Meta Officially Discontinues Quest Pro, Its First (and most expensive) Mixed Reality Headset

I don’t know if the path is self-sustainable, though. No one’s arguing that the Quest is the dominant VR platform. Given how much money Meta has put into it, it would be weird if it weren’t. But it’s not clear to me that Meta’s place in the market is so solid that they can’t be dethroned if they turn off the money hose.

I have a large library of games on their store thanks to a referral system that I and others frankly abused for hundreds of dollars in free games, but if someone released a better headset and store, it wouldn’t stop me from switching. I might hang onto the Quest until I was bored with those games, but I would still switch. The real driver of sustainable XR adoption in the future is going to be everyday AR, and I’m not convinced that Meta is going to win that battle, or that their $100B investment into the opening act of gaming-focused VR is going to pay off. They’ve been very good at hardware design and aggressive pricing, but their leadership decisions (like the Quest Pro) show a lack of vision, and Meta’s AR efforts are tied to Microsoft, whose software efforts haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory lately.

Working with Microsoft ensures failure because as soon as they don't see a 300% on their investment in a couple quarters they will completely pull out.

It's been a threat to Apple and Google enough that they both decided they could not sit on the sidelines anymore.

Yes but even apple who usually have a good sense and is able to create new trends, sort of didn't met it's usual standards.

It seems the potential that enthousiasts see in VR isn't translating well to mortals yet.
Sort of like how only nerds, scientists and army could see the point of the first computers.

I've been waiting for VR since the 90's, and when usable HMDs finally appeared a few years ago, I was sure it would take the world by storm, because this was obviously the medium of the future I had been dreaming about for decades.

And then I was completely baffled when that didn't happen, and the world just didn't care. I must have demoed VR to hundreds of people, all of which were wowed, but almost none ever got a HMD themselves. Very few even asked later if they could try it again. Instead mobile games, the probably least immersive form of video games with the most simplified input played on a display covering ~6° of the horizontal FoV took over more than 50% of all gaming revenue within a few years, and much more of the total play time.

So something didn't work out. I am actually very disappointed that those few who care about VR are mostly interested in games, while for me VR was always primarily a brain enhancement tool. But at some point I realized that the enourmous potential of VR I still have in my head is only loosely related to what is currently possible, or to what most people are looking for from any technology, which is mostly help with practical use cases, and convenience without requiring a lot of effort.

I think VR is great because of what I expect it (one day) could do, while most people only look at what it currently actually does, which (unless you value immersion way more than most) isn't a lot besides a wow effect that quickly wears of with miserable ergonomics. So my own positive view includes a lot of projection not really based on the current state of the technology. Which is why I don't see a paradigm shift or even (un-)typical inertia when adapting something new: people have always embraced new technology once it became good enough to improve their lives, and all the technologies listed above were established that way, first by a few willing to go the extra mile, and only later by the masses, once all the rough edges were gone and the use both obvious and effortless.

And VR simply isn't there yet, or anywhere close go it. It's still mostly a fancy toy for the more nerdy part of the population with seemingly endless potential, but currently only very limited practical use. The big mistake we inside the VR bubble make is insisting that the already available benefits are enough, when in reality they only matter for a rather small group of future oriented enthusiasts. For the vast majority VR simply doesn't offer enough yet to be worth the hassle. IMHO we are the anomaly, the rest of the world that can't be bothered with VR so far are the ones doing a more realistic cost/benefit evaluation based on their own priorities.

We are still in the gramophone phase with a total of ten records availabe that tend to break after a few uses despite the required huge investment in money, effort and space. Still a huge improvement over the wax covered cylinders used in phonographs, but not yet as user friendly as vinyl records with electric amplifiers with speakers, idiot proof as CDs or as convenient as iPods. And for a lot of people VR will only become interesting once it becomes lile Spotify: its just there and works everywhere without ever having to worry what's going on in the background.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.