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Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

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

#101

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…

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

#102
post #11

Genuine question - was it the product or the implementation that led this to not pan out? Maybe both?

So broadly, they should have acquired VRChat and just slapped their name on it before its own developers enshittified it, but nooooooo...

I'm really glad they did no do that! That would be the end of VRChat & big damage for the community, basically requiring a migration to to inevitable replacement.

Just see what Facebook did to BeatSabre and other VR games and Game studios they acquired.

Sure, they could have cloned it, but better with more money - that would be less questionable, especially if it actually worked out.

Well, at least they helped to provide affordable headsets for VRChat players at the right time. :)

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

#104

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…

I agree with you... but was it actually a failure ? I feel like that would require to have some kind of negative consequences, which I don't think Meta has faced over this. They've still been rewarded handsomely.

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

#105

As an engineer I love that Zuck likes to throw his money around. He has been one of the big reasons for SWE salary inflation over the past 15 years. We should be thankful that not every company is relentlessly cost cutting

You mean throw those billions, tens of thousands of man hours, shareholder attenton, industry power and mindshare to a mostly useless concept, just because he had the money? Why are those resources not better spent on 100+ startups and 100+ unique ideas that are immediately tested by the market?

Just because the end concept was useless doesn’t mean the individual pieces don’t have value. Meta’s loose wallet probably kickstarted the work of dozens of smaller companies in the hardware space whose work can be parlayed into other areas.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So broadly, they should have acquired VRChat and just slapped their name on it before its own developers enshittified it, but nooooooo...

I'm really glad they did no do that! That would be the end of VRChat & big damage for the community, basically requiring a migration to to inevitable replacement. Just see what Facebook did to BeatSabre and other VR games and Game studios they acquired. Sure, they could have cloned it, but better with more money - that would be less questionable, especially if it actually worked out. Well, at least they helped to pro…

Fair enough, it is really striking how VRChat got so much right about the medium.

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

#108

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…

> Microsoft has barely even dabbled in an adjacent area with the Hololens.

This is revisionist, Microsoft has been tilting at the same windmill for a long time too.

They even created and subsequently removed their own native platform for Windows, used by many hardware vendors, whose products were bricked by the Windows update that removed the feature.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mixed_Reality

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Microsoft has barely even dabbled in an adjacent area with the Hololens. This is revisionist, Microsoft has been tilting at the same windmill for a long time too. They even created and subsequently removed their own native platform for Windows, used by many hardware vendors, whose products were bricked by the Windows update that removed the feature. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mixed_Reality

I also commented on WMR, but I took that as MS not being "all-in on the metaverse". VR alone isn't the same thing, and HoloLens as a platform seemed to have more of a vision for working in shared mixed reality.

I love my WMR headset, but Microsoft wasn't really pushing hard for the kinds of "social" experiences Meta was trying to get us to participate in.

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

#110

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…

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The management of the whole Reality Labs thing was incredibly bad, and this is Zuck's fault, I agree.

But my take is that, given the efforts of other big player in the same field (Hololens, VisionPro, the VR stuff from Valve, Sony, Samsung, etc.) at least one of them would have gained traction and the entire field would have followed behind.

I think the vision was wrong.

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