Post-WWDC25 Thoughts: The Road Ahead for visionOS and the Vision Product Line

This year I was invited to attend WWDC! It was a great honor and it feels like my investment over the past two years has been recognized by Apple and the Apple community. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know things haven’t been easy for the visionOS community since launch.

The developer community was quite active during the first few months after the Vision Pro launch, but it quickly became clear that the lack of income from selling apps on the store made it difficult to keep developers motivated. Those who stayed, like me, shifted their focus to the B2B market and are quietly preparing for new hardware to adjust their strategies.

Some press outlets have also continued to spread inaccurate information, suggesting Apple is pulling back from the XR industry. They often take things out of context, like reports of Vision Pro production being paused or claims that people have stopped using their Vision Pros. While there’s some truth to these reports, they don’t reflect Apple’s actual commitment to XR.

On a more personal note, I launched my freelance business earlier this year, and while the first few months were tough, I’m happy to say things are looking great now. I’ve published three apps in the last two months, and many more projects are on the way!

In this post, I’ll share my perspective on the current state of the ecosystem and where I believe we’re heading.

The Future of visionOS

This WWDC and the announcement of visionOS 26 clearly show that Apple is committed to the space. This update brings long-awaited features such as:

• Widgets and windows you can place on walls that persist between sessions

• Improved passthrough and hand tracking

• New Personas (finally out of beta!)

• App folders

• Enhanced SharePlay for local experiences

• New enterprise APIs and team device sharing

And many more that I might cover in dedicated blog posts over the next few weeks!

A clear focus: Entertainement & Productivity

In my opinion, the keynote and the State of the Union really highlighted Apple’s focus for the next few years: Entertainment and Productivity.

For Entertainment, Apple is clearly pushing hard on immersive video. They are providing more APIs to natively play immersive content, and new hardware like the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive should soon be in the hands of filmmakers. DaVinci Resolve also got an update. With visionOS 26, we now have an even stronger foundation to create and consume immersive content.

As expected, we also got support for PSVR2 controllers for those looking to explore gaming on the Vision Pro. While it is nice to see that support, I do not see VR gaming truly thriving on this platform. On the other hand, streaming 2D games on the Vision Pro seems to be doing reasonably well. In my opinion, for gaming to have real potential here, new hardware would be needed. Personally, I would not invest time or money in this area unless you have a long-term plan where revenue is not a concern for the foreseeable future.

For Productivity, the new enterprise APIs and the ability to share experiences without relying on SharePlay or FaceTime open up many new enterprise use cases. Dassault Systèmes was a key highlight during the keynote, showing that Apple Vision Pro and visionOS have a strong place in the B2B market. With HoloLens out of the picture, many companies are looking for a solid replacement, and the Vision Pro is a perfect candidate when passthrough is not a limitation.

Apple clearly understands this, and new features like Team Device Sharing, along with hopefully proper updates to Mobile Device Management, should help them gain some market share. Their strong stance on privacy, which some see as a weakness especially when it comes to AI, might actually become one of their greatest strengths. After all, the last thing enterprises want is sensitive data leaking into the wrong hands. The new App-Protected Content API and the previously announced Private Cloud Compute are great examples of Apple’s ongoing commitment to privacy.

This focus on both areas is also reflected in the developer community, as highlighted in our VisionOS Professionals Survey 2025, which we released together with Yuki Kobayashi and Oliver Weidlich.

If you didn’t read our survey, it’s available to download right here:

Can we stop using Unity3D & Unreal Engine?

visionOS 26 did not bring the big updates I was hoping for in RealityKit and Reality Composer Pro. Instead, the focus was clearly on improving stability, which was definitely needed. So I guess I will have to wait for visionOS 27 to finally get excited!

What this WWDC also did not deliver, at least for me, is a clear roadmap for the future of RealityKit. As a former Unity developer, I have invested heavily in learning RealityKit and SwiftUI to create premium experiences. But many key features available in Unity3D and Unreal Engine are still missing, preventing RealityKit from being a true replacement for these engines.

On top of that, the recent rumors about Apple potentially acquiring Unity to better compete with Unreal Engine, along with their investment in Godot, only add to the uncertainty about which direction developers should take. Personally, I am still not willing to pay for a Unity Pro license just to develop for Vision Pro, so for now, I am sticking with RealityKit.

New Vision Products

While visionOS 26 brings long-awaited features, the question remains: when will we get new hardware? Because we won’t see meaningful adoption with OS updates alone. We need new hardware to truly grow the visionOS ecosystem!

If we take into account all the rumors circulating, I think we can expect a few products over the next few years:

• Vision Pro 2: A lighter Vision Pro with an M5 processor, potentially half the size and weight, with computing offloaded to an external puck.

• Vision “Air”: A Vision device that connects directly to a Mac and acts more like a screen than a full standalone spatial computer.

• Vision Glasses: A competitor to Meta's Ray-Ban, possibly without screens for the first generation. It might not even run visionOS initially.

These are my personal predictions, so take them with a grain of salt! I expect a new Vision Pro to be announced this fall, with a release around February 2026. And if we are extra lucky, we might see the “Air” version as well, but I am not counting on it!

As always, thanks for reading my blog posts. Feel free to reach out on social media and let me know what you think!