Most of the companies that complain that extended reality “never paid off” for them aren’t really complaining about the technology. They’re dealing with the side effects of ineffective content.
Program updates get stuck. New sites want changes. Compliance teams want consistency. Someone asks for localization. Someone else asks why last quarter’s version is still running on half the headsets. That’s where the build vs buy XR content debate starts.
Early on, custom XR content creation feels like the obvious move. It fits perfectly. It mirrors real workflows. SMEs recognize themselves in it. But once XR expands across roles, regions, or regulations, that same custom content often turns into the bottleneck. Every change becomes a mini-project. Every variation spawns another version. Suddenly, the scale feels fragile.
Buying has its issues, too. Finding a pre-existing solution that matches what you need exactly isn’t as easy as it seems, even with companies like Meta investing in huge immersive marketplaces.
So, how do companies actually make the right decision?
Build vs Buy XR Content: The Case for Building
There are solid reasons teams choose to build. In some environments, it’s not overconfidence, it’s common sense.
Custom XR content creation really does work best when the work itself is genuinely hard to standardize. Think training for proprietary equipment, safety-critical procedures, or operational edge cases that never show up in generic training libraries because they’re too specific or too risky. In those situations, generic content can actively train the wrong instincts.
Building tends to make sense when:
- The workflow is proprietary: Internal processes, tools, or sequences that competitors don’t share, and shouldn’t.
- Edge cases matter more than the happy path: Rare failures, emergency scenarios, or high-risk moments that generic content skips.
- SMEs demand precision: Subject-matter experts want to see their reality reflected, not an abstraction.
- Assessment needs to match internal standards: “Competent here” doesn’t always look like “competent anywhere.”
The upside of custom XR content
When building is done well, the benefits are real:
- High-fidelity alignment with SOPs, language, and culture
- Scenarios that reflect real constraints, not idealized conditions
- Assessment logic based on what actually matters in the job
- The potential to create reusable internal modules, not one-off experiences
Look at Emirates Airlines, they built their own MIRA platform for immersive training because nothing already available in the market would have matched their needs exactly. Most companies with complex systems or workflows take the same approach.
They need control over pacing, failure conditions, decision points, and environments. They also need proprietary systems they can reuse in the future.
The Real Constraints of Building XR Content
The downsides of the “build” approach are pretty obvious. Managing custom XR content creation doesn’t stop when the experience ships. It just changes shape. Once you build, the organization owns:
- Updates when SOPs change or policies shift
- Localization across languages, regions, and regulatory norms
- QA and regression testing every time a device OS updates
- Auditability when someone asks, “Which version was live last quarter?”
Scale makes things more complex. What works for one site or one role doesn’t always work for everyone. You need variations, which end up fragmenting the content base.
On top of that, adapting to new devices becomes more complicated. XR content used to run on VR headsets almost exclusively. Now, AR smart glasses and mixed reality are taking over. That changes the content. You don’t need hyper-realistic “metaverse” spaces anymore, you need:
- Shorter interactions
- Hands-free UX
- AI-guided simulations
- More frequent updates tied directly to how work actually happens
It’s not that building is the “wrong” choice. It’s just that building content that scales is a commitment, and many teams don’t realize how big that commitment actually is.
Build vs Buy XR Content: The Case for Buying
Buying XR content doesn’t always mean settling. In a lot of enterprise programs, it’s the only reason scale happens at all. If the content you need already exists, or there are apps you can easily tweak to fit your use cases without a lot of effort, buying is always the simpler option.
Buying makes sense when:
- The skill is standardized: Safety fundamentals, onboarding flows, communication skills, and customer interactions. The job may be complex, but the behaviors are broadly shared, which makes it easy for vendors like VirtualSpeech to share libraries.
- Scale matters more than nuance: You’re deploying content in dozens or hundreds of locations. Thousands of learners. Little tolerance for version drift.
- Governance demands uniformity: Compliance teams want one defensible experience, not regional improvisation.
- Internal XR skills are scarce: Most organizations don’t want to become game studios, and don’t need to.
Buying content (when you can) means you can roll it out faster across sites, benefit from consistent update cycles, and cut the cost of custom development. Plenty of companies in the XR industry are already expanding their content marketplaces to include more apps and simulations for soft and technical skill training, collaboration, and product development.
There are even companies like Strivr or Virtualware that are happy to work with businesses to adapt content to their needs. For a lot of companies, buying isn’t the “easy” path; it’s the more scalable one.
The Trade-Offs of Buying XR Content
Buying XR content solves a lot of problems. It also creates a few new ones that tend to show up later. Off-the-shelf content works by design because it generalizes. That’s also its weakness.
Generic XR training can miss:
- Site-specific hazards that only exist in certain environments
- Procedural exceptions that experienced workers deal with weekly
- Cultural nuance, or how people actually communicate, escalate, or make judgment calls inside a specific organization
This is where teams sometimes confuse completion with competence. Learners pass the module. Scores look fine. But the behavior on the floor doesn’t change much.
Another thing to keep in mind is that buying doesn’t remove accountability. Even when you purchase content, you’re still responsible for learning outcomes, policy alignment, and adoption. Buying just reduces the authoring effort.
There’s one other challenge to consider, too: integrations. Bought content still has to live inside real systems. Some companies prioritize open XR standards to help with this, Android XR from Google is a good example of an operating system that supports content deployment with flexibility. Still, there’s always a chance that you could end up with friction points.
Buying XR content works best when teams go in clear-eyed. It accelerates scale. It doesn’t eliminate the work.
The Hybrid Model: Why Many Enterprises Blend Build and Buy
This is the part that tends to get underestimated on both sides of the build vs buy XR content debate: hardware ages out neatly; content doesn’t. There are challenges to overcome because of that, regardless of whether you’re buying or building from scratch.
Plus, it’s worth remembering that both the buy and build options have their upsides and downsides. A lot of companies find that they can’t really rely on one route alone. That’s where the hybrid strategy comes in. Buy what you can, build what you can’t, and adapt as necessary.
With this approach, companies:
Buy for repeatable foundations
- Safety and compliance baselines
- Standard onboarding flows
- Common soft skills like communication, leadership, or customer interaction
Build for differentiation
- Proprietary workflows and equipment
- Site-specific hazards and constraints
- Internal decision trees, escalation paths, and judgment calls
The hybrid approach tends to blend modalities too, which can be helpful. Companies can build VR content that’s perfect for training, collaboration, and task rehearsal in unique environments. Then they can develop or buy AR and MR solutions that handle reinforcement and supporting work in the moment. For instance, they might buy an AI assistant solution they can train with their existing content to guide employees through tasks in the field.
Why the Hybrid Strategy Reduces Risk
Hybrid models work because they:
- Shrink the surface area of content that must be constantly rebuilt
- Preserve realism where mistakes are costly
- Allow global consistency without pretending every site is identical
Instead of asking every learning problem to justify a custom build, hybrid programs treat XR content creation like a portfolio. Some assets are shared. Some are bespoke. All of them have owners.
Deutsche Telekom is a good example of why this balance works. The company used VR-based communication training to drive measurable skill improvements in short sessions, ideal for standardized behaviors.
That didn’t eliminate the need for internal context, but it showed how purchased modules can carry the load for foundational skills, freeing teams to focus custom effort where it actually moves the needle.
Hybrid works because it respects reality: not every skill is unique, and not every workflow should be standardized. The mistake is pretending one approach can do both.
Build vs Buy XR Content: How to Decide
This is where the build vs buy XR content gets tricky, because teams ask the wrong questions, too early, with too much emotion attached. “Can we build this?” “Do we trust vendors?” “Will this lock us in?” None of those predict success.
If you’re really ready to unlock the value of XR in the enterprise, these are the questions worth asking, before you buy or build:
- Is this skill differentiating or standardized? If success here gives you an edge competitors don’t have, building deserves serious consideration.
- How often will this content change? Monthly updates behave very differently from annual ones.
- Who owns updates two years from now? Not who signs the contract, but who actually pushes changes when priorities shift.
- How many roles, regions, languages, and devices does this need to support? Scale isn’t just headcount; it’s variation.
- How much outcome variance is acceptable? Is “close enough” fine, or does consistency matter more than realism?
- Do we want XR creation as a core capability, or a managed dependency? Both are valid. Confusion here is not.
If you want a simpler decision framework:
- Build when differentiation is real, change is slow, and SMEs are committed
- Buy when speed, consistency, and defensibility matter most
- Go Hybrid when reality refuses to fit cleanly into either bucket (which is most of the time)
Build and Buy Are Strategies, Not Ideologies
There’s a strange moral weight attached to this debate. Building XR content gets framed as “serious.” Buying gets framed as “lazy.” Neither is true.
Building XR content creation is often the right move when the work is genuinely different, the risk of getting it wrong is high, and the organization is willing to own the long tail updates, QA, localization, and governance.
Buying XR content is often the only way scale happens at all. When skills are standardized, and consistency matters more than nuance, speed beats perfection. That’s not cutting corners. That’s respecting operational reality.
Hybrid works because most organizations live in the messy middle. Some skills need precision. Others just need to be done the same way, everywhere, every time. Treating XR content as a portfolio turns the build vs buy XR content conversation from an argument into an operating model.
If you’re ready to learn more about how XR can actually influence the future of your organization, before you dive into content creation, start with our ultimate guide to extended reality for businesses.
