Panasonic Sells Off Its VR Subsidiary

Shiftall, the Japan-based VR hardware creator, is no longer owned by Panasonic, as the company has been effectively sold off to the Tokyo-based company CREEK & RIVER. From a report: As first noted by tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch, Panasonic today announced it has transferred all shares of Shiftall to the Tokyo-based company CREEK & RIVER Co., Ltd., which specializes in outsourcing, consulting, content management and distribution services. Acquired by Panasonic in 2018, Shiftall primarily focused on niche consumer devices, but shifted over the years to focusing on VR hardware, such as its MeganeX PC VR headset, HaritoraX wireless body trackers, FlipVR motion controllers, and mutalk soundproof microphones.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Perhaps their market niche for soundproof microphones was too small to be successful.

Selling them to shy people at karaoke bars, perhaps?

Shitall VR

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Am I the only one who at first read that as Shitall? Because it kind of made sense that a failing VR subsidiary would be called that.

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[Surak_Prime]

I did a little better (all the letters were there) and read Shitfall. But that's still in line with the rest of your point. lol.

Re:Shitfall

[AntisocialNetworker]

Surely that was a film starting Daniel Craig?

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[Surak_Prime]

That was seriously what I was thinking the whole time, including having the chorus to "Shitfall" playing in my head. lol

I read Shitfall.

[MIPSPro]

Which is kinda like every morning around here. Great name for a corporation, though.

Re: Shitall VR

[Goodsuburbanite]

Yeah. It's not a great name. Shitfall, shitfall, fallshit

VR is incredibly unpopular at scale.

[PubJeezy]

VR is incredibly unpopular at scale. Literally nothing has changed since the days of Dactyl Nightmare. I wear glasses to improve my poor vision. They're very lightweight and yet I still get sick of wearing sometimes...no one wants to wear over a pound of electronics on their head just to visit a website or play a game. Every headset is definitely uncomfortable and many are probably actually unhealthy for the user when used for long term gaming sessions.

VR has had one problem going back to the very beginning and no one can actually made a plausible argument that any of the current products solve that problem.

Headsets are trash. No one likes them. Small amounts of market data have been performatively generated by selling headsets to big box retailers, but the end users do not stick with this product because it's bad. Headsets are bad. VR that requires anything more intrusive than a normal pair of glasses is doomed to fail. No amount of financing will ever change that reality.

Re: VR is incredibly unpopular at scale.

[SuperDre]

Oh please go back under the rock you crawled from. There are many people who like to play with VR. This is nothing different as having to wear skigoggles to ski or full guard/helmet clothing to play american boring football. Yep, it's not for everybody, but there are more then enough people who don't mind wearing a headset to be able to experience other worlds and have adventures. Having played VR doesn't even want me to play a lit of certain games on a flatscreen as it's far from immersive and intense (or

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[Njovich]

20 million quest headsets have been sold, and users like the product. That's pretty good for an entertainment product. I don't know what people are expecting, is it only a success if a billion people use it every day? It's unlikely to displace smartphones, but was anyone really expecting that?

Re: VR is incredibly unpopular at scale.

[drinkypoo]

20 million people seems like a lot until you compare to something actually popular like console gaming. Then you realize it's a fart in a windstorm.

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[JMZero]

~20 million (for the Quest II) wouldn't be a great console launch, but it's comparable to the original XBox (24 million) or Gamecube (20 million). Those may have been disappointing consoles for those companies, but they were hardly "farts in the wind".

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[HBI]

Your basic analysis is spot on.

I've watched an incredible number of projects using this hardware fail, also. There's the slow motion government failure of IVAS [armytimes.com]. Just take a look at this thing and tell yourself this is going to be the future. Go humping around in a place that is over 100F or under 20F with this crap on, with people shooting at you and no/very little capability to keep batteries charged.

Sure.

Mind you, this was the project that kept Microsoft's product group working on the Hololens in busin

Re: VR is incredibly unpopular at scale.

[ACisBack]

You're not entirely wrong, but you are also far from being right. Headsets have their advantages. The problem is that those advantages tend to be for things that are fairly niche. VR as it currently sits, needs scale. AR/XR might be able to give VR some foundation to survive on, but the places it's showing the biggest promise needs substantial development work to move from neat demo to valuable tool & nobody has yet stepped up to pay for that

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[thegarbz]

VR is incredibly unpopular at scale.

Is it though? Or is the niche simply spread too thin. I remind you that the Quest 2 has outsold both the Wii U and the Gamecube at this point. Does that make Nintendo unpopular too? There's been over 50million VR headsets shipped in the past 5 years which means VR has outsold the SNES, Nintendo 64, and the Megadrive at this point. Currently it would match the number of PS5s sold.

Headsets are trash. No one likes them.

It's no where near as unpopular as you think, the numbers don't agree with you.

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[TwistedGreen]

The tech has actually improved dramatically. I personally have a Quest 2 and hate it, but occasionally I boot it up and try to get back into it, but always get sick after about 15 minutes. I don't think the technology is there yet, at least at that price point, and they're still kind of lacking a killer app. Most games have as much depth as Wii Sports. But I'm actually really impressed by the tech, like hand tracking and gesture tracking... and every update keeps improving. You can now press virtual buttons

Shitfall?

[paul_engr]

I keep reading it as shitfall...

Sh1(f)7(all) CREEK without a paddle

[williamyf]

That was the first tought that came to mind wehen I saw the name of the acquiring company. And I gues unless Sh1f7all Creek and River turns around consolidates Panasonic's VR division wth othe3r holdings and sells the lot to a bigger player, that is esactly where the employees will be, on a Sh1f7all Creek without a paddle.

Joke?
Sarcasm?
Pesimism?
Realism?

You decide.