Meta changed his name because he wanted you to forever associate him with the nascent metaverse. The hardware it produces is meant to be our window into that metaverse. When you pick up a Meta Quest 2 headset and put it on your head, you must gasp and gently marvel at this new virtual world. But I put on my Meta Quest 2 to play beat saber either tetris or maybe pistol whip. It’s not a terminal in the metaverse, it’s a game console. And I don’t think Meta realizes that.
Earlier this week, my well-known colleague Alex Heath reported on Meta’s VR and AR headset roadmap. There are smart glasses that sound virtually identical to those made by North in 2019, only Meta’s will be controlled via the neural interface when they launch in two years. There’s a wildly ambitious AR headset codenamed Orion that will apparently “project high-quality avatar holograms into the real world” and is set to launch in 2027. These projects are big, expensive changes for Meta and its pivot into the metaverse, and that should be exciting. Just late last year, we got our first big Metaverse change, the then-$1,499 Meta Quest Pro. The product was an absolute waste of a device. accompanying software, world horizon, it’s so bad that even the people who do it don’t want to use it. That software is supposed to be the gateway to the metaverse. If it sucks, the Meta version of the metaverse is pretty stagnant.
But as bad as Meta is in the metaverse so far, the company is very, very good at VR. Of course, VR is supposed to be a component of the metaverse, but judging by its existing product lineup, that’s not the part Meta is good at. It’s good for making a console that people want to play on. According the edgeMeta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabkin’s own report, told staff that Meta has sold more than 20 million Quest headsets thus far. That includes both Quest and Quest 2. IDC has previously estimated Meta has sold around 15 million Quest 2 headsets, which probably means that the Quest 2 makes up the largest share of headsets sold. That seems like a small number, but the Nintendo GameCube has only sold 21 million consoles in its entire lifespan, and the Xbox Series X and S are estimated to have sold roughly 20 million consoles so far.
So if you look at Quest 2, which most people use to play games, as a game console, it’s reasonably well done. And I think we should see it as a game console. Meta might have big ambitions for VR headsets and their place in the metaverse, but the reality is that the best software in Quest 2 is all the games. Early adopters of VR in the consumer space buy headsets to play games. Devices like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR (which sold about 5 million headphones by 2020) were adopted by consumers for playing video games, not for playing in a barely built metaverse.
And the push for the Quest 2 to be a metaverse device hasn’t resonated particularly well with consumers. Rabkin told staff that “unfortunately, the newer cohorts that are coming in, the people who bought it last Christmas, are just not as interested” as early adopters. Those early adopters were eager to game, and that’s what they saw when they put the headset on. New users see ads for things like worlds horizonwhich again is a mess, even the people who make it don’t want to play it.
And while Meta is pushing metaverse experiences to users, it’s ignoring that core audience of gamers and not doing much to build it. beat saber, arguably the flagship VR app, is four years old, and no other VR game has really captured the spirit of the times in a similar way. People don’t watch their friends play great games like pistol whip and run out and buy a Quest 2. If they did, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. The platform does not have Super Mario Bros. either The last of us driving adoption.
Steam and Sony are well aware that killer AAA gaming experiences are necessary for a VR platform. That’s why we have great titles like Half Life: Alyx and Mountain Horizon Call. They are invested in the software as much as the hardware. Goal is not. He has bought many studios (including beat saber‘s) and then did things like announce the two-year game release on Meta Connect or shut down the servers for one of the first multiplayer hits on the platform. That last one was such an upsetting move that former Meta VR evangelist John Carmack publicly rebuked the company in a Blog:
Even if there are only ten thousand active users, destroying that user value should be avoided if possible. Your company suffers more damage when you take away something dear to a user than it gains in benefit by providing something equally valuable to them or others.
Carmack’s words are not only notable because he is the former CTO of consulting at Meta. He also helped build the video game industry and created massive and lasting hits like Condemn, Earthquakeand Wolfenstein 3D. Unlike Meta, Carmack seems to understand that telling people you’re going to take away their games to free up bandwidth to work in a metaverse that nobody wants yet is a bad idea.
And boy, do I wish Meta would understand because right now, it’s working on its third Quest headset, and if it were a gaming company, it might realize that it’s about to make the same mistake that other tech companies that moved on made. to game consoles.
The PS3’s launch price was so high that it cost Sony crucial ground in its war against the Xbox 360, and in the US, that meant the Xbox 360 won that generation’s console war. Quest 3 is expected to follow suit, costing more than its predecessor at launch. While Meta hasn’t announced a price for the Quest 3, Rabkin told staff that it was expected to cost consumers “a little more” money than the Quest 2 currently costs. The Quest 2, by the way, actually it costs more now than it did at launch. So while a base model of the Quest 2 initially started at $299, the Quest 3 will cost upwards of $399 at launch.
Meta hopes to explain that price increase by showing all the great features of Quest 3 compared to Quest 2. “We have to show people that all this power, all these new features are worth it,” Rabkin told staff. And according to the presentation that he did, which my colleague Alex Heath reported on, the plan is to show that with mixed reality. “The main north star for the team was from the moment you put this headset on, mixed reality has to make it feel better, easier, more natural.”
That plan to focus on something new and different instead of the games that made the console thrive is very similar to what Microsoft did when it launched Xbox One. That device came with an IR blaster! It had a coax line so you could use it as a cable box. Microsoft launched the Xbox One as a home theater computer that also played games. And gamers just went and bought the Playstation 4 instead.
If the goal is to grow the audience for mixed reality rather than a more expensive console focused on less-proven experiences, then gaming is unlikely to achieve that, especially considering that your current big, expensive mixed-reality headsets are doing the trick. very badly. is dropping its price just five months after launch. A fourth headset is expected in 2024 that will ideally “make the biggest impact we can at the most attractive price point in the consumer VR market,” Rabkin said. But in 2023, it looks like we’ll be stuck with a very expensive game console that wants to take us on a journey that most people aren’t interested in yet.
