Comment by karmakaze
5 days ago
The Meta/Oculus bet was never about VR or gaming. It is to solve Zuck's greatest fear of being beholden to platforms controlled by others. What it was supposed to be was basically what Microsoft missed out on with mobile, losing to Google and Apple. VR and AR could be that next platform to own and control. They would love to have all the data that Google and Apple enjoy. That's what Quest -> Horizon was about, change a gaming device into a mainstream entertainment and work-friendly one. This is all driven out of fear and lack of control. It would suck for them if OpenAI owns the most successful personal AI device.
I still find it funny that Apple did exactly the usual Apple thing of coming in way later and yet inventing a UX for this kind of stuff good enough that Meta immediately started scrambling to copy it.
Having a baked in hardware userbase and dev team helps a lot. The hardest part of inventing new things is getting feedback from real people who really think deeply about this stuff, who also have lots of power within the company to say no.
On the other hand, pico was always copying meta's UI.
And meta's UI has changed every 6 months anyway. Like significantly so. They were up for another redesign anyway :)
They could release a subsidized Facebook phone which is just some android pos with Facebook rammed into it for way less than the 70 billion or whatever they burned on VR.
They actually did that before, if i recall correctly?
They've done something like it in poorer countries, I believe, but it's more about subsidizing the connection.
There's certainly marketshare they could work with in USA and Europe. $70 billion is 70 million phones.
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