For starters we're in the middle of a huge financial crisis, so releasing yet another VR set, a 3500 USD one at that, is hilarious. To further hammer in how terrible the timing of this is, we are also amid so many tech bro shit schemes failing. Cryptocurrency, NFTs, you name it. The Metaverse was a laughingstock, Twitter is imploding from Elons idiot decisions, Teslas are literally crashing and burning and all major tech companies have been on the News at some point for fucking with people's personal data and other con jobs. AI is scaring people as much as it is entertaining them. Confidence in emergent technology is at an all-time low. It doesn't help that the promo poster features the most dead-eyed soulless-looking person staring through it at you. People are sick of it. VR headsets were already niche, who cares if it has AR or whatever tacked on? Sure, some rich yuppies will buy it to impress their friends, but they buy anything the market tells them is the next big thing and are a small minority (again, more poor people than ever at the moment)
TLDR this is going to be Google Glass again but this time even more of a flop because now people are poorer and more skeptical of big tech than ever.
They don't know what to even show it doing! Apple and every fucking AR VR whatever company KEEEEEP imagining that a human being is going to strap goggles to their head to read a text or an email or do a fucking Zoom. Like, call it a wizz bang gamer device, or shut the fuck up holy shit
They all imagine a Ready Player One experience but don’t realize that it was a dystopian future with rampant poverty and cultural death
I’m not sure even the author of RP1 understood that
Thiiiiiiis. That book got so trying towards the end.
The sequel is even worse. I am not kidding.
The creepy bazinga that wrote the damn thing didn't apparently realize that either, since the sequel doubles down on all of that and (CW: sex pestery, mind control fetish)
spoiler
and makes the protagonist a billionaire that escapes into space with his cybernetically mind-controlled waifu harem.
One of the funniest things about Metaverse was that Zucc wanted you to use shitty, ugly legless human avatars instead of having a sexy dragon avatar or a talking car or darth vader. VR is always going to struggle as a corporate product bc they're always going to make people's avatars look "Professional", ie boring and probably shitty, instead of acknowledging the human need to be an animu furry copyright violation.
It's like these people don't understand what convenience is. Nobody is going to strap on $3500 goggles to do boring office work. Do they think I'm going to get a notification on my phone/laptop and put these on to respond instead of using the thing that's already there in front of me? No one is going to wear these all day long outside of VR porn addicts.
I could see these used by engineers, architects, planners of various kinds, shipwrights - There are lots of contexts where being able to walk around a structure, or blow up a product until it's big enough to step inside, could be useful. Likewise, giving a corporate presentation where your clients can actually walk around in the building before the break ground has some niche uses. But stillllllll.
Exactly. It's a specialized 3D viewing device, not a fucking text message reader
Out of that entire presentation nothing was more deluded than this image
Every aspect of this photo is intentionally built to imply you would literally just sit around C H I L L I N G wearing one of these fucking things. She's comfortable, she hasn't moved, she's enjoying a long story. She's up close face to face. She's relaxed. She expects everyone in the room to just hold a normal conversation while she uses a literal headset to poorly replicate the visual properties of three cups of air.
The close second is the woman in a hotel room wearing the fucking goggles while packing her suitcase. While packing her suitcase. And someone calls her. Fucking incredible.
there are 400$ AR glasses to do the same shit rn lol