Comment by andybak
6 years ago
I think there is a market gap. Even without AAA games, even without a mass-market presence, VR is a genuinely new medium and there will always be enough people fascinated by it to for content to keep producing.
Even if it's arty or niche content (which is fine by me) VR fills a unique role and people will want to keep experimenting with it.
Between education, arts, B2B, training etc the gaming side of VR could disappear entirely and there would still be enough usage to maintain an ecosystem. It doesn't take a huge company to design and make the hardware.
Maybe VR going underground for another decade wouldn't be such a bad thing. The tech industry might be slightly less unicorn-obsessed next time round.
Could you tell me how you came to the conclusion that it doesn't take major resources to design and make the hardware? Magic Leap took $2 billion. Occulus, $3 billion.
I do agree that there's enough revenue in novelty that content can keep happening. 3D books are still coming out this year, more than 150 years after the initial wave of hype: https://www.amazon.com/Queen-3-D-Bohemian-Rhapsody-2019/dp/1...
But I don't think there's enough evidence to demonstrate that any of those VR uses you suggest will be sustainable businesses after this wave of hype fails. Sure, people will tinker, and I think that's great.
But the most I expect to be happening 10 years from now in VR hardware is the Cardboard-style "let's put a phone on your face" thing. With perhaps a side of "VR as amusement park ride", like today: https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/tours-and-expe...
And if that's all you're expecting, that's fine by me. My issue with VR is the enormous wave of hype around it.
> Could you tell me how you came to the conclusion that it doesn't take major resources to design and make the hardware?
God knows how ML spent $2 billion. Where did you get the figures on Oculus? Is that their spend or how much Facebook spent on them?
My source is the fact that multiple relatively small companies have brought VR headsets to market and that there are viable open hardware projects to do the same.
> My issue with VR is the enormous wave of hype around it.
Then we agree. My fear is the hype and the associated snipe will kill a fascinating new medium before it's had a chance to mature.
Zuckerberg was the one who said $3 billion. Which doesn't count ongoing development expense for the last 3 years, but from news reports it looks to be in the billions. And apparently they're spending circa another $1 billion on VR acquisitions this year: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/12/07/facebook-is-on-a-b...
I do believe that it doesn't cost that much to bring something VR-ish to market, as long as they're trying to replicate older hardware with commodity gear. But if they want to push the state of the art forward, I'm not shocked at all by those numbers. Apple's spending something like $15 billion a year on R&D, and billions more on acquisitions. Maybe that's unnecessary for VR, but certainly a lot of VR advocates still believe that true success requires further technical innovation.