A Vision of eXtended Reality as an Off-the-shelf Modality in Multimodal Interactive Ecosystems

New technologies, like eXtended Reality (XR) have emerged as a transformative paradigm across many fields such as healthcare, education, industry, and smart home environments. By providing multimodal immersive interaction, XR creates opportunities for a richer set of interaction abilities, potentially increasing system adaptivity and adaptability. However, existing XR solutions often rely on tightly coupled or application-specific approaches that limit scalability and their reuse in a wider range of scenarios. The impact of these constraints in a broader dissemination of XR capabilities motivate thinking about the need for a unified and decoupled architecture that supports XR as a modular, interoperable component into interactive multimodal systems. In this work, we reflect on the conceptual grounds that would allow an easier adoption of XR within multimodal interactive systems, particularly on how its integration within standard multimodal interactive architectures could extend XR’s versatility across diverse domains while reducing development barriers and fostering innovation. We present key arguments supporting this vision and outline future directions for incorporating XR into interactive systems, paving the way for scalable, adaptable, and enriched XR solutions.