THE FUTURE OF XR
MixRift’s CEO and Co-Founder, Bobby Voicu, tells MCV where he thinks XR is going
A
t MixRift we’ve shipped over 15 game prototypes since August 2024. Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, Horizon Worlds. You
learn a lot when you’ve created that many games, both from how gamers respond, and from being in the market, seeing what the competition is doing. There’s a huge amount swirling around the
sector at the moment. The usual topics are still the same: improving hardware, Apple struggling, Indie Developers important. But because they’re the same, they often drown out the trends that are really shaping the industry, whether that’s giving it the push it needs or holding it back. So here’s where I think XR is headed.
WHERE IS THE MECHANIC? The overriding feeling I have is that I don’t think anyone, including us, has found the core mechanic. The thing that makes XR gaming feel like its own medium and not a gimmick. Touch-and-swipe defined mobile gaming. Mouse-
and-keyboard defined PC gaming. XR doesn’t have its version yet. We’re still looking.
24 | MCV/DEVELOP February/March 2026 Gorilla Tag got there with VR. A solo developer
made locomotion itself the game. No controllers, just your arms pushing you
through space. That’s not something that works on a flat screen; it could only exist through VR. That’s what we’re looking for in XR. That search is why we build games in six-to-eight-week cycles specifically. Most prototypes don’t survive contact with real players. Good. I’d rather ship 15 experiments than spend two years polishing one thing that might not work. David, my co-founder, keeps saying the mechanic will be obvious in hindsight. He’s probably right. We just don’t have the hindsight yet.
INDIE DEVS KEEP SETTING NEW EXPECTATIONS The biggest XR games come from small studios (Gorilla Tag, Animal Company). The most interesting experiments come from small studios. When you’re a few people with six-week build cycles, you can try things that a 200-person studio can’t even propose in a meeting without a slide deck and three approvals.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
