Owlchemy Labs and Resolution Games announced they’re adopting support for Android XR, bringing some of their most popular titles to Google’s upcoming XR operating system.
Android XR is set to make its debut on Samsung’s ‘Project Moohan’ mixed reality headset, which is slated for consumer launch sometime in 2025. It’s no Daydream either, but rather a bona fide version of Android adapted to run on XR headsets, supporting both the massive catalogue of flat Android apps in addition to immersive XR content.
As two of the most veteran of XR studios in the space, it seems Google’s Owlchemy Labs and Resolution Games are again banking on their tried and true ‘first mover’ advantage; both studios are known for their broad support across major VR platforms, making for a fairly unsurprising move.
In separate announcements, Owlchemy Labs revealed its ever-fresh VR title Job Simulator (2016) and its well-received follow-up Vacation Simulator (2019) are coming to Android XR; Resolution Games says Demeo (2021) is coming too.
Similar to Apple Vision Pro, Samsung is highlighting Project Moohan’s hand and eye-tracking capabilities. Like Quest though, Project Moohan is also set to include first-party motion controllers and PC VR streaming, making it a bit of a mashup between the two.
For Owlchemy Labs and Resolution Games, which have already integrated hand and eye-tracking into their respective titles on Vision Pro, porting to Android XR appears to be fairly trivial, in part thanks to Unity’s day-one support for Android XR, which includes integration of the OpenXR software standard.
“Developing for Android XR provided us a streamlined approach to creating Immersive experiences, compatible with a wide range of XR devices,” Owlchemy Labs says in a press statement. “The platform’s integration with the Unity engine, with a majority of the functionality available directly from Unity APIs, without the need for third-party library integration, simplified the porting process and helped ensure our existing Unity based games could be seamlessly adapted to the XR environment.”
The story is the same for Resolution Games. CTO Johan Gästrin additionally notes Google shares the studio’s vision for social experiences, calling Google’s move “a prominent stance in the [XR] space.”
These three games offer accessible entry points for newcomers, from Job Simulator’s madcap activities to Demeo’s immersive, cross-platform multiplayer board game experience. However, it remains uncertain whether other XR studios will adopt Android XR at the same pace, particularly given the platform’s reliance on Project Moohan’s success. Arguably the biggest factor is the headset’s price, which still hasn’t been revealed, in addition to specific specs and release date.