3 ms·

I would love to know where this money is going. $700M isn't bad revenue at all, that's probably more than all VR competitors combined and certainly enough to ru

I would love to know where this money is going. $700M isn't bad revenue at all, that's probably more than all VR competitors combined and certainly enough to run the division off of. They canceled all the really promising/expensive R&D efforts like their own SoC and their own OS, so they're once more dependent on Android (eh) and Qualcomm (nooo). They haven't launched any major software and the hardware has stayed the same except for the massively underwhelming Quest Pro, which they're having to sell for $400 off right now. Either the Quest 3 reveal is going to be stunning or bureaucratic bloat has grown to the point it's sinking the division.

jayd16 4y ago
When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to.
- Miraste 4y ago
  They haven't launched much of anything - incremental updates are well and good, but the Quest Pro software page is unchanged from when it launched. The top selling software page is the same stuff it's been for years, largely the same as the Steam VR page since the launch of the Vive. Their biggest software release in 2022 was "Among Us VR." Richie's Plank Experience, an app from 2017 where you walk on a board, is still in the top sellers. To me these are not signs of a healthy ecosystem.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    VR experiences continue to have accessibility issues that make them seem more like the next 3D TVs than the next iPhone. But who knows.
    - Miraste 4y ago
      What do you mean by accessibility? Content aside, I'd say the number 1 problem is friction. The headsets are still too heavy, too buggy, too isolating, too ugly for mass adoption, even though all those things have improved a lot since the beginning. The potential is so high I can't see them entirely vanishing like 3d TVs-I maintain that AR glasses the size and shape of Ray-Bans would be a 100 billion dollar industry. But it might take another VR winter to get there.
      - qbasic_forever 4y ago
        A nontrivial amount of people get violently ill when using VR. That's a heck of a lot of friction to overcome.
        Miraste 4y ago
        I don't think it's enough to matter. At least, I've demoed to a lot of people and never encountered one. I've seen artificial motion cause often, but never just using VR.
- KVFinn 4y ago
  >When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to. They renamed the entire company from Facebook to Meta least year, and then nothing really happened. No big software or hardware release. If anything it seems the rate of change as slowed down in that year. The Quest Pro finally came out a full year later. And the Pro feels like a VR devkit to experiment with face tracking and color passthrough - a product to play around with and hope a developer hits on a killer app - not to rebrand your company around. Even just in gaming there's not much. Resident Evil 4 is still probably the only thing close to an AAA release and it's a port of a GameCube game. (Porting games of that era is a great idea though, hope they do a lot more it.) Ironically I'm very close to buying a Pro as a PC VR only headset. A feature Meta barely even mentions. The other features don't matter to me but the Pro lens clarity is unbeatable. It feels so good to never have to strain to keep your eyes in the perfect spot where the entire lens is clear edge to edge.

jayd16 4y ago

When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to.

Miraste 4y ago
They haven't launched much of anything - incremental updates are well and good, but the Quest Pro software page is unchanged from when it launched. The top selling software page is the same stuff it's been for years, largely the same as the Steam VR page since the launch of the Vive. Their biggest software release in 2022 was "Among Us VR." Richie's Plank Experience, an app from 2017 where you walk on a board, is still in the top sellers. To me these are not signs of a healthy ecosystem.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  VR experiences continue to have accessibility issues that make them seem more like the next 3D TVs than the next iPhone. But who knows.
  - Miraste 4y ago
    What do you mean by accessibility? Content aside, I'd say the number 1 problem is friction. The headsets are still too heavy, too buggy, too isolating, too ugly for mass adoption, even though all those things have improved a lot since the beginning. The potential is so high I can't see them entirely vanishing like 3d TVs-I maintain that AR glasses the size and shape of Ray-Bans would be a 100 billion dollar industry. But it might take another VR winter to get there.
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      A nontrivial amount of people get violently ill when using VR. That's a heck of a lot of friction to overcome.
      - Miraste 4y ago
        I don't think it's enough to matter. At least, I've demoed to a lot of people and never encountered one. I've seen artificial motion cause often, but never just using VR.
KVFinn 4y ago
>When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to. They renamed the entire company from Facebook to Meta least year, and then nothing really happened. No big software or hardware release. If anything it seems the rate of change as slowed down in that year. The Quest Pro finally came out a full year later. And the Pro feels like a VR devkit to experiment with face tracking and color passthrough - a product to play around with and hope a developer hits on a killer app - not to rebrand your company around. Even just in gaming there's not much. Resident Evil 4 is still probably the only thing close to an AAA release and it's a port of a GameCube game. (Porting games of that era is a great idea though, hope they do a lot more it.) Ironically I'm very close to buying a Pro as a PC VR only headset. A feature Meta barely even mentions. The other features don't matter to me but the Pro lens clarity is unbeatable. It feels so good to never have to strain to keep your eyes in the perfect spot where the entire lens is clear edge to edge.