The title of the article will surprise you, but from this writer’s perspective, it’s been an obsession with keeping VR as a premium product this whole time. Every peripheral or component for PC eventually had a version for ordinary people, but it was not the same with virtual reality, which was the main vector of its lack of popularity and, to put it mildly, being a niche technology
Does virtual reality make sense for Meta?
If I had to draw an analogy between Meta, formerly called Facebook, and its virtual reality division, Oculus. It would be none other than the Dark Knight scene, where the Joker, after robbing a bank, sets the money on fire in a chaotic, meaningless fashion. And it is that, if there is something that the purchase of Oculus has always been nonsense given the Resources, Processes and Values of Facebook, it is as if the mechanical workshop on the corner bought the butcher’s shop. Several years have passed since the purchase, neither more nor less than 8 years, and during all this time it has not become a mass phenomenon like other products.
It is clear that Facebook is the company of this social network where people played farms from the browser, that something as sophisticated as virtual reality falling into the hands of Facebook was undoubtedly heresy. Virtual reality cannot be used by ordinary users, but rather should be something tasteful that only a few can enjoy. The higher the barriers to adoption, the better. However, Facebook never had a plan to make a hardware democratization of virtual reality, all there was was a Mark Zuckerberg compulsive move, period.
For a long time and long before the release of the first Quest, which eliminated the need for a PC or console, VR focused on a real niche market, where few users meant big margins to stay at flow. The worst thing is that today we still find ourselves with this problem, a lack of long-term strategy and therefore of vision.
The reality of the quest
The Meta or Oculus Quest are not at any time an invention of Facebook, although they sell the product under their brand, they were actually born from a benchmark platform Qualcomm created to give their Snapdragon chips an additional outlet. The idea of not needing a computer to play is very good, but that’s where we run into the problem. VR is very focused on virtual experiences, as its name suggests, i.e. video games, an important market that moves billions of dollars around the world and from which other markets live.
However, to say that video games in the middle of 2022 is little less than lying to the devil for many, which is why they have to sell it as something more serious and start talking about things like metaverses. In the end you find that there is no app killer, that is to say a product in the form of a game or application that makes you buy virtual reality glasses. More than anything due to the fact that they did not deign to create game studios in this sense.
Many say the Metaverse is about creating virtual worlds to navigate. Apparently we forgot that at the dawn of the Internet there was the so-called VRML and the overhead that comes with having to create a virtual environment. It all boils down to them not giving any reason to put VR headsets on their heads. What problem does VR solve? For which application is it essential? Ten years later, it’s still a technology in search of a solution.
Zuckerberg in desperation
However, the quests are the ones that have brought virtual reality to more people, unfortunately the goat goes to the mountains and we find that a few weeks ago they presented us with the Meta Quest Pro, a product that has not makes no sense given that it lacks a target audience and on purpose. It’s one more step down this obsessive path in what Oculus was looking for in a sophisticated user, i.e. one who likes to burn money to have something that others cannot. not access.
Zuckerberg’s argument? Well, we can read it in the interview he gave to The Verge a few weeks ago, specifically in this section:
I mean Quest 2 is doing very well and I think some of the research we have on mixed reality, augmented reality, neural interfaces and all that, I think they’re leading the industry. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what we’re going to do. But it’s not something that will be mature enough in the next one, two or three years. It will therefore take a long time to build the next computing platform.
Let’s remember that Meta is really a software company and not a hardware company, no matter how much the Quest sells for right now. The fact that we don’t get a new Rift without Qualcomm’s PC gaming chip and specs similar to PSVR 2 is surprising to say the least. From Meta they made believe that they have to increase the price due to the high cost, however, what they are looking for is to use the professional or business slogan to increase the price. This amounts to going against what is most in demand in VR, video games. Since these are much lower margins.
Do you need a powerful PC for virtual reality?
Leaving aside Meta and his obsession with going against video games, one of the arguments that allowed certain characters to be in an ivory tower, believing themselves to be special to have VR for them, that is to say that it is expensive and inaccessible. Reality? The technology needed to move it has come down in cost and by now all gaming PCs, even the most modest ones, are ready to move VR games.
Perpetuating this myth is important for those who, to be in their private garden, have spent years supporting technology to remain only for the few. The problem is that the message has penetrated so deeply between the public and the companies dedicated to virtual reality that it has completely destroyed its future.
The lack of democratization of VR
The big problem with virtual reality is very simple to understand, there should be a low priced product which although not as sophisticated and advanced as the higher models but would be good enough for most people . The technology for this exists and although the margins would not be spectacular per unit sold, we are sure that it is necessary to reach this market, which is the vast majority of people.
Instead, we see the Quest dwellers fleeing to the high end and not moving from the location. To defend this movement, there is talk of high margins and opportunities, while it is speculated that companies like Apple could enter in order to give prestige to this nonsense. The reality is that many years ago we speculated about the possibility of having an Oculus Rift on our PC at a reasonable price and very focused on video games. Now SONY, take note with your PS VR 2’s and make them PC compatible, you have an abandoned market to tap into and without any competition.
People don’t have the knowledge to know the level of performance needed when using something. The launch of a low-cost virtual reality headset for PC opens the possibility for users to develop a taste that makes them prefer a similar product with higher specifications. Which is the key to low-end products.
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