Crossroads in the Metaverse
Meta CEO Talks Apple’s Opposing AR/VR Philosophy
27 JULY 2022 - The future of the metaverse took a couple of interesting turns on Tuesday - one rhetorical, the other dealing with economics. On the rhetorical side, a piece from The Verge had Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg participating in a question and answer session about the future of the metaverse. Last month, a number of tech companies including Microsoft and Meta and not including Roblox and Apple founded an open standards group, meant to increase platform interoperability for realities augmented and virtual. Writing of the new organization in June, another piece from The Verge said:
The Metaverse Standards Forum is supposed to foster open, interoperable standards for augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D tech.
Apple’s absence from the org raised a question Tuesday from one of Zuckerberg’s employees: “How does that affect Oculus and our ecosystem?”
The CEO began his answer saying, “I think it’s pretty clear that Apple is going to be a competitor for us, not just as a product but philosophically.” The philosophical difference - the open approach being taken by Facebook and the Standards Forum versus the closed approach Apple is practically bound to take. According to Zuckerberg:
This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating that they build a better consumer experience. And we believe that there is a lot to be done in specialization across different companies, and [that] will allow a much larger ecosystem to exist.
I will say, if we believe what we’ve heard about Apple’s AR/VR philosophy, a closed system makes sense. Early in 2022, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said he’d been told that:
…the idea of a completely virtual world where users can escape to — like they can in Meta Platforms/Facebook’s vision of the future — is off limits from Apple.
Apple was said to be targeting “bursts of gaming, communication, and content consumption,” not “an all-day device.” If the play is not for a metaverse, interoperability may not be as big a deal.
The other interesting thing about Zuckerberg’s answer - while he obviously thinks his approach is the right one, he can’t say so for sure. Two lines stick out on that: “…it’s not really clear upfront whether an open or closed ecosystem is going to be better,” and, “…I just don’t think that the future is written here yet for the metaverse.”
Making a Harder Time for VR Hardware
On the same day Zuckerberg wonders over the meta-future, his company may have done something to mess up its chances. Meta announced higher prices on the way for it Oculus hardware on Tuesday. In a statement on Twitter, the company said:
In order to continue investing in moving the VR industry forward for the long term, we are adjusting the price of Meta Quest 2 headsets to $399.99 (128GB) and $499.99 (256GB) starting on 8/1/22.
Hard to blame them #InThisEconomy. But one industry watcher thinks the move could screw them up. Responding to the announcement, TF International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo hit Twitter, saying:
The more-affordable price had been a critical competitive advantage for the Quest 2 vs. competitors. Since Meta's VR ecosystem is still insufficient to attract users, the price hike of Quest may hurt the demand and its hardware supply chain shipments.
