ByJon Kirchner,
Forbes Councils Member.
COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)Feb 20, 2026, 02:30pm EST
When I think about some of my most memorable entertainment experiences, one thing stands out: They all commanded my full attention.
One was Hero, an immersive virtual reality experience that transported participants to the edge of war in a Syrian village just before a bombing. Amid the chaos, we had the opportunity to save a woman’s life. It was so visceral that many people emerged in tears.
Years earlier, I felt something remarkably similar while watching Schindler’s List. Not only did it look and sound deeply authentic, but it was also driven by masterful storytelling that lingered long after the credits rolled.
espite unfolding in very different environments, the effect was the same: Each experience pulled me all the way in. That’s the power of great entertainment. When done right, it earns full attention whether through storytelling, experience-oriented technology or, at its best, the combination of both.
Today, the demand for that kind of immersion is playing out everywhere—in the purpose-built venues people line up for, in at-home experiences being redesigned to engage all the senses and in emerging mixed-reality formats that are inching us closer to the multifaceted diversions we crave.
Here’s what’s fueling that shift and what it means for the future of entertainment.
Attention Is The New Battleground
We live in an environment that’s frenetic and overstimulating, often to the point of numbness. How many times have you watched a show while also scrolling on your phone? Turns out you’re not alone. According to the results of a YouGov survey, “7 in 10 Americans double-screen with social media.”
The most compelling entertainment doesn’t just distract us—it helps quiet the noise. It gives us permission to focus on one thing, and that level of focus can feel liberating.
In the past, great storytelling alone was enough to hold our attention. But today, in a digital environment designed for interruption, the stakes are much higher. When even one element of the entertainment experience falls short, such as muddy audio, inconsistent visuals, laggy interfaces or an out-of-context ad, the opportunity for immersion can collapse.
t’s no coincidence that entertainment technology is focused on solving for exactly this: removing friction points and keeping audiences anchored in the moment.
Reengineering At-Home Entertainment For Immersion
Advances in spatial audio, visual fidelity, intelligent search and personalization are making it easier to enjoy at-home entertainment experiences that aren’t just engaging but genuinely absorbing. One place this shows up is content discovery. AI-driven systems that help viewers find what they want faster shorten the path to that lean-back-and-relax moment, before distraction takes hold.
But immersion at home isn’t just about what you watch. It’s how the experience meets you where you are. Improvements like clearer dialogue, enabled by intelligent sound processing, can be the difference between leaning in and tuning out. Likewise, innovations that narrow the gap between the theater and the living room can preserve the creative intent of filmmakers—from picture quality and aspect ratio to sound design—in ways once possible only in premium venues.
The next frontier? Making the experience feel truly effortless and adaptive. When technology learns preferences and optimizes around them, it fades into the background and the story can truly take over.
Purpose-Built Venues Are Setting A New Bar For Presence
The popularity of places like the Sphere in Las Vegas or the new Netflix House reveals how hungry audiences are for entertainment that lets them physically participate in the experience.
You can see that shift in spending, too. Experiential entertainment is taking up a growing share of the broader “experience economy,” spanning sports, travel and live events—a sign that people are willing to pay to be part of something rather than just watch.
What makes these experiences so compelling isn’t just scale or spectacle. It’s how thoroughly they engage the senses. Enveloping audio, visuals that respond to scale and movement, and spaces that become part of the narrative all work together to keep audiences present.
This way of thinking is moving beyond physical venues as well. Take sports broadcasts, where alternate feeds, new camera angles and tailored audio mixes recreate a “seat in the crowd” experience, even from the comfort of home.
Whatever the environment, the goal is the same: Make the experience more sensory, more personalized and much harder to drift away from.
From VR To Mixed Reality: What Comes Next
VR represents the most personalized form of immersive entertainment available today, with its potential to make experiences responsive and adaptive in ways traditional formats can’t. Yet, despite ongoing excitement around it as frontier technology, VR has felt “five years away” for some time now. The limiting factor isn’t its promise but its practicality, including battery life, chip efficiency, form factor, comfort and cost.
For VR to scale, it has to feel natural—closer to lightweight glasses than a rig on your head. It also has to fit into a social world where entertainment is often shared. That’s why the next wave may be more about mixed reality, where digital immersion and a sense of being present with others can coexist. Content has to mature alongside the hardware, too.
This future is edging closer. Companies like Meta and Apple are signing high-profile deals to bring mainstream content to VR platforms. If that ecosystem comes together, VR can move beyond a niche experiment, becoming not just a delivery mechanism but a way to create the conditions for sustained attention.
Ultimately, the biggest driver of immersive entertainment isn’t a single piece of hardware or software. It’s audience behavior and how quickly we adapt. What feels extraordinary today quickly becomes familiar. Expectations rise, and the bar moves again.
That’s why immersive entertainment will keep evolving, not because newness is the goal but because attention has to be continually earned. In a world saturated with noise and distraction, the experiences that endure aren’t always the loudest or flashiest. They’re the ones that remove friction, quiet everything else and make it easy to be fully present.