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Carmack's Million-Dollar Bet
PSVR discounts, FitXR's July update on Quest, XREAL a01+ at $299
XR = eXtended Reality (everything VR, AR, MR)
📣 If you only read one thing today 📣
🇪🇺 The European Commission is set to exempt wearables like smart glasses from the EU's user-removable battery mandate, a carve-out Parliament could still block within two months, while BEUC warns it sets a dangerous precedent and privacy regulators ready a surveillance report.
📢 This quietly decides whether the entire smart glasses category can keep shipping sealed, ultra-light designs in the world's second-biggest consumer market — a design constraint that would have forced every maker from Meta to Google to Samsung into thicker, heavier hardware for years.
🕶️ Fans get to keep the glasses they actually want: 40-50 gram frames that look like eyewear, instead of a battery hatch bolted onto your temple.
🥳 But there’s more:
🔫 Combat Waffle Studios is launching Ghosts of Tabor: Legacy on July 31.
🪓 For the first time since July 2025, new music has landed in Viking rhythm game Ragnarock.
🥽 Palmer Luckey has teased an unannounced pair of strikingly slim AR glasses.
eXtend your gaming:
Welcome to XR Gamer Digest #110
XR Games
🏺 Leaked concept art and a 15-minute gameplay video have revealed Project U, an official Tomb Raider VR title that Vertigo Games Amsterdam developed for Quest 3, PSVR 2, and PC VR before its cancellation in January 2026.
🔫 Because a chunk of the community kept pining for the "old days," Combat Waffle Studios is launching Ghosts of Tabor: Legacy on July 31 for Quest and Steam - a $14.99 content-frozen snapshot of the 2024 build, with its original map, damage model, and time-to-kill restored.
🏷️ Roughly 200 PlayStation VR and VR2 titles, bundles, and DLC drop in price until August 12 as Sony's Summer Game Sale opens, with cuts reaching 88% on games like Star Wars Squadrons, Gran Turismo 7, and Alien: Rogue Incursion.
XR Entertainment
💪 FitXR's July update on Quest introduces Journey, a goal-based recommendation engine that picks workouts from the app's 1,000+ classes, alongside Move Point Profile Levels, daily streaks, overhauled audio, and a new underwater Oceana environment.
🪓 For the first time since July 2025, new music has landed in Viking rhythm game Ragnarock - two free licensed tracks, Mister Misery's "Strangeland" and Lordi's "Hard Rock Hallelujah" - while an expired license forced Wanadev to swap the tutorial song.
XR News
💵 Now that Microsoft has gutted id Software with layoffs, a $1 million personal guarantee is back on the table from John Carmack, who wants Team Beef allowed to commercialize official VR versions of DOOM, Quake, and other open-source legacy titles.
🥽 Palmer Luckey has teased an unannounced pair of strikingly slim AR glasses - presumably an Anduril project tied to Qualcomm and Meta - insisting they deliver wide-FOV full-color stereo rather than mere smart-glasses functionality, though whether a puck hides somewhere remains unclear.
📺 Marketed as a "pocket cinema," the a01+ from XREAL reaches US buyers at $299 with dual-layer Micro-OLED panels, 1,600 nits, HDR10, and a 147-inch virtual screen at four meters, plus TÜV Rheinland eye-comfort certification and interchangeable frames.
🇪🇺 Wearables including smart glasses would be spared from the EU's upcoming user-removable battery mandate under a Commission tweak that Parliament may still object to within two months, even as privacy watchdogs prepare a surveillance report and consumer group BEUC warns of a dangerous precedent.
AI Games
📉 Lenovo's US-based XR business unit has reportedly been shut down, with most staff let go, as the company abandons its enterprise-first ThinkReality strategy in favor of consumer AI wearables built under the Motorola brand.
Until next time, enjoy your other reality gaming!
Bobby Voicu
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