Comment by estimator7292
4 days ago
No, Microsoft bailed pretty early. Apple gave it one shot and gave up.
The entire VR/AR industry sort of crumpled up and died while metaverse was still burning a billion dollars a day.
I worked in a VR startup at the time. Nobody could find a customer and all the competing startups slowly bled to death (including mine). Everyone was really holding their breath that Apple Vision would bring some life back to the industry, but once it became clear that it was a flop, everyone gave up.
I remember two Gamescom visits.
First one was I think during the releae of the first Oculus, when still hardly anyone got to actually try out VR headsets. An absolutely HUGE area in one of the main halls, the queue going once around the entire area, many hours of waiting time, etc.
Second visit was two years later, in the "indies, hobbyists and everything else hall" - staffers of some Chinese gaming startup were stopping random passersbys and essentially pleading for them to try their VR game - the headset of course being technically superior than the Oculus during the first visit...
Meta going so hard was part of the covid “new normal” psychosis. Surely we’ll all just stay home and buy crypto assets for the rest of our lives! The hardware I think is pretty good - I just never really found a use for it.