alt Hacker NewsIt’s premature to say that the idea failed; The flashy controversial “metaverse” angle where you can live your whole life on the Quest or whatever isn’t happening, but their investment into AR/VR has definitely started to show real payoff potential with their glasses.
They address the friction of use issue being discussed, they’re even more discrete and available than a phone. And they are getting a lot of general public recognition, albeit not for the best reasons (people discretely filming, for genuine social media reactions but also for other reasons..).
Their tech is improving at a decent pace and they’ve recently put out a product that is both ready for consumer (at least with select use cases) adoption, and actually reasonably available to the public.
I don’t mean that VR failed entirely, just that the metaverse as a concept is basically dead. VR will live on in the niches where it makes sense.
If you’re talking about the Meta Ray Ban glasses, I wouldn’t really call that a successor. There’s no AR or VR to them that I can tell; just glasses with speakers, a mic and a camera. It’s a neat product, but not a platform in the way VR was meant to be. They also have real competition. I do actually own a pair of the Bose headphone sunglasses, which are practically the same product without a camera (which I’m sure they could add if they wanted). Unless people suddenly care about the Meta AI integration, and again; Bose or someone else could add a phone companion app.