Not because there shouldn't be legitimate concerns about VR, but because it's pointing to Facebook execution fail as the only thing that matters to the success of the metaverse, and it's expecting that the timeline should have been further along by now.
Facebook has always built mediocre products. Its strength is in acquiring or copying good ones, and then jacking the internal engineering on them up to 11.
Apple is seen as putting out good products, but they put out the Newton, ROKR, and even internally designed the iPad before they released the iPhone. There is time to build a good product, and chances are, Facebook won't be the one to build it.
And yet - first year iPhone sales and first year Quest 2 sales are somewhat on par. There's reason for optimism, or at least not heavy pessimism, yet.
I'd also point out that a huge number of disruptive technologies that succeeded where other had failed did so because of... content.
It's effectively impossible to buy sufficient content to meet AAA platform expectations these days. Because you're competing against incredibly competent, experienced, and well-stocked legacy alternatives.
Consequently, either (a) "upgrading" an existing deep pool of legacy content (Google search, iPhone/web) or (b) turning every user into a content producer (Facebook, TikTok) have very good chances of success.
And finally, to call out a fundamental blind spot: if Facebook doesn't lose, they win.
Everyone pretends Facebook needs to win the VR market. They don't. They just need to keep enough of an eye on it that they aren't blindsided by a competitor, and then scale up their engineering once a seed appears successful. Their size, revenue, and ubiquity will win by default.
If FB has 100 engineers working on VR for 20 years with nothing to show for it, but that allows them to ramp up when something magic finally happens (right hardware breakthrough, etc), then that's FB money well spent.
Re: comment aging poorly - somewhere on this site there's a really old comment of mine saying I couldn't believe Facebook didn't accept the Microsoft buy-out offer. I correctly predicted the then-soon coming backlash against Facebook and that they would become "uncool", but I failed to predict that that wouldn't impede Facebook much as a business nor lead to the mass exodus of users.
The question is whether or not this is even a category that will ever be more than a niche. What value does this kind of VR environment really provide beyond its novelty, and is this something that the average person actually wants? I am not so sure about that, and history is full of technologies that sound cool on paper, but have limited use in practice.
Consider, for example, the repeated attempts at making 3D televisions a thing. It keeps popping up every couple of years, then people figure out that they don't really need it, and it fades away again. This kind of VR technology could very well be the same. Even 3D gaming remains a niche despite some serious attempts by major players to turn it into something more than a gimmick.
Not because there shouldn't be legitimate concerns about VR, but because it's pointing to Facebook execution fail as the only thing that matters to the success of the metaverse, and it's expecting that the timeline should have been further along by now.
Facebook has always built mediocre products. Its strength is in acquiring or copying good ones, and then jacking the internal engineering on them up to 11.
Apple is seen as putting out good products, but they put out the Newton, ROKR, and even internally designed the iPad before they released the iPhone. There is time to build a good product, and chances are, Facebook won't be the one to build it.
And yet - first year iPhone sales and first year Quest 2 sales are somewhat on par. There's reason for optimism, or at least not heavy pessimism, yet.