across VR this week.
This week's latest XR News Round-Up is live with a few additional news stories.
It's been another busy week across VR gaming, with numerous reveals and launches in particular for PlayStation VR2. Alien: Rogue Incursion is now available on Quest 3, Skydance's Behemoth received a second major patch, while Waltz of the Wizard became the first PS VR2 game to support hand-tracking. Palmer Luckey's Anduril is taking over the US Army's IVAS program, Android XR will let apps access the passthrough cameras, and John Carmack weighed in on PC VR.
Our weekly newsletter and latest articles can tell you the rest. As always, here are a few other stories that caught our interest.
SXSW XR Experience Returns Next Month With Experimental New Projects
SXSW is back next month with an XR Experience Exhibition that runs from March 9-11. Featuring over 30 projects with familiar names like Address Unknown: Fukushima Now, this year's line-up also features three Quebec-supported projects via SODEC.
That includes Traces: The Grief Processor: an interactive VR experience that explores loss. The Secret Life of Monsters - The Gateway Experience promises an immersive adventure that looks at the potential of advancing MR technology, while Chom5ky vs Chomsky: A Playful Conversation on AI lets you engage in questions with the “vast digital trace” of Noam Chomsky.
Wet
Created by SUPER HYPER MEGA (Noun Town, Project Aeroes), Wet is a new puzzle sandbox strategy game where you manipulate terrain and guide water to rescue the rock spirits. That's out now for free for 30 days on Quest 3 and 3S, while the upcoming Steam versions (flatscreen and VR) have a free demo each that's available now before next month's launch.
Phasmophobia Confirms 2025 Roadmap With Two Major Updates Planned
Following last October's launch on PlayStation VR2 and flatscreen consoles, Kinetic Games announced the 2025 updates roadmap for Phasmophobia. That includes a 'Chronicle' that revamps how you record evidence, a player character overhaul, reworks for existing maps alongside a brand-new map, plus seasonal events.
Ghosts of Tabor Adds Improved Scope And A Redesigned Adventure Bag
The latest Ghosts of Tabor update is now live across Quest, Steam and Pico. Update 0.9.1 adds an Adventure Bag redesign with the ability to fold armors, a new NRS system, a GRIM skin if you own the survival game, improved scopes, streamer items, and more. You can find the full patch notes here.
Thief Simulator VR: Greenview Street Celebrates Over 300k Copies Sold
Joining Into The Radius in sharing its sales figures, 3R Games announced that sandbox burglary game Thief Simulator VR: Greenview Street has now sold over 310,000 copies since release. The studio later clarified that this specifically refers to sales on the Quest version, so that figure doesn't include sales on Steam or PlayStation VR2.
Other Updates
For even more news, here's everything else we've spotted across this week.
- Developed by Cat City Games, Balls To The Wall is a mixed reality puzzle game with 20 levels of arcade-style gameplay.
- Dungeons of Eternity on Steam received a new delay to Q2 2025.
- VR horror game The Obsessive Shadow released a new Steam demo before its upcoming launch.
- VR arcade shooter Aim Assault released a Steam demo.
- Premier League Player heads to Pico next month.
- BRINK Traveler is coming to Pico.
- Batman: Arkham Shadow won the “Immersive Reality Game of the Year” at the DICE Awards 2025, while Starship Home won for “Immersive Reality Technical Achievement.”
- How To God is a new narrative sandbox sim heading for Quest.
- VR mech combat sim OVRLRD will receive a 'major' graphical overhaul this year.
- Death Game Hotel is celebrating Valentine's Day with a new limited time event.
- Gran Turismo 7 added support for its AI agent 'Sophy' onto two new tracks.
- Retronika released the 'Paint It Black' update with a reworked dashboard, new skins, and more.
- Population: One kicked off the 'Cupid's Crush' event with a new limited time mode.
- Arcade puzzler Hidden Pictures: Agent Q confirmed a February 27 launch date on Quest.
- New patches are live for The Secret of Retropolis 1 and 2 on Steam and Quest.
- Astro Hunters VR launched a new update with additional quests.
- Green Hell VR added a friendly fire 'on/off' setting in co-op with patch 2.0.5.
- Masters of Light now supports bHaptics following a recent update.
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