Breaking News: TikTok’s parent company said it sold a majority stake in the app’s U.S. operations to avoid a ban in the United States. nyti.ms/4jRmgcW

I thought the same but my kids have favored the Meta Quest over the Asus ROG handhelds this holiday season in a big way

Video game music continues to be one of my absolute favorite parts of working in gaming Devs deserve more recognition than they get rn. It's pure talent. Send me moar. 🙏 What VR or otherwise gaming soundtracks are you into Moss from @PolyarcGames was my number 1 this year!

Super interesting! Probably works way better for some games than others no?

Apologies to the guy I was chatting with in line. I said that I heard that Ayahuasca could one shot your brain and turn you into a circus stripper. - at which point he said under his breath that he has done that 8 times and he hadn't turned into a stripper.

We have now gotten to the business state of esports being so bad, that even “the industry blew up and collapsed” articles are further apart. Straight up newzoo just stopped publishing their esports reporting. This is a pretty epic fail for VC’s funds invested into esports - which topped out at 6 billion in 2018. However in your edition of “niche VR esports news” there are some very interesting things happening. Sometimes the most interesting things happen while the hype is low. First - there might actually be VR esports at the esports Olympics! The selection of games for the 2027 Games is still being finalized. The best contender is Virtual Taekwondo, which looks rad. There are some back and forth allegations on conflicts of interest which could derail this. This is mostly happening in Asia, with recent finals happening in Singapore and with pico very visible full body tracking. @VRMasterLeague is keeping the flame alive for PCVR and other core titles with much passion and heart and did an excellent event earlier this year onsite for VRMLcon. There was a $20,000 cash prize pool and five VR titles -  Orion Drift, Pavlov Shack, VAIL, Breachers, and Onward. World Tennis Esports Championship just happened. Road to VR and some of the other press releases report that the total prize pool was $100,000. Again, what’s interesting to me about hype in this space, is that things happen organically for a long time and then it becomes mainstream again and no one has paid any attention. The Gorilla Tag esports scene is definitely this way - its now the largest and most organic growth of VR esports ever; they have 230,000 people in their discord and 12,000 teams. That’s an insane number! VR soccer in general is popping off. @VRFS_GG has an official partnership with Puma, and they are consistently in the top 20 of all best selling titles on the quest. Very few of this is driven by content creators in a reverse trend - this is mostly organic word of mouth. Most of the social media videos on this are about how to play the game. VRFS the VR soccer game has a community made up nearly entirely of only community moderators. These are high schoolers mostly! This F2P model has really worked for soccer in VR. Just in July Rezzil went free to play and just today so did We are Soccer. These games are a blast. I haven’t tried Rezzil yet, but We are Soccer is has a very quick time to fun and shows a lot of promise with the younger F2P VR crowd.

It's been a joy and an honor to work with Khang and his team @PlBattlegrounds along the journey to their growing success with Plastic Battlegrounds. meta.com/experiences/plastic…

It was my birthday AND meta connect. Had such a good time! Thanks @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt

40 Studios & Influencer Spotlights 2 days of speakers and panels 1 massive giveaway with 100s of game keys, subscription codes, & a Meta Quest 3 The largest online VR fitness, sports, wellness event of the year. Join us on VR Fitness worldwide day and commit to being healthier.

Have you entered our giveaway? We've got a Meta Quest 3 and 100 VR game keys & subscription codes for games like FitXR (@wearefitxr) and Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu (@dragonfistvr)! Sign up for your chance to WIN! Link below 👇

So I’m just about to start up my morning routine of @weareFitXR and it’s only just occurred to me, that I’ve not only got 5 friends addicted to it, but their partners too! Fitxr if you’re looking for streamers to promote your product. I’m here, ready to jump on the front line.

Had such a blast filming with @weareFitXR this last weekend and @tnybeats and @NikitaFajitaa, Coach Cole and Casey! VR fitness does not quit and neither do we. We are excited to announce that this year we will be hosting a VR fitness summit with creators and VR studios focused on fitness, sports and wellness. So far, this is set to be the biggest active online focused event of the year with more than 30 devs are on track to participate. We and the devs working with us have new announcements incoming during the summit 👀 Deeply grateful for the devs and creators who have put their trust in us for a big online event again. People often dismiss VR fitness, but once they try it it turns some into fanatics. VR is used for active play, wellness and fitness by millions of people, to this point. Even with changing demographics in VR, it's a mistake to ignore the powerful potential here and we think VR fitness is here to stay. We are going back to our roots on this one. We ran our first VR Fitness summit in the middle of 2020, a year when everything was melting and we had shut down our physical spaces. Our theme this year is “VR fitness doesn’t quit” and we are aiming to have people show that by all joining together for a remote day of fitness wherever they are in the games they personally enjoy at once. There is a serious passionate core here and that’s super real and one of my main reasons for being a founder in VR. Some honest vulnerability: As we put this event together, it has encountered some roadblocks. It's been nearly two years since we ran an event of this size (we have run five events like this). That’s the whole thing though, every time something meaningful happens it starts with a decision to dig deep and the VAL team has here :) I love VR fitness. It's my best use case. I use VR fitness of all kinds 4-5 times a week, and lately I have also been using it near daily for meditation and a health focus in the mornings now too. There are some incredible things happening in the sports space in VR including things that have gone viral. Excited for what we have built so far. If you are a studio in the fitness, wellness, or sports space and we haven’t talked to you yet, now is the perfect time. The main way for devs to get involved is to work with their own communities on their own games and get people moving. Expect highlights from games, wellness, and sports - sorry esports shooters some other time :)

It is time

Random advice no one asked for: If you have the ability to add a smooth cam option into your VR game, then I recommend it! It can make a world of difference when it comes to creators showcasing your game. #VR

All know that a strong America is the best ally of peace—the world’s avaricious dictators of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are hesitant to invade and brutalize in the face of 1) American strength and 2) American resolve. Our tepid response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Crimea surely contributed to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. American strength is greatest when we have friends that stand with us; we must not let economic squabbles fray the bonds of our alliances. American resolve is greatest when we stand with the victims of oppression and invasion. After Russia invaded Ukraine with hundreds of tanks and hundreds of thousands of troops, America - together with Europe - rallied to give Ukraine the weapons and aid to defend itself. Three years later, Russia continues its brutal assault. We must not let personal squabbles weaken our resolve to stand with the freedom fighters and to oppose the authoritarian aggressors. Lasting peace will only be achieved if America demonstrates strength and resolve and if Ukraine is certain that it will not be invaded again. Anything short of that would elicit only temporary celebration; it would open the door to global conflicts that we may be unable to contain.

Worked with a friend in December who's VR game was a premium (paid) app with 100 users. He passed 250K by going F2P (was already multiplayer) Here's what he did: -Changed from $4.99 to F2P with IAPs - significantly boosting his reach and page conversion rate - Changed his Store thumbnail to something visually interesting - Changed the name of his game to something easier to type/spell -enabled users for short form vid distribution seriously (YT shorts, Tiktok) 2500x Guess where on the chart the game became free.