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IDC: “All eyes will be on Apple” as Meta’s VR strategy “isn’t sustainable”

14 points by danaris 4y ago

Someone 4y ago
Given the depth of their pockets, Meta doesn’t need to change its strategy urgently, though. It also is easily changed. The article also doesn’t mention quality differences between what Meta can offer and what Apple supposedly will offer, so if Apple enters the market at a higher price point, making a profit on sales, what stops Meta from rising their prices to match Apple’s and stop losing money on their product? The article between the lines seems to assume Apple’s product will be (much) better than Meta’s, that it will take the high end of the market, and leave little room for profit for other parties.
- mlajtos 4y ago
  You answered your own question. Quest 2 is the best thing Meta could produce so far and Cambria is still not on the market. Apple is known for extra polished experience of its first iteration of any product category. That may mean it will provide much broader uses than game-oriented Quest (and work-oriented Cambria). Fitness and entertainment are two categories where Apple have long time bets, while they make great strides in non-casual gaming. Since there isn’t the one killer AR/VR app for everybody, the device plus OS combo has to provide great experiences in all mentioned categories - gaming, entertainment, productivity & fitness. If they can pull it off, they will definitely put Meta in an uncomfortable spot from where they can compete only in terms of price and not the quality of experience. Anyway, I am really looking forward to the next chapter of the Mac.
  - Someone 4y ago
    > If they can pull it off In my book, that still is a big if. From the rumors I read, they may be able to pull something off, but ‘it’ may be fairly limited because they’ll price the product at a level where few will be willing to pay that amount. Between the lines in this article, I read the belief that, if Apple decides to sell a product in any field, it will always be much better than what anybody else can make, and corner the market, dollar-wise. In a world with many more companies with very deep pockets, I don’t believe that. It’s not like Meta didn’t try, did they?
atoav 4y ago
Ah. Meta. The company which I will remember for updating the firmware on my Oculus Quest(s) without asking me for permission. You can't pair the glasses to your phone without switching on location services. You need to pair to your phone in oeder to activate the developer mode. I have yet to find a thing that is similar in pain to setting up (and maintaining) a dev environment for the Oculus Quest and Unity — and I say this as a person who enjoys SMD reworking and thinks it is enjoyable to spend days tracing complicated memory errors. I don't trust Meta to build a product that does not suck in that domain, because the thing that would not suck would not be smart and harvest your data at every point.
lampshades 4y ago
Apple adheres to such to such a level of quality that I am super pumped for their inevitable foray into the VR/AR space. Meta products don’t feel like they have the “Apple polish”. But, Meta has captured the meta part of the metaverse well, aka communication. I don’t see Apple fully being able to compete at the metaverse level, but if I were Meta I’d be worried about their competing at the hardware level, where they’ll probably become a dominant force. Then again, Apple has expertise in delivering high quality OS experiences across a wide range of devices and iMessage is heavily used. Maybe it isn’t so far fetched to think that Apple can encroach on something as increasingly commoditized as a social network.
- danaris 4y ago
  This presupposes that there is and/or will be a "metaverse" in any meaningful sense, an idea of which I have always been extremely skeptical. It's got most of the same problems as the idea of NFTs as in-game items.
  - unicornmama 4y ago
    The "metaverse" is an education on the corruption and lack of critical insight from mainstream journalists. FB does a corporate corporate reband, mails out talking points, and suddenly major media outlets won't shut up about fantasy product that does not exist, may never exist, with no good reason other than an oligopoly told them to. If anyone thinks this is benign behavior, remember we're in the midst of unfolding global energy, food and climat crisis. Yet a staggering amount of capital continues to be directed towards assinine projects. The lack of fear in the room is terrifying.
amluto 4y ago
For better or for worse, a lot of people are quite willing to buy Apple hardware that only works with Apple-approved software. A lot of people are quite willing to by hardware for gaming that works with essentially any software (GPUs, monitors, controllers, CPUs, etc). If Meta stands by it’s Facebook-required stance, it remains to be seen whether people are willing to buy fancy hardware that requires Facebook. The odd thing here is that I don’t understand what’s in it for Meta. I can see two ways that Meta makes large amounts of money off this initiative: 1. Revenue from hardware sales. With a good enough product, this can be huge. 2. Revenue from people who use the hardware for Facebook (and Facebook-integrated metaverse applications or otherwise delivering Meta ads). But #2 is achieved by getting people to buy the hardware (or competing hardware) and getting them to use Meta’s metaverse, which is achieved by making it compelling, not by forcing its use to use other applications. So I don’t get it. I think Meta should make their ecosystem more open. If Meta’s hardware is better than, say, Valve’s and supports the Valve ecosystem as well as Valve’s, then people will buy it and Meta wins. But right now, a major selling point of Valve’s hardware is that it works without Facebook.
trafficante 4y ago
I don’t see even a passing mention of Meta’s upcoming “Cambria” HMD in the IDC article other than a generic line about “next generation” headsets. From what we know, it’s about as far from the “non-sustainable” Quest 2 model as you can get. Cambria is supposed to be a play for the high end business focused market. It’s confirmed to not be subsidized (at least, nowhere near the Quest 2), seems to be designed for long term use/comfort, and will likely hit a high enough resolution to hopefully provide similar clarity to real life 1080p (as opposed to the Quest 2 which is slightly fuzzy when working with virtual 1080p monitors). Appears to be running on the same XR2 chipset as the Quest 2 and will be able to play all Quest games, but they’ve been very clear that they don’t intend this as a consumer gaming device like the Quest line. It is strange that we haven’t gotten an official reveal of the device yet since it’s supposed to ship this year. I’m very curious about the details they’re still keeping under wraps. My Quest 2 is heavily modded for comfort (third party halo strap with rear mounted battery/counterweight plus some random additional 3d printed tweaks) and the available software tools for doing work inside VR are…getting there. But the screen clarity is the biggest hurdle as it just isn’t good enough for working with large amounts of text. That said, it feels next frickin level to sit on the moon surrounded by a bunch of virtual monitors with the 2001 obelisk acting as a frame to a live camera overlay of the door to your office.

14 points by danaris 4y ago

Given the depth of their pockets, Meta doesn’t need to change its strategy urgently, though. It also is easily changed. The article also doesn’t mention quality differences between what Meta can offer and what Apple supposedly will offer, so if Apple enters the market at a higher price point, making a profit on sales, what stops Meta from rising their prices to match Apple’s and stop losing money on their product? The article between the lines seems to assume Apple’s product will be (much) better than Meta’s, that it will take the high end of the market, and leave little room for profit for other parties.

mlajtos 4y ago
You answered your own question. Quest 2 is the best thing Meta could produce so far and Cambria is still not on the market. Apple is known for extra polished experience of its first iteration of any product category. That may mean it will provide much broader uses than game-oriented Quest (and work-oriented Cambria). Fitness and entertainment are two categories where Apple have long time bets, while they make great strides in non-casual gaming. Since there isn’t the one killer AR/VR app for everybody, the device plus OS combo has to provide great experiences in all mentioned categories - gaming, entertainment, productivity & fitness. If they can pull it off, they will definitely put Meta in an uncomfortable spot from where they can compete only in terms of price and not the quality of experience. Anyway, I am really looking forward to the next chapter of the Mac.
- Someone 4y ago
  > If they can pull it off In my book, that still is a big if. From the rumors I read, they may be able to pull something off, but ‘it’ may be fairly limited because they’ll price the product at a level where few will be willing to pay that amount. Between the lines in this article, I read the belief that, if Apple decides to sell a product in any field, it will always be much better than what anybody else can make, and corner the market, dollar-wise. In a world with many more companies with very deep pockets, I don’t believe that. It’s not like Meta didn’t try, did they?

atoav 4y ago

Ah. Meta. The company which I will remember for updating the firmware on my Oculus Quest(s) without asking me for permission. You can't pair the glasses to your phone without switching on location services. You need to pair to your phone in oeder to activate the developer mode. I have yet to find a thing that is similar in pain to setting up (and maintaining) a dev environment for the Oculus Quest and Unity — and I say this as a person who enjoys SMD reworking and thinks it is enjoyable to spend days tracing complicated memory errors. I don't trust Meta to build a product that does not suck in that domain, because the thing that would not suck would not be smart and harvest your data at every point.

lampshades 4y ago

Apple adheres to such to such a level of quality that I am super pumped for their inevitable foray into the VR/AR space. Meta products don’t feel like they have the “Apple polish”. But, Meta has captured the meta part of the metaverse well, aka communication. I don’t see Apple fully being able to compete at the metaverse level, but if I were Meta I’d be worried about their competing at the hardware level, where they’ll probably become a dominant force. Then again, Apple has expertise in delivering high quality OS experiences across a wide range of devices and iMessage is heavily used. Maybe it isn’t so far fetched to think that Apple can encroach on something as increasingly commoditized as a social network.

danaris 4y ago
This presupposes that there is and/or will be a "metaverse" in any meaningful sense, an idea of which I have always been extremely skeptical. It's got most of the same problems as the idea of NFTs as in-game items.
- unicornmama 4y ago
  The "metaverse" is an education on the corruption and lack of critical insight from mainstream journalists. FB does a corporate corporate reband, mails out talking points, and suddenly major media outlets won't shut up about fantasy product that does not exist, may never exist, with no good reason other than an oligopoly told them to. If anyone thinks this is benign behavior, remember we're in the midst of unfolding global energy, food and climat crisis. Yet a staggering amount of capital continues to be directed towards assinine projects. The lack of fear in the room is terrifying.

amluto 4y ago

For better or for worse, a lot of people are quite willing to buy Apple hardware that only works with Apple-approved software. A lot of people are quite willing to by hardware for gaming that works with essentially any software (GPUs, monitors, controllers, CPUs, etc). If Meta stands by it’s Facebook-required stance, it remains to be seen whether people are willing to buy fancy hardware that requires Facebook. The odd thing here is that I don’t understand what’s in it for Meta. I can see two ways that Meta makes large amounts of money off this initiative: 1. Revenue from hardware sales. With a good enough product, this can be huge. 2. Revenue from people who use the hardware for Facebook (and Facebook-integrated metaverse applications or otherwise delivering Meta ads). But #2 is achieved by getting people to buy the hardware (or competing hardware) and getting them to use Meta’s metaverse, which is achieved by making it compelling, not by forcing its use to use other applications. So I don’t get it. I think Meta should make their ecosystem more open. If Meta’s hardware is better than, say, Valve’s and supports the Valve ecosystem as well as Valve’s, then people will buy it and Meta wins. But right now, a major selling point of Valve’s hardware is that it works without Facebook.

trafficante 4y ago

I don’t see even a passing mention of Meta’s upcoming “Cambria” HMD in the IDC article other than a generic line about “next generation” headsets. From what we know, it’s about as far from the “non-sustainable” Quest 2 model as you can get. Cambria is supposed to be a play for the high end business focused market. It’s confirmed to not be subsidized (at least, nowhere near the Quest 2), seems to be designed for long term use/comfort, and will likely hit a high enough resolution to hopefully provide similar clarity to real life 1080p (as opposed to the Quest 2 which is slightly fuzzy when working with virtual 1080p monitors). Appears to be running on the same XR2 chipset as the Quest 2 and will be able to play all Quest games, but they’ve been very clear that they don’t intend this as a consumer gaming device like the Quest line. It is strange that we haven’t gotten an official reveal of the device yet since it’s supposed to ship this year. I’m very curious about the details they’re still keeping under wraps. My Quest 2 is heavily modded for comfort (third party halo strap with rear mounted battery/counterweight plus some random additional 3d printed tweaks) and the available software tools for doing work inside VR are…getting there. But the screen clarity is the biggest hurdle as it just isn’t good enough for working with large amounts of text. That said, it feels next frickin level to sit on the moon surrounded by a bunch of virtual monitors with the 2001 obelisk acting as a frame to a live camera overlay of the door to your office.