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Facebook's VR Headset Not Selling, Literally Giving It Away

Facebook’s VR Headset Not Selling, Literally Giving It Away::Last fall, Meta-formerly-Facebook unveiled its Meta Quest Pro, a long-rumored, higher-end follow-up to the company’s best-selling Quest 2 VR headset. The sleek device, which initially went on sale for an eye-watering $1,500, has really struggled to catch on since then, just as we predicted at the time. And, as Mixed Reality News reports, Meta is […]

tabular ,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

I am interested in VR. Not interested in proprietary spyware and wearable webcam from Facebook :/

MataVatnik ,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Soon enough they’ll start recording your brainwaves tol

bingbong ,

Elongated muskrat licks its lips in the distance

limeaide ,

What company can you see doing it right?

MaxPow3r11 ,

Capitalism ruins everything.

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

If I’m putting something over my head it won’t be from the greediest tech company ever.

phx ,

Meh. If they’ve still got some free ones to give out I’ll take it.

But in all seriousness, the Quest 2 is pretty good hardware, especially for the price. The problem is that Meta tried to build an ecosystem around monetization and then bring people in, rather than building something that appeals to most people and still allows them to profit. Kinda the opposite of the Facebook model really, which became a defacto online community and kinda kept the monetization a little quieter or behind the scenes for a long time

luciferofastora ,

I wonder: Did the people who successfully pulled off the Facebook strategy get replaced by dumber, greedier ones, did they get overruled by dumber, greedier decision-makers, did they get overconfident and thought their current market position would let Meta get away with it, or did they get lucky in the first place and fail to take any notes on why it worked?

Corporations tend to run on “if it works, why change?” so mixing up your entire strategy to this degree seems like it must’ve been a deliberate decision. I’m just curious who made that decision, and by what reasoning.

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

Now they have to show rising numbers to shareholders quarterly. They can’t play the long game anymore. They need results every quarter, even if it sinks the company on the long run.

luciferofastora ,

Capitalism was a mistake. The only innovation it breeds is how to exploit things for money.

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

It works when the company is growing. But when it has reached 100% of their potential users, the only growth is greed and that’s where it fails.

luciferofastora ,

One of my favourite song lyrics regarding this is “wild growth is called cancer”* - growing is fine, but if you need to keep growing to sate investors’ demands for more and more profit, you end up doing more harm than good.

The song is in German by a band named “Saltatio Mortis” (Latin: Dance of the Dead) called “Wachstum über alles” (German: Growth above all). You can probably guess the topic from this context.

Not_Alec_Baldwin ,

See: instant pot

Buffalox ,

or did they get lucky in the first place and fail to take any notes on why it worked?

Yes.

Buddahriffic ,

They could release the best possible VR hardware that puts your body into a dream state and allows you to experience things fully in VR for $99 and I still wouldn’t touch it if meta, fb, or zuckberg has anything to do with it.

Not_Alec_Baldwin ,

Iirc these headsets require your Facebook login to function at all?

Nope nope nope.

bezerker03 ,

They fixed that. Still need to make a meta account but it’s not Facebook.

Guntrigger ,

Surely that is the exact same thing?

Callendor ,

Yup its exactly the same

bezerker03 ,

Yes and no. The Facebook thing was upsetting folks mainly because they would get banned from Facebook and lose their oculus.

grue ,

Needing any account to use hardware I own is a 100% deal-breaker.

Peppycito ,

They tried to speed run the enshittification process.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Well, possibly people have finally been turned off by Zuck Zuck and his creepy-ass avatar doing their combined best to make his “Metaverse” pipe dream as cringeworthy as possible. Seems he can’t get it through his head that all we really want to do is play video games (and I guess maybe watch VR porn), and for $1500/999, we can buy an awful lot of game console with change left over for some games, or a pretty significant chunk of normal gaming PC.

I think I’ll stick with my Reverb G2. I wouldn’t take a Meta/Facebook backed device, nor touch its ecosystem, if they paid me.

fartsparkles ,

$1500 also buys a lot of porn (or so I’ve heard) especially as free is a pretty low price.

MrMcGasion ,

I’ve spent over $1500 on VR (HTC Vive, and Valve Index, plus some accessories for both). I’ve never been able to talk myself into even a Quest 2 for $200 back when they went on sale shortly before they raised the price due to “supply chain issues.” I enjoy VR experiences and I’m personally okay with paying enthusiast prices for hardware that improves the experience, but I want nothing to do with Meta/Facebook’s ecosystem, at any price.

Jastas ,

This ^ That is all the same exact reasoning I thought of when I purchased my Valve Index this year. Sure, it’s older hardware at this point but I want nothing to do with Meta/Facebook’s ecosystem as well.

CaptainAniki ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    RaoulDook ,

    Those are old GPUs you know. You can get a very VR-capable RTX card now from the 30 or 40 series for relatively cheap. 3060TI is doing well for my setup.

    RaoulDook ,

    What extras do you recommend for the Index? I have the standard kit with 2 base stations and controllers.

    MrMcGasion ,

    The big ones for me are a cover/replacement for the fabric face gasket, prescription lens inserts, and for long play sessions a fan insert for the headset can be a nice to have, but I don’t run mine all the time since sometimes it’s just adding noise. The face gasket has probably been the hardest thing to get right, since a lot of third-party ones either don’t have enough padding, or are hard to swap in and out, so I kinda prefer having a full extra magnetic insert so I can easily change between the original which is most comfortable for me, and something else that I’m less worried about sweating all over for more active games.

    RaoulDook ,

    Those are good suggestions. I made prescription lens inserts for my wife by simply removing the ear-holder arms from an old pair of her glasses, just leaving the frame and lenses which fits well inside the lens area

    stigmata ,

    Uh, the Pro wasn’t aimed for that, you twit.

    Sanctus ,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    We’re broke as fuck, we can not afford that shit. Money is better spent elsewhere than a VR “workstation”.

    Secret300 ,

    For real. Even if I did have enough money to go buy something that’s that much I’d rather get literally anything else

    Sanctus ,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    For that price I can buy a used ThinkPad AND set it up for work in a literal strip club. Thats the price tag.

    surewhynotlem ,

    I am intrigued by your message and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

    Krompus , (edited )
    @Krompus@lemmy.world avatar

    I’d also like to subscribe to strip club management tips, please.

    BowtiesAreCool ,

    Also their cheaper option is great for 1/3 or less of the price

    stigmata ,

    And for 500 it’s getting even better than all other options next month.

    LazaroFilm ,
    @LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

    I’d use VR for work if I could afford it. But not from the take all you personal dada and sell it company.

    AnAngryAlpaca ,

    I would use it for work, except our tech stack is still stuck in the 1990s…

    KairuByte ,
    @KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    You could likely capture card your monitors and pipe them into a secondary PC, to then pipe into your headset. Assuming your limitation is a work PC unable to run VR for one reason or another.

    AnAngryAlpaca ,

    Great, now I can get even 3x the headache while fixing legacy code, using jquery UI and wearing a VR headset at work! /s

    stigmata ,

    This is the dumbest take on what’s happening. The Quest 3 is better than the Pro and it comes out next month. We don’t need the Pro anymore. Some of y’all need to use some critical thinking. Roblox also just recently got a lot of attention towards it from Meta; it’s not a coincidence these were Roblox devs that the Pros were given to.

    Astroturfed ,

    Shut up and hate the zuck with the crowd. How dare you question the groupthink hate train.

    June ,

    Idk, I want those pro controllers

    paddirn ,

    I wouldn’t take anything from Facebook, no matter if it was free or if I was paid to take it. They’re toxic as a service and as a company, I want nothing to do with them.

    Dkarma ,

    No shit. The platform is basically just a string of rug pulls over your lifetime.

    pomodoro_longbreak ,
    @pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works avatar

    That’s the thing. Anyone who cares about cutting edge (read: flawed, unproven) tech is unlikely to be messing about on FB. More likely they do not associate any positive feelings with anything that you might chose to attach to FB.

    iHUNTcriminals ,

    No one is going to buy a pro VR set from meta, lol. That’s like going to an Apple Bees with $1000 instead of a Michelin Star restaurant.

    And what are people going to do with it…? Play the same Beat Saber they always have?

    XEAL ,

    Apple Bees

    iBees

    JudahBenHur ,

    Would you like to go on a date with me to Apple Bees?

    freebread ,

    Applebee’s 2 for $20 is NOT a date!

    kronkadoop ,

    But why is Michelin giving stars to restaurants. Shouldn’t they stick to tires?

    SatyrSack ,

    The more stars a restaurant has, the more it is worth it to put wear and tear on your tires in order to drive there.

    MooseBoys ,

    Why does an Irish brewery track world records? Shouldn’t they stick to beer?

    kronkadoop ,

    tou·ché

    bob_wiley ,
    @bob_wiley@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    kronkadoop ,

    Nice insightful response!

    Lucidlethargy ,

    Agreed. It sucks the Steam Index and HTC offerings are so expensive still, but they are top notch and they’ll do anything and everything you need them to.

    MataVatnik ,
    @MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

    The goal has never been to sell VR head sets, the goal is to have 1Billion people on VR. The money would come from the monopoly they would have over selling software through their app store. Same way Google and Apple have a monopoly on who sells through their app stores. This has been zucks stated goal from the start

    limeaide ,

    In my opinion, I think their goal was to control the platform. If you think about it, the amount of information that they can gather from users is wholly controlled by Google and Apple through their OS’.

    Apple and Google have continuously decreased the amount of information Meta can gather through their apps, and I think with VR they made a huge bet that would be the next platform so they jumped on the ship to make sure that this time they would be controlling the platform and not another company.

    I don’t think they want to make money through software, I think they want to make money through data collection. The amount of data they can gather from you just through the setup, is incredible. They can literally know your height and have cameras on at all times.

    I think VR can be successful, but I don’t think Meta will do it. I don’t think they’re be the ones getting the ball rolling at least. If anything their marketing and the bad name they gave to VR set things back. I think they’re too early and have a pretty bad brand image for people to trust them. I don’t think the hardware or the software support is there for things to fully take off either

    Also, wouldn’t their goal be to sell VR headsets? How would people buy their software without a headset? I think their goal was to sell headsets. Pretty sure they sold their budget headsets at a loss just to introduce people to the platform.

    Fiivemacs ,

    No shit…the day my occulus rift got bought and whored out by Facebook was the day I stopped using it.

    dual_sport_dork ,
    @dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

    Mine too. My OG Rift is still sitting in a box in my basement. I don’t even feel right selling it on, since I’d just be saddling the next user with the same bullshit.

    It’s fine anyway, since for the purposes I use it for my Reverb is much better.

    banneryear1868 ,

    I kickstarted Oculus and I don’t even know where my CV1 is now. It was always a pain to use and made me motion sick, the immersive aspect could be cool but it was actually more of a pain being that closed off from your surroundings. The sensory immersion always seemed like a crutch for games that had no emotional or story component, or even good game mechanics, which is actually more important for immersion.

    It also didn’t provide a relaxing gaming experience for me. I like to sit back with a snack and a cup of tea and zone out on a game for a bit. With VR I either had to prepare beforehand, or have this weird thing where I had to remember where in the game world I had to reach to find my real world snack or drink. It’s also just an ordeal to take the thing on and off. A regular game just one button, go let my dog out, back in. VR it’s a chore just to get situated. None of them are comfortable for long term wear either, they all leave marks on your face, your eyes get hot in this weird way, it’s gross and distracting.

    sentient_loom ,
    @sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I never knew it existed. It sounds extremely stupid.

    sugartits ,

    VR today is what 3D TV was 10 years ago: the fad has peaked and now the sales are starting to decline.

    It will still have it’s niche, but people will be getting over it pretty soon.

    pineapplelover ,

    The fad will past much like with the invention of internet.

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    VR was the future of entertainment when I was still in college, and I graduated in the previous millennium.

    Blackmist ,

    It’s hard to compare the old Virtuality arcade machines to Half-Life: Alyx though. Just a shame that few games are really following Alyx into the future. It’s expensive to make a proper VR game (or indeed any big game), and the fact that there’s not an enormous number of headsets out there is hardly encouraging devs to make more.

    There’s other niches besides games. VR headsets would be pretty much the only way to watch 3D HFR movies at home, but nobody really seems interested in bringing them to the format. You can’t even get 3D 4K movies on Blu-ray. Plus wearing one for a three hour movie is likely to be tiresome.

    Modern VR has modern enemies, and those are price, space, and comfort.

    CaptainAniki ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Blackmist ,

    Well indeed.

    In terms of big full length walking around and shooting stuff VR exclusives, there’s pretty much just Alyx. Walking Dead Saints and Sinners is supposed to be decent. It’s in my library but I’ve never tried it.

    Plenty of smaller games like Beat Saber are fun and easy for anyone to pick up and play. They’ve got that Wii-appeal.

    Cockpit games like racing sims are an easy conversion. People have been raving about Gran Turismo VR.

    Astro-bot was decent but outside a few gimmicks there was nothing particularly VR special about it.

    It’s still in the enthusiast’s toy space right now. Not sure it will ever really get out of that phase at any price. It’s not something you go past in a shop and go wow, it’s something you have to try out, and in order to do that you’d already have to be vaguely interested in it.

    RaoulDook ,

    Blade & Sorcery, Into the Radius, Star Wars: Squadrons, Beat Saber, DCS World, Assetto Corsa (and several other racing sims), Battle Talent, Dragon Fist Kung Fu

    These are all awesome VR games that my kid and I play frequently on the Index.

    DemBoSain ,
    @DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

    I loved my 3D monitor when playing games like Fallout NV and Skyrim, because I could just sit down, put on some glasses, and play the game as normal. But I can’t get used to wearing a heavy, hot, giant pair of goggles to play a game. Plus the learning curve was entirely unnecessary, and the lack of any straight 3D support for existing games is unforgivable.

    oatscoop ,

    I’ve found the idea that modern VR is a “fad” comes from people with limited VR experience. It’s not their fault, since cheap consumer VR like the standalone quest headsets is mostly limited to what amounts to the equivalent of mobile games – they’re toys.

    I own a relatively expensive setup and have experienced the top tier of what consumer VR has to offer: it’s incredibly impressive. But that also highlights the issues. Quality consumer VR is expensive, fiddly, and currently has an extremely limited/niche number of worthwhile games and experiences.

    The reality is the current tech is really the first generation of practical consumer VR with capabilities beyond “headache inducing novelty”. It’ll never replace “2D”, it still needs to come down in price, but it’s hardly a “fad”.

    nosurprises ,

    I disagree. 3D TV is nothing compared to VR. VR is an absolutely incredible thing. It provided me the best gaming experience I’ve had in 19 years (from Hal-Life 2 to Half-Life Alyx) The issue is that you need a good headset and a very expensive hardware to enjoy it, few people can afford that. Because of that, there are not enough players and developers don’t want to spend money developing AAA-games for such a small market.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    Looking for the place so I can have my free, “literally” given away VR headset.

    dbilitated ,
    @dbilitated@aussie.zone avatar

    I find it so perplexing they released a “premium” version with barely improved resolution.

    JeffCraig ,

    The main problem with the Pro is that it completely fails at the thing it was primarily marketed for: AR passthrough.

    The cameras are so bad that when you use video passthrough, everything is blurry. It’s completely unusable. No one will ever use it for productivity tasks in its current form. Meta should have just focused on making a high end gaming version because they failed at making it usable for anything business related.

    exohuman ,
    @exohuman@programming.dev avatar

    The Quest 2 sells fine. The Quest Pro is for an audience that doesn’t exist at $1500. Also, Apple’s VR headset might as well not exist due to how expensive it is.

    sturmblast ,

    I didn’t even realize Apple had a VR headset

    iesou ,

    Ok I agree with all that sentiment, but in the article I only saw a $500 price drop, were they ever free or are you taking the world literally figuratively?

    moormaan ,

    It is referring to that Roblox developer conference. But yeah, somewhat click baity as people might be hoping to get one for cheap.

    WindowsEnjoyer ,

    Valve Index is much better device.

    Also Zucc can go fuck hinself. Maybe he will find a privacy, because he stores it in his asshole.

    raldone01 ,

    Your username makes this comment way funnier to me. 🤣

    WindowsEnjoyer ,

    BTW I use Arch 🤫🤫🤫

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