Tencent Scraps Plans For VR Hardware as Metaverse Bet Falters (reuters.com) 16
Tencent is abandoning plans to venture into virtual reality hardware, as a sobering economic outlook prompts the Chinese tech giant to cut costs and headcount at its metaverse unit, Reuters reported Friday, citing three sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The world's largest video game publisher had ambitious plans to build both virtual reality software and hardware at an "extended reality" XR unit it launched in June last year, for which it hired nearly 300 people. It had come up with a concept for a ring-like hand-held game controller, but difficulties in achieving quick profitability and the large investment needed to produce a competitive product were among factors that prompted a shift away from that strategy, two of the sources said. One of the sources said the XR project was not expected to become profitable until 2027, according to an internal forecast. The second source said the unit also had a lack of promising games and non-gaming applications.
It's dead (Score:2)
...Jim.
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Re: It's dead (Score:2)
No, always grab the phaser. That way, you get to grab both people's wallets.
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More like sobering metaverse adoption (Score:3)
as a sobering economic outlook prompts the Chinese tech giant to cut costs
While the economic outlook is indeed sobering, far more sobering is the absolute void of people that actually want to do things in a "metaverse".
I do think 3D and augmented realty things will improve in popularity over time, but I really am not sure what it would take for people to have any interest in what are essentially avatar based chatrooms...
Maybe porn.
Re: More like sobering metaverse adoption (Score:2)
Utherverse has tried the porn angle for some time. Judging from the enormous number of bugs and relatively small number of users, I think it safe to say that it's a dead-end.
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Although I've not heard of Utherverse I have to say it's not very surprising... even for that purpose it just seems way short of real life, and you are almost guaranteed that every single female there is a dude or an FBI agent.
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I don't think it's so much that VR lacks a "killer app", it's that there's very little additional entertainment value over old fashioned 2D screens to justify buying and using another gadget.
Look at it this way, even in 2023 there's still a huge market for good old fashioned print-on-paper books. Despite being incredibly low-tech, they're still an informative, educational, and entertaining medium. VR is a tough sell because it's competing for eyeball time with everything that came before it, and as I just
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My general opinion is that the closest to a killer app VR has is sit-down, cockpit-based games. Racing, flying, space sims, anything where you're sitting and not moving around much is utterly incredible. I can't play games like Assetto Corsa or Elite Dangerous in 2D anymore because of the immersiveness VR brings. I've dabbled with a couple giant mech-type games that worked really well too.
On the other hand, it's a very mixed bag for things like run and gun shooters. The inherently limited play space makes m
3D TV was a flop (Score:1)
The fact that an entertainment device which enabled you to watch 3D content without heavy goggles strapped to your face flopped, tells you all you need to know. I said it before in the Apple VR story, the consumer electronics entertainment device market is weird. Plenty of products based on innovative technology have failed in the marketplace. Even home video gaming almost failed [wikipedia.org], which seems kind of unthinkable today. And in an extremely odd turn of events, vinyl records are actually back.
New Techs are collapsing (Score:2)
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True - new technologies never work (says he, instantly responding to a stranger who could be on the other side of the world, by typing a sarcastic text on a device the size of a palm who has more computing power than all humanity had only a few decades ago)
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Well, if only somebody would invent a device that converts sunlight into electricity to charge your battery! But you're right, this would be new tech, and therefore never work...
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Tencent is possibly the only company... (Score:2)