Comment by andybak
6 years ago
> 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.