“I do think that one day there will be much cheaper headsets,” Ye says of HTC’s efforts. They did a fine job getting some version of virtual reality into a lot of hands, but when that experience isn’t a particularly good one, it’s easy to imagine those people writing off paying a lot more money for VR in the future. One can credibly make the argument that these things ultimately did more harm than good. The market has been flooded with low-cost VR solutions for years, from Google Cardboard/Daydream to Samsung Gear VR to thousands of products and companies you’ve never heard of. The “race to the bottom” he’s referring to here is precisely that main talking point connected to mainstream adoption: price. People who want a good experience are stuck with these products that are racing to the bottom.” “They want something portable, but they want something better. “To this day, people still want a Switch Pro,” he tells TechCrunch.
LEAP MOTION GOOGLE CARDBOARD PRO
Ye compares potential buyers to gamers who have been patiently - and frustratingly - awaiting the arrival of a pro version of Nintendo’s popular convertible console There’s a lot of money to be made selling product to businesses - certainly more than currently appears to be kicking around for pure consumer plays.
Even more so is the fact that the company made an outright pivot into enterprise. Leap Motion’s well-publicized struggles are a decent barometer here. “This is for an audience that wants an upgraded experience,” Shen Ye, the company’s senior director, global head of Product said in an interview with TechCrunch, “gamers and just people who want a good headset that is comfortable.”Īt this point in the evolutionary process, it might be unfair to put the bar for success at an XR headset in every home. At $1,099, it’s a few hundred dollars less expensive than Meta’s Quest Pro but still way too expensive to see it as some kind of breakthrough for the industry at large. It means being okay with remaining a relative niche - a far cry from the Taiwanese manufacturer’s high-flying days as a phone maker - while chipping away at those big granite boulders standing between it and the general public.įor HTC, the Vive XR Elite was the star of the show. In the meantime, that means focusing on a core audience. It’s the recognition that - in spite of years of hearing otherwise - true mainstream adoption is still some ways off.
Both of these factors are moving in the right direction, certainly, but there’s a big, open question around whether they’re doing so at a fast enough clip to hit a critical mass in this iteration of the perennial hype cycle.
Good VR is still prohibitively expensive. I believe that most of the people who try these technologies in this context get it, but there are currently far too many barriers to getting these products on most people’s faces. Strap on a headset and feel the show floor slip away for a minute or two. There’s something about the technology that feels warm and welcoming, after a long day on your feet, glad handing your way across Las Vegas venues. I was dazzled by a few demos but ultimately left wondering what form a true mainstreaming of AR/VR might ultimately take - if it ever actually takes such a form at all. Strong presences from Meta, Magic Leap, Sony and HTC led the way at this year’s CES, with hundreds of startups picking up the rear. But then, they all seem to be, these days.
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