I guess BOM went up the roof in last year or so, so they prefer to sell less kits with lesser loss.
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That is why Wireless VR is more the way forward than Wired: The convenience.
And Index lacked both the price and the convenience.
It's the same reason the Deck took off where other Portable PCs did not: They can't compete with Valve's lower price.
I think Wireless VR is not up to the price point of 299 or 399 just yet.
Let's not forget that Oculus Business was $800 and Pico Neo 3 Pro was $700 and $900 for the Pro Eye.
Pico Launches Neo 3 Pro & Neo 3 Pro Eye, Serving up Strong Competition to Oculus & HTC
Pico Interactive’s next generation headsets—the Pico Neo 3 Pro and 3 Pro Eye—are now shipping to businesses worldwide, and they’re looking to undercut both Oculus and HTC by offering a pretty appealing set of specs at one of the lowest prices we’ve seen targeted at enterprise. Update (October...
www.roadtovr.com
Someone's got to eat the cost of making an affordable VR Headset while also making games which will sell to that market and turn a profit.
I think it's a bit shortsighted to say something like this.
The potential for VR outside of gaming is absolutely huge, but I think there are a few key things that are holding it back still.
The cost and the size are what are really stopping VR from exploding right now.
As we saw when the Quest 2 launched, once the price is low enough, some people will happily buy it just to try it out, it will be interesting to see how the sales are affected this late in the product lifecycle with the price increase.
The other issue of size is something that will become a non-issue once we get headsets the size of a pair of sunglasses, which nVidia has already showed is potentially possible with their working prototypes:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGzj-AgI6RI
I would happily sacrifice all of VR forever instead of supporting Meta's vision of an NFT-infested "virtual world."
imagine if they spent that 2.8b developing legs for Zuck and neil degrasse tyson for that space video
How many times have we heard this though, VR has been coming for decades until it hasn't, still.
I really think Nintendo is well positioned to do it, if they want to. An upgraded Switch could feasibly contain all the necessary hardware components to "switch" into a standalone VR headset.
They need only include a plastic headset shell with some kind of positional tracking solution built in, (likely cameras) and ensure that the new Joycons can be tracked by that system as well.
Selling a video game console that can become a VR headset is an easier sell than a video game console that can interface with a VR headset at additional cost.
I mean what does this even mean? This "oh VR has been coming for ages" is completely disingenuous given that VR is actually here this time with the tech required to make it a reality. Quest 2 has sold 15 million units already, with big YoY growth. We have multiple vendors producing VR headsets, and more content than ever. The tech is now popular enough that improvments that lead to size and cost reductions WILL continue to happen over the years, and ultimately it will be much more popular and widespread than it is now. Does that mean it'll be VR everywhere all the time? No definitely not, but thinking that VR is just going to die off from this point when it literally has never been in a better spot in terms of users reached, technology, availbility is being pretty disingenuous/narrow minded.
I swear the VR proselytizers must have these same speeches saved as text files, ready to paste into every VR thread that pops up. It's the same old platitudes about potential and revolution we've heard for years... yet we're still waiting for said revolution to materialize. And frankly, if the vaunted VR mainstream breakthrough involves sitting in your house with something strapped to your face so you can spend crypto to be a good consumer and purchase NFT-backed fake products and generate tracking info that FB can sell to advertisers... then I'll take the hardest of hard passes, thanks. How many times must the mainstream market look at VR, and say 'Nah, I really don't want to strap your dystopia goggles onto my face, thanks,' before the message sinks in?
The Switch can't even run most 3D games at a locked 720p image in handheld mode. How exactly is it going to power a VR headset with dual images?
I'm not talking about the Switch, I'm talking about a successor to the Switch.
If the Snapdragon XR of the Quest 2 (released in 2020), can run decent standalone VR, I'm sure whatever chip Nintendo uses on a Switch successor in 2023 or 2024 would be more than up to the task.
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Definitely agree with this sentiment.
VR is perfect for gaming but none of the Big 3 need to incur this kind of loss.
Right, but as I said earlier they can no longer afford to take the longer term view. That's what's changed in just the last 3 or 4 months.
That whole "it'll take 10 years to turn a profit thing" was based on the last 10 years of tech economics, in which Wall Street was literally paying half of the total compensation for Facebook/Meta's engineers in the form of stock grants the engineers could then sell for a profit because Wall Street was always willing to drive the value upwards. You'd get 100k in "base salary" and then depending on seniority another chunk of stock to sell off for 200k more, thanks to Wall Street investing in tech stocks that didn't have to be profitable, they just had to be pursuing some future goal like VR that investors believed would eventually be profitable.
But that free ride slammed to a halt a few months ago when Wall Street suddenly started tanking any stock that wasn't profitable right now. That meant that the engineers' stock grants were suddenly worth far far less, and Meta had to suddenly double or triple base salary to retain staff (because you could always make a higher base salary at non-FAANG companies, it was the stock grants that made them so lucrative as employers). That is a big unpleasant surprise to Zuck.
So now they're spending 3x as much for the same 10 year plan. So they have to shed employees like mad, but that turns the 10 year plan at X cost into more like a 30 year plan at X cost if they could lose as much money as they were planning to for the ten year plan originally, but they can't even do that, because Wall Street is also tanking the stock because they're not profitable right now, and Zuck's wealth and Meta's entire war-chest is entirely tied up in that stock.
So their costs for X employees have tripled and they don't have to shed staff down to get the cost back to what they were originally a few months ago, they have to get them much lower than that just to stabilize their stock value. The 10 year plan to VR profitability is utterly dead, since they're going to end up with something like 1/5th the staff they had in mind when they were talking about that. Reality Labs is living on borrowed time unless Wall Street does a complete 180, which they're showing no signs of doing ($META's down another 7% today).
It doesn't really matter that Zuck likes this stuff or has controlling votes on the board – Wall Street as a whole can wipe him and the company out unless he plays ball by cutting everything that's not immediately profitable, and they're already really starting to make Meta hurt.
Nintendo have the games and that is what excites me the most. Nintendo could produce a headset at exactly the same specs as the Quest 2 and drive the library of games insanely hard. I can also see a world where a steam deck successor sits snuggly into a tracked frame.
I just wish people were consistent with who they went doing the exact same shit with their data then they come in here to grandstand lol it's funny
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Every time someone tries to convince me that the Metaverse will take off, it usually goes something like this:
"Instead of hanging out with your friends or going on dates in the real world, you can do it in the Metaverse instead!"
"Why would anyone want that? Why not just do it in person and have physical interaction?"
"The Metaverse is more convenient!"
"Do you really think Brad the football hero and Jill the grandmother are going to choose to forgo physical social interaction in favour of a VRChat living room?"
"Some of us don't have any IRL friends and can't afford to go to concerts/bars/parks/anything so the Metaverse will be great for us"
Yes VR is probably a game changer for people who can't/won't socialize or do things in real life, but that's not the audience these companies want to be associated with. Meta absolutely DOES NOT want to become Second Life 2.0.
Facebook took off because it started as an exclusive club for hot university people doing cool young person things to brag about their escapades and meet other hot university people. The Metaverse is like the polar opposite of that where nothing is real and the people most invested are the people with the least mainstream social capital.
Everything about the concept from a marketing/psychological perspective just screams impending failure. Traditional social media is a tool used to promote real world social interaction whereas the Metaverse aims to replace a good portion of it.
I mean ... given the increasing popularity of the Quest 2 and the amount of units sold in the time that it's been out, your statement seems incorrect.
As the other reply said, your statement is just disingenuous, considering the Oculus Rift, the first big push to get headsets into the hands of the enthusiast market isn't even 10 years old yet.
The Quest (2019) is the first product aimed at the mass market rather than the enthusiasts, and it's been growing rapidly. With the lower cost of entry and complexity, it's clear that people want VR, otherwise the market would never see tens of millions of these things being sold.
Again, you're just playing into the meme.
Having a Gmail account and using YouTube does not mean that you don't care about your data privacy or the larger issues with big tech. It also doesn't make you a hypocrite for criticizing the practices of Meta.
The mainstream doesn't know the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.
I don't get why they'd deal with the bad optics and the shittiness of passing it along to customer just to avoid making marginally less profit.
EDIT: to be clear I'm referring to the profits for Meta as a whole
EDIT: to be clear I'm referring to the profits for Meta as a whole
Well it does mean you're turning a blind eye to one but not another for a device that stores much more personal content than a vr headset
Yeah that's almost impossible to reconcile. Once you ditch the wire it's so hard to go back. Especially if it launches at 399 too and not cheaper. Playing Alyx again but not having to count how many times I turn cus I need to remember to untangle every so often was a revelation. But I doubt too many people chickening out of buying a Quest 2 cus of 100 dollar price bump will Buy a ps5 plus PSVR2 (800 to 1000 dollars possibly)
I meant because it's obvious here Meta is taking a fucking beating by selling the Quest 2 at the price it is and isn't trying to organically grow the market but instead to completely strangle it so Meta's the only game in town. Cutting the cord is obviously way more expensive than Quest 2's $299 price tag would lead you to believe
And I don't know why I keep having to explain to you that Sony's target isn't the minor amount of people that will buy into the PS ecosystem because of PSVR2. It's the 100 million people that will already own a PS5 and are trained to pay $70 for a game. Sony could make cover the BOM of PSVR2 with MSRP and one or two games at launch, so they aren't going to take a bath on hardware like Meta clearly is doing right now. That will allow Sony to focus on paying for games instead of covering their losses on hardware, which is absolutely the smarter way to drive growth long term
How many of those headsets are collecting dust, though? Novelty can wear off quickly. It happened to many casual gamers with the Wii and its motion controls.
I think the biggest problem with VR is that people hate wearing hardware strapped to their faces. After 20-30 minutes they've had enough. People can be on their phones or consoles for hours and hours, but with VR...And it's even worse in the summer. The last thing you want to do in the summer is VR.
Maybe so, but without any stats to look at, this is baseless speculation.
I'm in the Caribbean, where it's hot pretty much all year round, and even hotter still during summer, despite that it's not enough to sway me from putting on the headset and playing games. It's not like I'm outside under the hot sun playing, I'm indoors and only getting slightly hotter than if I run my PS5 for a few hours. IMO, your statement is almost the same as saying that people who enjoy a sport would stop playing it as soon as they get hot and sweaty.
If it's fun, I think a lot of people will put up with a little discomfort.
I wouldn't say baseless. Their VR team is bleeeding money. Somebody has to pay for the R&D and for selling hardware at a loss: and that's customers buying software from their Store, using the hardware regularly. If they're raising prices of the Quest 2 clearly they're business model isn't working, despite selling a good chunck of headsets.
That strategy only netted them 6 million over 6 years on a console that was significantly more successful by time its respective VR headset launched in a market where every other headset was an expensive PC one. Like I'm so confused lol we've already seen Sonys VR strategy last gen and it does fuck all for mainstream appeal. And am I supposed to be upset that Meta is taking a plunge that many can't to push VR further? Every headset will be wireless in five years, Meta just revealed that the only way to really be successful in the space is wireless
The amount they're bleeding could never be made up through software sales lol. It's absolutely massive and it's clearly at least partly intentional
View: https://twitter.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538
Zuck read Ready Player One and took the lesson that the Oasis was Good Actually and that his stupid company needed to be the one to create it.
Couple of good pieces on Meta's "vision"- https://defector.com/meta-is-desperate/
No Sex for You | Lyta Gold
In the metaverse nobody’s getting any ass—or even seeing anything ass-adjacent.
thebaffler.com
(Not a VR hater, but I want nothing to do with Zuck and Meta's metaverse ideas)
User Banned (2 Weeks): inflammatory Commentary; Misogyny; Boys Club Rhetoric
Someone buy that writer a dildo. She's horns for cyber dick.No Sex for You | Lyta Gold
In the metaverse nobody’s getting any ass—or even seeing anything ass-adjacent.thebaffler.com
(Not a VR hater, but I want nothing to do with Zuck and Meta's metaverse ideas)
I mean, the general point of Meta's vision for the metaverse being staid is dead on.
Yeah? So was Ketsuya Eguchi's vision for Animal Crossing. But I don't see people furious over that.
Look, just say fuck Mark Zuckerberg and we'll get the message.
If you're going to use numbers to bolster an opinion at least do it with some level of sincerity otherwise what's the point? You don't need to skew the numbers to suit a narrative when the pure facts themselves tell pretty much the same story - in doing so you come over as a bit try-hard and disingenuous.
You conveniently round up to this 6 year figure which is a milestone that hasn't yet been reached. You also ignore the fact that ps4 is end of life hardware and from what we know should likely have already effectively ceased production (seemingly only continuing due to ps5 production issues and maybe some small residual lockdown-fuelled demand surges in gaming platform of recent years). You ignore that PSVR itself is no longer in production.
There's no need to do any of these things; PSVR did 5M in 3 years and a few months. That's not amazing, it's not industry-shaking, but it's clearly enough to convince them to continue in the space. Right now it's effectively a dead platform, has been for some time, nobody is going to argue otherwise with any sincerity. Your "6 years" claim is about as worthwhile as me saying the original xbox only managed to shift 24 million units in the past 2 decades.
Sony will be fine with their VR offering, even if it registers a striking "fuck all" on the mainstream appeal meter. It was a peripheral platform within a platform They'll have made a business case for their next offering and no doubt hope it grows their presence in an area of gaming they're clearly very interested in evolving.
You're seemingly upset about something otherwise you wouldn't be throwing around f-bombs and needlessly distorting already telling statistics. Selling good hardware at a huge loss in a standalone format is clearly one way to grow the appeal of VR - almost 15m sales in just over a year and a half is truly impressive. It's also clearly not sustainable given the state of the Meta/facebook company as a whole and the price bump.
Maybe you are right and every headset will be wireless in 5 years. But they won't all be stand alone devices even if that's the case, there will always be those who want to utilise the power and a much wider array of software available on external boxes. Nothing rules out a wireless PSVR2 within those 5 years.
Real success in the VR space was never theirs to "reveal". It's something they could aspire to demonstrate through all their combined efforts on multiple fronts, and surely this depends on an agreed definition of being "really successful" anyway - there's much more to success in business that shifting units alone.
Being wireless is the sole aspect you see, the one quality of their offering, that makes them a success. OK. A more reasonable reading of the situation might be that being wireless is just one facet of Q2 that gives it appeal along with the massively loss-inducing price point and the fact that you can completely ignore the platform's ecosystem and use it as by far the best value PC headset available.
Lol PSVR1 sold the bulk of its sales in 2016 to 2018. If you check Wikipedia the PS4 was in production for all these years and was insanely popular. I think you'll find tethered devices haven't really had a sales success one time, meaning that the mainstream viability of such a device is yet unproven (despite being the most common category of VR headset). Keep in mind that the last most popular VR headset sold 6 million in 5.8 years. I'm sure the success of the first one convinced Sony to make another one, but it still doesn't seem to have convinced them to put one of their A teams on it with a full budget and it likely won't convince third parties of anything they haven't already been. Because success is what developers are waiting to see before plunging in, not power. No, the fact that the Quest 2 is wireless is absolutely a big boon to its success. Being able to buy an all in one device is clearly much more appetizing to the vast majority of people than people on a games forum would lead you to believe. In what posts do I seem mad? I believe you're kinda inserting that emotion in yourself lol
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Exactly my point. I know when PSVR did the bulk of its numbers - in the first few years as I stated. You use this "in 6 years" nonsense, repeatedly, in order to over-emphasise something that doesn't need to be distorted in that way when the precise facts themselves tell the same story. I comes off as disingenuous and try-hard when there's no need for it.
You're at it again. There's no need to distort PSVR sales figures, we know what it did when it was relevant. ps4 is no longer manufactured (at least they reported no sales), same for PSVR. Get back to me in 2036 and let me know the sales figures for PSVR are 6 million in 2 decades, that'll be a really worthwhile "fact", too.
That's all speculation and opinion and seems to have zero bearing on this thread.
Clearly it is. Nobody would dispute that. But you previously said "Meta just revealed that the only way to really be successful in the space is wireless" which is a completely different, far more specific statement to make and something you have no data to prove. It's merely one (very important) factor in a number of factors.
It's common sense that a standalone unit has a much wider market to exploit. People on a games forum likely have hardware platforms that can offer more than what the standalone unit itself can. Nobody is disputing any of this.
None as far as I can tell, for either common use of the word.
I didn't state or even imply that you were "mad" at all, I don't know where you got that from.
I quoted you stating you feel that some situation should apparently make you upset, so it seems if anyone is inserting anything here it's... not me.
Word.
Fine, it sold like 3 million in 3 years. Is that so much better? Quest 2 sells 10 in 1. Is there a different way I can be framing it to better please you? Nobody is distorting anything lol I'm literally reading sales figures. Sure at this point it's all speculation but currently the only announced PSVR2 title is a B team side project for one of their biggest IPs. We'll see if they change their minds but last gen it was mostly B team side projects and flat conversions. And yes. As of currently there is not a single mainstream tethers headset. It's possible there will be but there is zero precedent for it. I'm even more confused as to what you meant about me seeming upset cus I said fuck or something if you didn't actually mean that lol.
For someone that harps on about games and A teams, how do you feel about the software output on Quest? Are you looking at the potential software that is likely to be released on PSVR2 with a little bit of envy? I mean regardless of how many numbers you see over the next few years there is going to be quality software. There was plenty on PSVR1 even with the outdated tech holding it back, we can safely assume there will be more. I would suggest you stop looking at it all in such a zero sum way, you can have both, you can have either or.... No need to be so down on it all the time.
What? With envy? I'm not a child, I'm a semi well adjusted adult. I'll get PSVR2 when PS5 is appealing enough to me and they hopefully come out with a wireless variant. However other than Astrobot I really don't think the first PSVR1 had that good of a games library and all we know about the horizon game is that it's pretty. Have you tried a headset outside of the Sony camp?
What are these updates? I work with this in my job and I'm curious how irritating can these changes be.