i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it.
what’s really concerning is that it’s not marketed as a new VR headset, it’s marketed by apple and these “tech reviewers” as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc…
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the “metaverse”. it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i’m not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i’m more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won’t achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it’s deemed a success because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
This is anecdotal, but I see all of these VR rooms or stores at malls or on outlet areas where you can play with VR heat and have fun. They are almost always empty. I VERY rarely ever see people in them.
There another entertainment venue near me that has bowing and games and stuff. They also have a VR area that I have never seen open. Don’t know if it’s just constantly broken or if nobody is actually interested in it.
Went to one of these with my co-workers. We were the only ones and nobody was there before we arrived and when we left there wasn’t anybody else coming in either.
They probably have to constantly update the HW to actually get customers and then it has to be expensive enough that the few that come, make them a profit.
Eh, you’re talking what, $1500 for a headset and rig? Even if you have 4 setups at one of those kiosks the cost to have someone running it is going to quickly outpace the cost of the hardware.
I know a guy who used to run one of these businesses. He pivoted to something else because of the expenses, and hardware wasn’t the biggest. The monthly license fees for games are outrageous when you want to provide them to the public. Which means you have to constantly bet on which game’s demand will outweigh its cost on a monthly basis.
Before COVID, his place was very busy. I went many times and it was a lot of fun. His business was profitable, but because of the cost of games still not super successful.
I agree that the expense of paying someone to run the spot would quickly outpace the cost of hardware, but in his case he was running the whole thing himself. Even with nobody to pay for their time, his margins were never great.
Then COVID came along. That really killed it. No one wants to wear a VR headset that was just worn by a sweaty stranger minutes earlier during a pandemic.
I didn’t even think about the software costs. Makes sense. The whole “you don’t really own your games.”