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Facebook's Quest 2 is an impressive piece of tech. One of the biggest reasons to be skeptical of VR taking off is that Facebook is one of the major players. B

Facebook's Quest 2 is an impressive piece of tech. One of the biggest reasons to be skeptical of VR taking off is that Facebook is one of the major players. Between the login shenanigans and their anti-competitive dealings with developers, they have an opportunity to single-handedly tank the industry.

outworlder 6y ago
It's the ONLY player on the "stand-alone" headset space. There's some competition on PC headsets, Rift headsets are not even the best, feature-wise. But just like the quest, they score very high on the cost-benefit analysis (I guess we pay with a combination of cash and data).
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  PSVR is somewhere in the middle but Sony has all but abandoned it at this point.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Pretty underwhelming hardware too.
nitrogen 6y ago
I think Facebook is in VR because they don't want the Metaverse to belong to anybody but them.
- echelon 6y ago
  100%. Zuckerberg sees that it has the potential, and he wants to have an early angle of attack in case someone else innovates first. Zuckerberg views platforms as chess pieces. He doesn't care what they are - he just wants the most valuable and strategic ones. He's not like a Musk that just builds or a Cook that refines product into a cohesive vision. Zuckerberg is playing war and finding the reverse salients. He's destabilizing and weakening the platform and expanding his reach. He's more like Bezos or Ellison.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. It will be so good that it will be the default way to commutate at a distance, making it a huge threat to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger. I think the fufilment of that promise is still probably more than a decade out.
  - fatnoah 6y ago
    >For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. And that, IMHO, is why FB wants you to use FB login for your VR experience.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      It's also the definition of disallowed monopolistic behavior -- using ownership of one area to control another. This is more egregious if you consider "VR" as not "virtual reality", but "virtual relationships."
zmmmmm 6y ago
I agree. For tech to take off you really need a significant "platform" player to emerge - someone that is able to position themselves as a middleman where the value made by 3rd parties significantly outweighs the value made by the middleman. That is what causes a technology to really bloom and get broadscale uptake. Facebook just isn't interested in that. They'd rather have a smaller pie where they own it all than capture a larger piece of a giant pie but be just one part of it.
chaostheory 6y ago
I feel the biggest thing that FB brings to the table is multiplayer and social. Because their device is both capable, inexpensive, and easy to setup; it's the most democratic. I can almost always find others to play with or against compared to Steam, where only a few games have a lot of players.

outworlder 6y ago

It's the ONLY player on the "stand-alone" headset space. There's some competition on PC headsets, Rift headsets are not even the best, feature-wise. But just like the quest, they score very high on the cost-benefit analysis (I guess we pay with a combination of cash and data).

jonny_eh 6y ago
PSVR is somewhere in the middle but Sony has all but abandoned it at this point.
- outworlder 6y ago
  Pretty underwhelming hardware too.

nitrogen 6y ago

I think Facebook is in VR because they don't want the Metaverse to belong to anybody but them.

echelon 6y ago
100%. Zuckerberg sees that it has the potential, and he wants to have an early angle of attack in case someone else innovates first. Zuckerberg views platforms as chess pieces. He doesn't care what they are - he just wants the most valuable and strategic ones. He's not like a Musk that just builds or a Cook that refines product into a cohesive vision. Zuckerberg is playing war and finding the reverse salients. He's destabilizing and weakening the platform and expanding his reach. He's more like Bezos or Ellison.
dougmwne 6y ago
For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. It will be so good that it will be the default way to commutate at a distance, making it a huge threat to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger. I think the fufilment of that promise is still probably more than a decade out.
- fatnoah 6y ago
  >For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. And that, IMHO, is why FB wants you to use FB login for your VR experience.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    It's also the definition of disallowed monopolistic behavior -- using ownership of one area to control another. This is more egregious if you consider "VR" as not "virtual reality", but "virtual relationships."

zmmmmm 6y ago

I agree. For tech to take off you really need a significant "platform" player to emerge - someone that is able to position themselves as a middleman where the value made by 3rd parties significantly outweighs the value made by the middleman. That is what causes a technology to really bloom and get broadscale uptake. Facebook just isn't interested in that. They'd rather have a smaller pie where they own it all than capture a larger piece of a giant pie but be just one part of it.

chaostheory 6y ago

I feel the biggest thing that FB brings to the table is multiplayer and social. Because their device is both capable, inexpensive, and easy to setup; it's the most democratic. I can almost always find others to play with or against compared to Steam, where only a few games have a lot of players.