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Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

engadget.com

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Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#71

Post by ZiiS »

mistersquid wrote: post #10
stephc_int13 wrote: post #6

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many…

> not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. > And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many others all crashed into the same wall. This is revisionary. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta was the only company to go all-in on the "metaverse". Microsoft has barely even dabbled in an adjacent area with the Hololens. Apple h…

I am not sure we can say `all-in` when a more or less complete write down leaves them in the top 10 largest companies.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#74

Post by Macha »

mistersquid wrote: post #10
stephc_int13 wrote: post #6

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many…

> not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. > And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many others all crashed into the same wall. This is revisionary. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta was the only company to go all-in on the "metaverse". Microsoft has barely even dabbled in an adjacent area with the Hololens. Apple h…

Everything Meta did to make it a "platform" just contributed to making it worse than VRchat, a product by a company many many times smaller. It felt very designed with a "look at what we can do for Meta" and not "why would consumers use this over alternatives?" which always felt doomed from the start.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#75

Post by hparadiz »

unicorn_cowboy wrote: post #40
stephc_int13 wrote: post #6

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many…

• Not just a Meta failure: 70+ years of VR history (including Microsoft’s Hololens flops and Apple’s Vision Pro stagnation) shows every major player slammed into the exact same wall: betting billions on “inevitable” infrastructure instead of experiences that actually answer “why VR?” • The metaverse was never inevitable: Horizon Worlds peaked at 300k MAUs, cratered below 1k DAUs, and is now shutting down. Meta burned…

VRChat won because it's a relatively open platform. That's it. The people in there spent money on Meta hardware when it was better but they would then use it only in VRChat.

If a big company embraced an open platform I suspect the space would be far successful. Still a lot of untapped potential.

VRChat is successful because someone can show up in a Goku avatar and start roleplaying. A DJ can stream their twitch steam right into an instance.

VRChat still has no real store system having people upload unity projects manually to use a custom avatar. There's an entire universe of potential revenue if a clothing, avatar, and instance space system was built into the client.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#76

Post by stefanka »

riskable wrote: post #33
asadotzler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. The few who did wanted that for games but Zuck wanted a social VR platform, not a third-rate gaming console. Games couldn't even bring in the numbers needed to pivot anyone to social so they're giving up.

> No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. This has yet to be determined! Because no VR headset so far has actually been a proper PC. You can't develop on them. You can't just install whatever TF you want. You have to use their app store and getting developer mode enabled doesn't even give you root on the device. A more accurate statement would be, "No one wants to wear a locked-down, extremely limited-use phone on…

Godot on the Quest allows you to develop on the device which is at least cool even if it makes little sense. You’d see the virtual world around you adapt to the changes in the editor. That was one on the reasons I bought it, even if I never used it in the end

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#77

Post by estimator7292 »

unicorn_cowboy wrote: post #40
stephc_int13 wrote: post #6

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many…

• Not just a Meta failure: 70+ years of VR history (including Microsoft’s Hololens flops and Apple’s Vision Pro stagnation) shows every major player slammed into the exact same wall: betting billions on “inevitable” infrastructure instead of experiences that actually answer “why VR?” • The metaverse was never inevitable: Horizon Worlds peaked at 300k MAUs, cratered below 1k DAUs, and is now shutting down. Meta burned…

Don't post AI generated comments.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#80

Post by coffeebeqn »

estimator7292 wrote: post #70
stephc_int13 wrote: post #6

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many…

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 indus…

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.
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