[alerter]

I always wondered if it was a mistake for Facebook to try to rapidly casualise VR after acquiring Oculus. If they spent even a small fraction of their metaverse billions developing high-end, niche products (flight/mech sims etc.) then they could cultivate a loyal base of affluent users. It probably wouldn't be profitable by itself, but it would grow their user base and act as a nice showcase of what VR is capable of. More so than the cartoon office space vibe.

[deckard1]

yeah, it's a bit weird that Marques Brownlee recently gave a better presentation on Meta/Metaverse than what Zuckerberg cooked up.

But I think that's the intent. Because when you lay out Meta's strategy so naked, like Marques did, then you realize that no one is going to buy into it. You need early adopters and those are the ones that are going to sniff out that you're actually building a dystopian privacy-invading Skinner Box platform controlled 100% by Meta and they will predictably eviscerate you.

Marques brings up the part of what Meta is focusing on now, which is creating replacements for everyday functions with a VR twist. He claims some of them are actually quite good. But I think this is the way Google approached Google+. People don't want something good-as or marginally better. What Meta needs is a killer app. Something that can only be done in the Metaverse and is so compelling that people are willing to give Meta full control over their life and spend the money on the hardware. That's a tall order.

[nicolashahn]

I don't think the "metaverse" needs to succeed as much as the hardware does. A set of AR glasses that aren't bulky or sci-fi enables a huge amount of brand new functionality, on maybe even more than smartphones did. In that case, if Meta has the best option on the market, it doesn't need to write the killer app, someone else can do it, just like the App Store enabled iPhone developers to do.

I'm less optimistic on the VR takeover, but I can imagine a future where VR headsets would be preferable to using laptops for daily use, and the same thing applies there.

[JoeJonathan]

Not sure if the technology will get there, but I can see AR being much more useful. I don’t want to cut myself off from the outside world, but I’d love to be able to put on a pair of glasses that allow me to use a giant monitor without needing an actual monitor. Or a home theater. For me, something as simple (though it’s probably technically complex) as a high resolution screen coupled with AirPods for watching movies would be a killer app. And if I could use those same glasses to work or bs on the internet (on a plane, in a cafe, on a bus), I’d be all in… and I’m willing to bet everyone else would be as well.

I suspect this is what Apple is trying to do.

[majani]

Glasses will simply never be cool outside of some niche communities. They are a sign of disability and weakness for most people

[shubb]

Good point about someone elses killer app - but if this is the case then Meta need to focus on SDK / dev evangelism - the way source engine made steam as a platform. They seem more focused on building their own application.

[pascalxus]

Yeah, the zoom replacement looks really cool. Butt...

The biggest problem I have doing zoom calls with family is an unstable internet connection at their end and I don't think the metaverse is going to be able to solve that. And besides, I'm certainly not going to pay 500$ for a headset just for Awesome VR calls, if i can just use a phone call.

The biggest potential is being able to work remotely. Just imagine all the remote work Metaverse could make possible. And 500$ headset might just be in the budget for a midsized company looking to expand it's workforce.

[aj12ay]

Ok, something I’ve thought about is the Metaverse version of video calls couuuuld require less bandwidth than video calls. Because you don’t have to send every frame — instead it’s the one time cost of a model, and then animations data + voice streaming.

And, maybe you can interpolate better since the domain space is human activity instead of an arbitrary video.

[nr2x]

To be fair, mkbhd is a genius at what he does.

[vhold]

I wonder how much it would have cost to simply recreate Google Earth VR, which is still one of the most compelling VR applications, period. It was released 6 years ago.

[AnotherGoodName]

Yep slow and steady rather than trying to make it happen now would be the real long term play.

Apple tried to make the Newton happen a decade too early. It worked in the end but they did the right thing in not trying to repeatedly double down on making it work before all the pieces of the puzzle came into play (mobile networks, better touchscreens, efficient CPUs, enough storage to hold music, etc.).

[seanmcdirmid]

> If they spent even a small fraction of their metaverse billions developing high-end, niche products (flight/mech sims etc.) then they could cultivate a loyal base of affluent users.

They've actually already cultivated these affluent users almost by accident (they aren't interested in gaming, but they are interested in fitness). But these users tend to be older even if they are richer...it isn't a demographic that Facebook was going for.

[eklitzke]

To be fair, the Meta Quest Pro is a pretty high-end product.

[r00fus]

For $1500. Who's buying?

[dpratt]

The amount of people who are willing to pay $1500 for high-quality VR hardware is not a huge market, but a rabid one filled with enthusiasts and early adopters. It's likely enough to fund research into how to produce a more mass market solution.

The amount of people in the first group who are willing to pay for a device that requires you to tie every single action and usage into Meta's data-pipeline Hoover of personal information is likely near zero.

[fbn79]

The First iPhone cost was ~900$ (inflaction adjusted) and was not able to record video (many other less expensive phone coulded).