It’s sort of like how YouTube ran at a loss for a long time. The idea is to get ingrained in the market and make up the money later.
Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible. If some new idea or technology catapults VR into a more popular position, then Meta is in a prime position to take advantage.
Will that happen? I don’t know, but Meta seems to think so.
Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible.
Too bad the company is absolute garbage. I’m not even willing to look at their ‘products’ anymore.
Particularly with articles like this around:
https://observer.com/2024/03/meta-facebook-compete-snapchat-class-action-document/
Yep. I will never use any VR product by Meta. Mark can go zuck himself.
Meta is the only reason I’m staying away from their AR/VR headsets. If it was any other company, I would have jumped in by now.
I don’t think the technology is there yet. As long as people need to wear big bulky goggles and headsets it’s not going to take off. Make something that’s about as cumbersome as sunglasses and less than $1000 and there might be mass adoption.
March 2023 they sold 20M Quests. Half as many as PS5. That counts as “taken off” in my book.
Wow, I’m shocked it’s that high. I’ve never heard of someone using one.
Everyone in my family has one. We play ping pong. It’s cool, you feel like you’re in the room with someone even when they are many miles away.
Having said that, I believe most of the users are minors. Whenever I log into a multilayer game, there are children taking.
Besides ping pong, there’s Best Saber and 3d jigsaw puzzles. Outside of that, I haven’t really had much fun outside of occasional shooting / archery.
It sucks that it’s owned by Facebook of course. I deleted my Facebook over 10 years ago now. I had to set it up with my girlfriend’s Facebook account.
Everyone in my family has one. We play ping pong.
This reads like a joke. 50 years of technological development and people are just playing hi-tech pong.
I bought vr for simracing…I use vr for Beat Saber
I play putt-putt with my sister and we’re both in our fifties.
Daily active users are a much better indicator of success.
Halo infinite had a peak player count if 272,000. Now it sees DAU of only 3,000
It depends what the tie ratio / attach rate is for the device and whether owners maintain usage of the device or whether it’s a novelty that wears off over time and the device gathers dust.
VR is already great today, and lots of us are enjoying it. I know several people with VR systems.
I agree that the tech isn’t there, but unless we figure out some new physics it’s going to be impossible to put enough battery, computing power, and cooling capacity in something the size of sunglasses. So the tech for VR like we really want is at least 20 years away, if not more.
Idk man, if you let go of the requirement of wireless and standalone, we’re already there.
So I’m expecting there to be a lot more headsets like that next gen.
I’m waiting for more Bigscreen Beyond class weight headsets. 127 grams.
But it’s tethered and the headset itself is ~1000, and you need the stations and controllers as well.
There are a lot of problems keeping VR from going big and I think Meta’s strategy of cornering the market is one of them. They think if they get all the exclusives they’ll be the next iPhone but I think instead they’re fragmenting an already tiny market which really needs a bunch of impressive experiences (and there still aren’t a ton right now, even after years of VR development). I feel like the reverse would win them more users - they should win on hardware AND software but make their software available for any VR headset to use. Because right now they need to help create a market for VR because there really isn’t one worth cornering yet.
They just announced that they opened up the OS for other manufacturers to use. I know Asus/ROG is supposed to have a headset in the works using the OS.
So they want to be the Microcrap of the VR world?
Nah I’m good, let me know when we get a Linux of the VR world
Steam VR not good enough for ya?
Its probably great but when you need to set up a specific room, it makes it inaccessible for most people
??? You don’t need a specific room. Quest doesn’t need any beacons or wires.
I don’t like Facebook, never had a Facebook account and refused to buy their VR until they removed the Facebook account requirement 2 years ago.
But the hardware is excellent for the price. Facebook is selling the hardware at a loss and making it up in software sales. So you are hurting Facebook by buying their hardware and using it with Steam.
Sorry, was referring to Valve Index. Did not realize you can use SteamVR on on the Quest
That would be Valve‘s Deckard, I suppose. Would be nice if that would materialize at some point soon.
But even a „windows equivalent“ HorizonOS would be an improvement in the standalone headset space if that meant I could choose between HMD vendors and carry over all my software.
Meta Horizon OS is running on Linux under the hood lol
That is not what I was referring to. Meta loves to invade our privacy like Microcrap
Sadly SteamVR needs a large open space to work effectively which makes it inaccessible to the vast majority.
SteamVR is a software store. It has nothing to do with whether the hardware needs beacons in the room or wires.
You can play SteamVR racing sims at your desk. If it’s a standing game, you push a button and then draw virtual borders on the floor wherever you are to define the play space.
See also: Meta’s recent opening of their vr headset OS to other hardware manufacturers.
They don’t give a shit about profit at this stage as long as they control it and can use it to suppress the development of any kind of competitors.YouTube still runs at a loss
Valve index better
The index is better overall and I love mine, but I can’t help but feel jealous that someone can just grab their quest, put it on and get into VR immediately. I have to cart my PC downstairs, turn the base stations on, find the index and wire it all up, troubleshoot why Windows has decided to mess up the drivers and now nothing works, and maybe half an hour later finally get into a game or completely give up and try again another time.
The quest gains a lot in portability and ease of setup, and that does result in a lot of other features being sacrificed but to most people the downsides don’t matter as much.
Its not just YouTube. Pleant of companies lose money on their product Loss leader
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but these companies need to pay more taxes. Losing $3.9 billion dollars on a stupid vanity project because they have nothing else to spend it on is ridiculous. Higher taxes would at least force them to be more efficient.
You’re not really talking about higher taxes, you’re talking about reworking the corporate tax system. As things stand now higher taxes would encourage more of this sort of behavior, not less.
Corporations only pay taxes on profits, so money spent on business activities, re-invested back into the company, paid to employees, etc. is not taxed. In this system, taxes are kind of a penalty paid for taking money out of the business; the higher taxes are the less incentivized profit-taking is.
If your company made $100 million in profits at a 20% tax rate you get to take home $80 million as opposed to re-investing $100 million back in the company and not paying any taxes, so the incentive to re-invest isn’t very high. But if your company made $100 million in profits at a 40% tax rate now you can only take home $60 million as opposed to re-investing $100 million, which becomes a much better value proposition on re-investment.
Whether VR works for Meta or not, they have invested in technology and built careers for employees. This is why we should have corporate taxes. I’d rather see corporations keep employees and advance technology instead of giving dividends to the wealthiest people in the world. While the product might not work out, I bet there are many people who worked on it that will take those skills to new projects.
Many people have no clue how taxes work, but darn it, they wanted them raised. It just encourages other behaviors, such as offshoring money, as many companies do. We really need a complete write of the tax code to encourage paying workers well, creating jobs, etc and less focus on avoiding paying the taxes. I don’t care if a company makes billions in profit if their workers are all paid well, treated well, etc. We will make it up with them having money to spend in the economy.
I am still not convinced VR is a worthy technology outside of a few niche uses. I went to the verge when that was open and that was pretty cool. At home is nothing like that.
But VR is cool
Investment is good. Public policy is usually designed to encourage it that’s why investment has good tax avoidance that is exactly what the government wants.
Business lesson, : never build a factory because it won’t pay for itself in the first year.
And yes I know it’s hard to hear but Meta’s vr is doing really well in the areas they targeted, industry, academia, and special use. This is likely to end up a profitable part of their business for a long time.
I was happy and now I am sad.
What is “really well”?
Why that’s a 10% return on investment!
Zuck read Ready Player One and wants so badly to be James Halliday. He just wants to be loved. 🤣
its like they have too much money and they’re burning it away on bad ideas. Imagine how much public housing that money could have built.
I mean, you do understand that this money isn’t just vanishing right? It’s being spent on people, manufacturing, materials. It doesn’t just vanish into nothing.
yeah it gets distributed in the economy and gets absorbed in the system. at least it’s not being hoarded or funneled outside the country.
the other poster is just parroting things they do not understand.
Its also drawing real resources away from other things. The real estate used on these luxury failures had other potential buyers and raises costs across the board as it competes for chip factory space, marketing, etc.
If the money was taxed out of circulation it actually does essentially vanish, increasing the value of every remaining dollar if the state budget remains unchanged - its the easiest way to reduce inflation.
These big corporations with lots of money do affect everyone when they make big stupid decisions - resources get misallocated and costs go up. Money doesn’t exist in a void, the things people do with it have real world effects.
They have the best VR headset in the market. The only problem is that it’s also mining all your data.
Do they? I thought it was just the cheapest.
Is it the cheapest? I don’t follow VR much anymore.
I agree being the best is subjective, but the UX is impeccable.
Pull out the helmet, setup the guardian and you can play pretty much anywhere.
Ok, so it sounds like you put a lot of value on a standalone experience. So something like a Switch or phone for gaming instead of a gaming PC.
That seems to be the area they win at. They don’t have the best image, refresh rate, or tracking accuracy, but they are easy to get going with, and it’s inexpensive relative to other options.
To me, the biggest strength is how small the headset is and the fact that you don’t need to dedicate a room to VR with sensors.
I put a lot of value on how easy it is to setup. When VR first started, I had a dedicated 7x7 space with a pulley system so that the wires wouldn’t get in the way. My computer had to be near as well.
If I had a mansion, I would definitely use a better headset, but if we want a better VR adoption, then it needs to be accessible to as many people as possible.
You guys do this like every quarter lol
Honestly love to see Meta losing money. Zuck is a parasite on this nation. A cancer.
I thought OP wrote the headline himself but no, PCGamer “journalists” just spend way too much time on Reddit
Business are business… sometimes you win sometimes you lose but not always it’s about winning in the short term…
heres hoping they fail 🤞
Imma say nah. Competition is good, and this space needs more competition.
So everyone has to succeed for it to be competition?
Would a football game be good for the fans if one side didn’t show up?
wut? How is that a response? I am asking if everyone has to succeed for it to be competition. So your analogy should be ‘would football be a good game if both sides won?’
Alright, well you’re a dipshit. Moving on.
…I see…
they aint in the game to compete, if their past is any indication they will cheat, dominate and make it awful for everyone.
They “lost” 4 billion dollars like the Pentagon “lost” 12 billion dollars in Iraq?
I guarantee you that Meta has become the biggest Top Secret spying agency for the US government.
All that money got “lost” into straight up spying programs.
