Earlier this month, the latest XR and Metaverse Fair Tokio was held in a large tourist hall in Tokyo.
This is one of Japan’s biggest events to showcase the work of creating a future of AR, VR and mixed reality. In theory, the event should serve as a springboard for Japanese industry, and an opportunity to take a positive view of growing industries due to the increased commercial, industrial and home adoption of XR technology. So why does anyone here seem confident in new ideas and themselves?
International companies are considered the leading pioneer in the industry. This is whether we’re talking about growing Chinese domination using display glasses from XReal and Viture, Meta and Apple’s VR headsets. Nevertheless, Japan is still a country with plenty of companies making strong claims about the unique benefits this technology can bring to people’s lives.
Two years after the introduction of the event in 2023, major Japanese companies such as Universal Studios Japan, Sony, DMM, Line and Nissan announced at the event. They showed us how to use this technology to improve efficiency or attract audiences. Some of these have also become technology realized beyond the corporate attitudes of business to business. Universal Studios Japan, for example, is constantly using VR and XR to enhance its park attractions.
However, compared to the strong presence of these key players over the past few years, this is an event driven by startups. It is fair to say that the event has a significant mix of the practicality of technology shown by companies across Japan and across Asia, but that is far from a bad thing. Meanwhile, software solutions company TechFirm was introducing a new system for remotely managing and linking headsets for group training in XR. This uses proprietary software known as OneXR and appears to be truly impressive in the firefighter simulations shown. Meanwhile, a Korean company’s book startup rarely feels stimulating when technology is a little more advanced than Nintendo’s 3DS AR minigames despite domestic success in their home country.
There was an exciting technology on display, but it was a contradiction that defined the event. Most impressive was the demo featured by Nikon, a renowned innovator in the world of VR video production, through a lineup of lenses designed to capture video in formats. Here, the company introduced a new way to use recording equipment to enhance live broadcasting in VR, especially for sports.
Thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, we have already seen examples of how sports broadcasting can take on a new dimension. Those who use official applications to view the NBA can experience action from a unique mixed reality perspective, taking advantage of court 3D renderings seen from a top-down perspective that provides a whole new way to experience action. The company’s MR broadcast demos rival the advances seen in the NBA Vision Pro application, but there are other enhancements that go far beyond what’s implemented here.
Instead, Nikon uses 3D imaging captured using dual-lens VR lenses to recreate a 3D map of a baseball field where viewers can watch the action from anywhere in the stadium. That includes unique locations like direct on the playfield where recording is not possible. Rather than generating models and creating a 3D approximation of the match using tracking data, the player itself can be rendered directly with 3D imaging of matches from a series of lenses and cameras placed around the stadium.
Viewers can choose where to watch the action from here. In two demos, one can stand right next to the batter to see the action, while the other shows you to see the pitch from the outfield position and hit.
The appeal to sports audiences is clear. This is a baseball game I’ve never seen before. Compared to the limited angles of terrestrial sports broadcasting, this was an opportunity to see matches from pitch levels in a way that has never been seen before in this way. In the case of Tech Demo, this is achieved using pre-recorded footage using 3D models created from low-resolution pixelated rendering of what the camera can capture. Speaking to the representative, I hope this could become a real-time feature for future live sports broadcasts.
This is an exhilarating demonstration, but a very few demonstrations to demonstrate the authentic, clear and obvious mass market possibilities of adoption in ways that could drive the industry forward and new technology well-executed. If anything, this reveals how much of the event lacked a positive and exciting vision of the future. This is especially noticeable when compared to other shows that are taking place alongside it within the same venue.
XR and Metaverse Fair Tokyo were part of a wide collection of business-to-business festivals simultaneously hosted throughout the vast halls of Japan’s largest event space known as Lifestyle Week. Collectively, they shared a core goal despite focusing on very different industries. It focused on a range of fashion and culture with high involvement and constantly changing consumer habits, and this was a glimpse into the future. There was a license expo, which represented the growing importance of licensed characters and collaboration. There was a fashion fair. You had a design expo centered around digital and physical design that appealed to a typical audience.
You even had an Oshikatsu Expo representing activities from the community to support more talent for creating custom products and more by artists, sports players, or celebrity fans, and to capture the way the industry is responding to how the audience is involved in these spaces.
I only had a brief glance at these spaces at my free moments, but the booths on display in these spaces contrasted with the slow, uncertain showcases I witnessed at XR and Metaverse Fair. In particular, at Oshikatsu Expo, we have seen a real experiment in how companies adapt to a growing market for fans supporting their favorite musicians in Japan. I live in Japan and follow many musicians. It is common to see fans buying advertising space for celebrities’ birthdays or buying flowers for showcasing outside the concert venue. We supported the latter fan project. Rather than several AR showcases in a space dedicated to the industry, companies experimenting with AR enhancements to these displays are experimenting with AR enhancements to these displays.
These events may initially seem unrelated to the discussion of the XR showcase, but I’m mentioning this for good reason. More mature spaces have an understanding and vision of their field and have sought to showcase their potential futures, but the much newer, perhaps more positive XR industry is lost and has no direction. It’s not that the industry isn’t investing in really exciting technologies or using technology with innovations you won’t see elsewhere. While the integration of XR glasses by Japanese company NEXCO for field engineering visualizations is impressive, Nikon’s aforementioned VR capture technology is far ahead of what can be seen elsewhere.
A few weeks after the event, at the Indie Game Convention Bitsummit, VR Yokocho Showcase was a space where Japanese and later VR companies could showcase their gaming work to the public. Here, Japanese companies like Mydearest and Carchersbank are exciting viewers in one of the busiest booths on the show, introducing already released titles, and released to people new to technology. While Virtual Expo feels overwhelming at Expo 2025, companies like the Japanese government and Capcom with Monster Hunter Bridge have directly funded some of the show’s most exciting VR and XR exhibits, pushing current technology to the limits. The Japanese XR industry is making great strides in the commercial, gaming and non-gaming context.
Across Asia, many of the current innovations in XR were found, and there was a strong presence here. XReal introduces one of the latest pro display glasses, showing both gaming and non-gaming applications. Play flat screen games in virtual spaces and interact with surrounding objects with incredible reliability. This offers a rendering area where, although still small below 60 degrees, the limited area in the world of display glasses is beginning to give a glimpse into the potential of the ultimate consumer AR glasses.
But beyond these bright spots, the industry lost confidence in itself and didn’t know what the future would or should be. By this point, the concept of metaverse, once enthusiastically declared by Mark Zuckerberg, has been sued and ultimately deemed unconvincing to the broader public in its present form. But the amount of companies that continue to drive this and many other ideas feel trapped in the heyday of their former prayers for a future that appears to be impossible. There was a company that sold signs for the Metaverse. Also, this is because everyone is salivating saliva in 2025.
Despite attempts to make VR the near future of virtual meetings with the workroom, people are still sticking to Zoom calls as software of choice and have recently become a quest as a 2D app. VRCHAT has been a successful application that allows anyone to create unique online communities, create art, explore virtual film production, and bridge the real virtual world through events such as the virtual market. Instead, they were here to sell themselves as the future of virtual offices.
In Japan alone, VR is an almost $4 billion industry, and is expected to grow. So why is it so scary to showcase all the assets and potential future applications of VR and XR that justify these lofty predictions? Why are new advances shunned because of attempts to trust ideas that the public has rejected? Beyond some choice exceptions, why don’t you want to introduce the concept of how to encourage a wider public to adopt this technology?
There is a notable disconnect in how people are currently using XR devices and how they can be used in exciting ways to allow them to participate in technology. Clusters were long-term Japanese metaverse applications with both flat and VR applications that discovered authentic mainstream adoption, and were present in events. Thanks to the massive collaboration with everyone, from TV Asahi to local and central governments, the app is one of Japan’s biggest success stories in this field. More recently, Vtubers used the application to interact with fans as a new form of direct communication between talent and audience. This was not seen anywhere as the company firmly introduced the 10th anniversary celebration teaser.
Just as I have found great potential in the industry and have come to know many creators over the years working on VR and XR technology in Japan, what this event lacks is the message to the audience. Despite the name of the event, Metaverse remains a tough sale for most audiences. Apple’s headsets are impressive, but they are reportedly creating a much cheaper Apple Vision Air now, despite having a hard time justifying the current high asking price. The industry needs a pitch that ensures that the industry meets growth forecasts. This is necessary for a general audience beyond the core audience for the technology to read this article. That’s what was most notably lacking here, unlike what was seen in the wider Lifestyle Week showcase.
If possibilities like Xreal or Nikon are realized, I think the industry is still creativity, knowing that the only way to bring this piece to new people is to provide both accessible and possible in this field. Unfortunately, more broadly, I’m leaving the event shrinking more than I would expect for this part of the industry’s beliefs and ingenuity to fill that gap.
