Wow, they burned billions. Karl Guttag has blogged about them for years, debunking their technology. Hi blog is a good read for all things in the AR/VR space https://www.kguttag.com/
Sounds like Theranos of Tech.
Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
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Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#112I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for." Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.
I don't trust Evans at all, but I'm going to partially defend that here. There's a long history of technology being absolutely amazing the first time you use it and then not mattering at all. E.g., the Segway was going to revolutionize transport. The 3D space is particularly prone to this. I count at least 5 waves of 3D innovation going back to the Great Exhibition in 1851. 3D movies were going to revolutionize thing…
The segway at least found a niche with cops and tourists.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#113> Citing COVID-19, CEO Rony Abovitz wrote in a blog post that the company needed to shift focus Right... because of Covid-19. As a counter example, Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch is doing phenomenal right now, in part due to Covid-19.
Products consumers enjoy at home are getting a big bump, Startups relying utterly on the VC cash gravy train less so.
I've heard that VCs are doubling down on their portfolios and avoiding new company investing. Maybe Magic Leap was just not looking all that great to its VCs and they'd rather focus their resources on companies that are more likely to come out of this pandemic as big winners.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oculus Quest has been a major hit, do you have any info on facebook walking away from VR? I just don't think they are with the amount of work they are doing on the Oculus ecosystem atm.
Ya, I don’t think Facebook is stepping away from VR at all, or even AR for that matter. Quest has been a huge hit during quarantine, too bad they’ve been hard to get ahold of.
Every Quest was sold out during the holiday season and was being sold for double the price on eBay/Amazon during Christmas. It’s an incredible hit.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.
Not with its playing-card-sized FOV it isn't
I tried out a HoloLens at a rich friend's house and had a similar experience, despite it also having a small FOV. It blew my mind and instantly registered as a really big deal. But as another commenter here pointed out, the hardware isn't there yet, and when it arrives it will require a vibrant software ecosystem. The difference is that Microsoft seems to understand that.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#116I sort of always knew it was the job of VCs to hype up their portfolio, but i've never seen it as bare faced as when Benedict Evans was shilling Magic Leap saying things along the lines of "Magic Leap was the coolest thing I'd seen since the iPhone. It's now much cooler than that." and "I’ve had the Magic Leap demo. It was worth going to Florida for." Well that looks a bit silly now doesn't it.
Magic Leap is really cool to use. That doesn't mean it's a feasible product for the mainstream.
It's the segway solution. Cool tech that solves a problem which doesn't really exist.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#117The sheer volume of cash and talent thrown into something that hadn't yet found a market is sort of amazing / seemed like a huge amount of cart before the horse. It seems generally like they decided to do X, Y, Z but needed to invent A, B, C before they could get there, let alone know if anyone wanted X, Y, Z.....
I don't want to doxx myself so I'm intentionally leaving out details, and you can take this comment as rumor and baseless. But based on the people I know (personally) who work there - there wasn't a lot of talent being thrown at the product. I think their organization is incapable of bringing a product to market, even if that market existed.
Maybe that was part of the issue. They had a large volume of guys like me, unremarkable folks... trying to do remarkable things.
Not a good recipie talent wise.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful? Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hard…
> Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. i think that technology was CGI: https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...
That's not even a demo of the actual physical product though, that was just a video that was posted online that purported to show what the experience would look like (but actually was not). It's not like you would've seen that had you actually been looking through the glasses.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Products consumers enjoy at home are getting a big bump, Startups relying utterly on the VC cash gravy train less so.
My point is that the Magic Leap CEO made it seem like there is a lack of consumer demand for gaming / entertainment products, due to a lack of job / financial prospects during Covid-19.
While there is absolutely a consumer market for gaming and entertainment, Magic Leap has nothing to offer in that space. The apps store they offer is very limited and it's mostly tours of locations, or design tools for making stuff that works with the spacial dimensions.
They do not have any real games to play that the public at large would find fun for more than an hour or so. Their apps are like PoCs for what you can do with Magic Leap. If FF7R was on Magic Leap, I bet they'd be selling a lot more units and it'd be a great time for them.
Instead, you're better off getting the Oculus or Valves VR where you have tons of actual games to play and support for streaming apps.
There is no way for Magic Leap to capitalize on the consumer purchasing right now, because they don't have a catalog that supports the hardware to any meaningful degree. And they can't suddenly churn those things out in the space of a month since we've been hit with quarantine.
Re: Magic Leap reportedly slashes jobs and steps away from consumer plans
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. I think they couldn’t get it to a place where it could be small enough to be useful? Hopefully when Apple ships AR hardware for real it’ll be what it should be. Magic leap will be kind of like General Magic or the creative nomad jukebox - right idea but too early with hard…
> Supposedly the magic leap demo was actually cool and used different technology than the eventually crappy hardware they ended up sort of shipping. i think that technology was CGI: https://hothardware.com/news/magic-leap-admits-outrageous-au...
That was the concept video which was different from the demo, but you are correct and they did a horrible job conveying that that was a concept and not the actual product.