https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/02/bright-spots-in-the-vr-market/
Virtual reality is in a public relations slump. Two years ago the public’s expectations for virtual reality’s potential was at its peak.
But still today the holistic VR experience is still a non-starter for most people.
Can we extrapolate beyond the current state of affairs to a magnificent future where the utility of virtual reality technology is pervasive?
2 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Snap says more than 170M+ people access AR features daily and updates its AR platform with voice search, geography-specific Local Lenses, and SnapML — Snapchat’s augmented reality dreams might be starting to look a bit more realistic. — The company has been subtly improving …
Snapchat boosts its AR platform with voice search, Local Lenses and SnapML
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/snapchat-boosts-its-ar-platform-with-voice-search-local-lenses-and-snapml/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The pandemic has probably killed VR arcades for good
https://tcrn.ch/3hvnoSH
A lagging trend of the past few months has been witnessing startups that COVID seemed poised to kill end up scaling back some of those deep cuts and taking off again. Not all spaces have been quite so lucky, in particular, lately we’ve seen a host of location-based virtual reality startups shut their doors.
Virtual reality arcades weren’t exactly crushing it pre-pandemic, the small industry was already a bit of a Hail Mary for the virtual reality market which has failed to push consumers to adopt headsets on their own and saw arcades as a way to warm up the general public to VR’s role in entertainment. Lackluster consumer interest and the throughput difficulties associated with quickly moving users through experiences were among their biggest challenges facing VR arcades.
With the future of in-person entertainment unclear, the question is whether virtual reality arcades have any chance of a rebound.
Virtual reality, as an industry, is in a tough spot. In the United States, it’s essentially only Facebook keeping the space alive in a meaningful way and while the company seems to be barreling ahead in its efforts to build a mainstream future for the technology on its own terms. Earlier this summer, Facebook announced that it was pulling its top-selling title Beat Saber from arcades for good by August. Since the acquisition of Oculus back in 2014, the ecosystem that sprang up around Facebook’s VR efforts has receded meaningfully leaving the company in a lonely position once again.