Google ignored Android XR at GDC 2025, and indie VR devs are concerned

Google made no effort to reach out to indie VR and XR game developers at GDC 2025. Combined with social media reports that most top-selling Quest devs were "rejected" from Google's Android XR boot camps, it's painting a worrying picture about what to expect from Android-based headsets like Project Moohan.

Google loves GDC; it has a huge presence there every year. This year, its panel on real-world AI applications in game development filled up 45 minutes before it started. It had several Android gaming panels and a large Play Store exhibition in the West hall, and it partnered with Samsung on another Galaxy panel.

GDC is well-known for its private hotel demos off the show floor. Perhaps Google made an Android XR push behind closed doors with larger VR publishers.

But Google's decision not to court indie VR devs publicly with panels or demos — at the same conference where Meta pushed its new passthrough tech and reassured devs how profitable their store is — seems pretty telling.

It's all but guaranteed that the Google I/O 2025 program in May will have workshops on Android XR — to court 2D app devs. Gaming rarely comes up at I/O, and this platform is public, so it's not as though Google needs to wait for some big reveal.

Will Google have the same disdainful approach to VR gaming that Apple does with the Apple Vision Pro? At least one VR gaming dev we spoke to thinks that Android XR is already heading in the wrong direction by spurning the people who made Quest headsets so popular.

Will Android XR ignore the indie VR gaming scene?

The Quest Store is flooded with meme games, social multiplayer targeting teens, and indie content you'd typically see on Steam. It turns off many VR elites and frustrates VR devs making "serious" content, but these games strike a chord and keep people returning to the Quest 3S headsets more regularly to spend money.

Android XR is compatible with Unity, OpenXR, and WebXR, with controller support built into the UI. During our press preview, they suggested that headsets like Samsung's Project Moohan "support gaming use cases." They said that "hopefully" this universal compatibility "will lead to incentives for people to port over to Android."

You'd think the owner of the Play Store would recognize the power of smaller developers to strike it big and reach out to those developers to give Android XR greater visibility.

Instead, according to developer RJ White at Soaring Roc Studio, "9/10 top devs for the Quest platform" have been rejected from Android XR coding boot camps, and he sees this as a premature death knell for the platform.

"Google is treading the same path towards failure that they did with Stadia and Daydream. By shutting out some of the most experienced and smaller studios and developers, they're showing they've learned zero lessons with how to manage or grow a modern software platform," said White in a discussion with Android Central senior editor Nick Sutrich.

White, whose indie studio has made several Quest titles like Spiders and FireZone, says that studios and games from "humble origins" power huge successes from major platforms. However, he believes Google is "too focused on trying to force a polished diamond out of a large team as quickly as possible" instead of "cultivating an environment that lets those smaller teams thrive and carve a gem out on their own."

"XR developers aren't just game developers; they're 3D interaction experts," says White. However, by rejecting them and prioritizing the same "just make things flat" approach as Apple, Android XR will be "2D dependent to a fault."

What is Google's Android XR strategy?

White's thoughts don't prove Android XR is bound to fail, and we don't have evidence that Google is fully ignoring Quest developers beyond word of mouth.

Rather, it reflects a perspective among some VR developers that without overtures from Google, it's hard to know how much stock to put into Android XR — or whether Google knows what it needs to do to make it successful.

Big Tech wants to make productivity XR headsets the new alternative to laptops, but none of the big-name consumer products have sold at a massive scale. Apple allegedly sold 500,000 Vision Pros, and Samsung wants to sell 100,000 Moohan headsets.

VR gaming remains the one definitive use case that has attracted millions of users. So, is there a reason why Google wouldn't prioritize it?

Samsung's Project Infinity headset is rumored to have Sony-made micro-OLED displays with 13.64 million pixels per eye, arriving in the second half of 2025 with a hefty price tag. Beyond that, other announced Android XR devices include a Sony enterprise headset that'll cost almost $5,000, Xreal AR glasses, and an unconfirmed Lynx XR headset that may trend toward the pricey side.

So perhaps Google wants to focus its outreach to the enterprise and productivity app creators because it knows people won't spend thousands of dollars to play Gorilla Tag when the Quest 3 is already here. It needs a "killer app" to justify its existence, and Google must assume that app won't be a game.

Maybe Google truly believes that gaming developers don't need an Android XR boot camp because they can easily port over OpenXR games without much effort.

Perhaps, as White suggests, they're underestimating these XR developers' ability to do more than gaming software and create useful 3D app content, whether for headsets or AR glasses. We know Android XR will have similar camera tech to the Quest's new passthrough API, but Google didn't come to GDC to appeal to XR devs as Meta did.

Or maybe Google is following the lead of its hardware partners, who don't care as much about gaming. If Samsung decides to make a Quest rival, then Google could prioritize gaming, right?

Frankly, whatever Google's reasoning, I'm not a fan of Google potentially downplaying the importance of gaming for the future of Android XR. It should be building up momentum now so that devs are ready to overload Project Moohan with content by the end of the year.

Hopefully, by Google I/O in May, VR gaming devs will have more reason for optimism that Android XR is a viable new platform for them.