Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#351

Post by kranke155 » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #254

kranke155 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR will never become mainstream. I’ve been working in VR since 2015 and I don’t use it daily. I don’t know a single person who uses it daily. Maybe if you’re mildly autistic or remarkably introspective it works for you. For most people it’s a fundamentally alienating experience, like taking LSD but with none of the joy. VR is fundamentally an industrial technology, good for training and other purposes. For entertainm…

> I don’t know a single person who uses it daily. I know a bunch of people who use it daily. They are all using Immersed[0] for work (disclosure, I'm an investor, but I invested because of the love their early customers had for the platform). Basically, you get a bunch of virtual monitors in VR. It's way cheaper and much more portable than dragging five massive screens around, and the isolation is the point -- you ca…

This can’t be good for your eyes. Making people blind long term doesn’t seem like a good product strategy.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#352

Post by kranke155 » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

extortionist wrote: post #286

kranke155 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR will never become mainstream. I’ve been working in VR since 2015 and I don’t use it daily. I don’t know a single person who uses it daily. Maybe if you’re mildly autistic or remarkably introspective it works for you. For most people it’s a fundamentally alienating experience, like taking LSD but with none of the joy. VR is fundamentally an industrial technology, good for training and other purposes. For entertainm…

I have one and use it probably a few times a week. It's become a necessity for flight sims for me, I no longer play them outside VR. Flight sims aren't terribly mainstream, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's enough of a crowd between flight and racing sims who are willing to spend small fortunes on peripherals to keep VR going at some scale. For gaming generally, there's a lot of friction that'll have to be…

How many people do you know who do the same thing as you?

When Nintendo sold the SNES it wasn’t one person here and another one there playing it. It sold millions and a good percentage of your friends had it.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#353

Post by spywaregorilla » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #327

spywaregorilla wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they're still losing money with no path towards profitability or market domination?

Yeah don’t disagree. But how will increasing the price help them?

You asked

> Imagine where Uber would be today if they wanted to stop losing money so early in the game.

Well if they stopped they could have lost less money

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#354

Post by andybak » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #352

extortionist wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one and use it probably a few times a week. It's become a necessity for flight sims for me, I no longer play them outside VR. Flight sims aren't terribly mainstream, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's enough of a crowd between flight and racing sims who are willing to spend small fortunes on peripherals to keep VR going at some scale. For gaming generally, there's a lot of friction that'll have to be…

How many people do you know who do the same thing as you? When Nintendo sold the SNES it wasn’t one person here and another one there playing it. It sold millions and a good percentage of your friends had it.

People seem really stuck on "VR is either the next iPhone or it's nothing".

Isn't there a middle ground?

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#355

Post by broknbottle » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

PaulsWallet wrote: post #248

parkingrift wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion. You're kidding yourself with that. You gave Facebook literal eyes into your home through an internet connected device. If you don't think Facebook know who you are I have some coins I'd like to sell you.

I talked to someone who used to be at Facebook's reality lab and they said they have very VERY strict controls on user data and no one just has remote access through Oculus cameras including devs but reputation is hard to shake when tied to a company like Facebook.

You really think Zuck couldn't phone up a random SDE and ask them for a direct feed into a random users home? Sor..sorr..sorry Zuck I can't break policy, even for you the president of Hawaii.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#356

Post by andybak » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #350

andybak wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm torn between "thanks for investing billions in a medium I love" vs "I hope the whole field doesn't get dragged when disillusionment sets in among Meta stock holders"

The secret is - there is no field. Meta wouldn’t have to spend billions jump starting something if it was a commercial success. No commercial success in history needed tens of billions for commercial success. It either sells or it doesn’t.

> there is no field.

You obviously mean "there's no field fulfilling criteria X that I haven't spelled out".

VR predates Meta's acquisition and took far less than "tens of billions" to get to commercial readiness. Several small-ish companies have got products to market. Heck, even Google's half-hearted attempts resulted in a fairly decent 6DOF headset.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#357

Post by QuantumGood » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

FractalHQ wrote: post #212

dmix wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out, Quest 2 was one of the best purchases I've made in the last year. I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it. I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a priv…

My Quest 2 runs glorified arcade games with 20 year-old graphics. What games are you playing that you enjoy for more than 5 minutes? Beat saber and VR-Chat bore me to death.

• Eleven table tennis is absolutely terrific with or without adapters.

• Biking/walking through interesting locations (museums, beautiful nature) together with my disabled wife is wonderful.

• Contemplating while visiting some beautiful locations such as Horseshoe bend from above is very nice.

• Biking through brightly-lit locations while actually being in the dark in my air-conditioned bedroom while my wife sleeps is nice.

• I don't play the games, but the best of them have enormous dedicated followings

• Viewing 3D pictures taken by users is often interesting.

• I find anything approaching porn very creepy, but imagine that the "virtual live sex doll" nature of it is very popular.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#358

Post by joshlemer » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #56

joshlemer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's honestly just hardly even any games on it at all. And all of the games are really expensive. I like how on the Nintendo Switch there are big budget games but also thousands of games for like $2

"Hardly any games" seems like an exaggeration. Are you including AppLab and SideQuest or just counting the main store? Even so... Also bear in mind that Meta have been extremely aggressive in restricting access to the main store. Unless you're a big name dev, can show strong sales on other VR platforms or you have good contacts with someone inside Meta then it's very hard to get in.

I've never heard of AppLab or SideQuest and didn't know there was any way to get games/software on the quest other than the main store, so I'll have to check it out thanks!

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#359

Post by kranke155 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #354

kranke155 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people do you know who do the same thing as you? When Nintendo sold the SNES it wasn’t one person here and another one there playing it. It sold millions and a good percentage of your friends had it.

People seem really stuck on "VR is either the next iPhone or it's nothing". Isn't there a middle ground?

Of course there is. My point is Meta’s investment is currently being justified by home usage, and I will make a decent sized bet there will never be mass adoption of VR for home use in its current form.

Having worked in VR since 2015, I don’t know of a single person who uses it for their entertainment, period. Some folks here in the comments saying they use it for flight or racing sims, in which case Meta is sinking billions into an expensive peripheral for sim players, similar to a flight joystick.

Re: Meta is raising the price of the Quest 2 to 400 USD

#360

Post by kranke155 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 8:55 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #356

kranke155 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret is - there is no field. Meta wouldn’t have to spend billions jump starting something if it was a commercial success. No commercial success in history needed tens of billions for commercial success. It either sells or it doesn’t.

> there is no field. You obviously mean "there's no field fulfilling criteria X that I haven't spelled out". VR predates Meta's acquisition and took far less than "tens of billions" to get to commercial readiness. Several small-ish companies have got products to market. Heck, even Google's half-hearted attempts resulted in a fairly decent 6DOF headset.

I’ll clarify - there is no mass consumer field for VR that will enable adoption or a market in the size of home consoles, laptops or televisions.

VR in its currently incarnation will not make a system that will sell 100 million units, which is the regular size market of the leading home console in a generation (both switch and PS4 sold this much).

I’m surprised they sold as much as they did tbh.