“Meta Quest Pro is up for pre-order today—for $1499.99.”
After watching a lot of mobile phone manufacturers’ conferences, the announcement of prices is often the highlight. Whether it’s a high-end Apple, or a “one-man show” by Lei Jun, Yu Chengdong, and Luo Yonghao, everyone’s routine is similar – blow a wave of products, put a question mark on the price on the ppt, pause for a few seconds, announce the price, and then applaud from the audience. thunder.
I’m used to such a scene. At the Meta Connect conference last night, when Mark Zuckerberg said “$1499” calmly and coherently with a robot-like speech rate, you would have thought that he was just introducing the head. A trivial new material for nose pads. A second later, when the price of $1,499 was printed on the PPT, you realized that the most unexpected scene appeared in the speech of more than an hour.
Meta’s previous generation product, the Quest 2, is priced at $399 ($299 before this year’s price increase). Overseas analysts and technology media have already expected a price increase for the Quest Pro, but the general forecast is $600-800, even if the wildest The prediction of this product is that the price of this product may exceed 1,000 US dollars, but no one can think that the final price will be as high as 1,500 US dollars. On this level, Zuckerberg slapped all analysts and technology media.
Such pricing is unexpected, but the logic behind it is actually not complicated. The positioning of Quest and Quest 2 is for ordinary consumer users, and the price of three or four hundred dollars needs to be subsidized by Meta’s own pocket – this has long been no secret in the industry. The Quest Pro, which has the same price as the top iPhone 14 Pro, is obviously not a “toy” for ordinary consumers, but for enterprise users and a small number of XR enthusiasts who are not bad money.
This can also be verified in the usage scenarios highlighted by Zuckerberg. At the meeting, Zuckerberg pushed the XR office, and even announced a cooperation with Microsoft to jointly explore the work scene in the metaverse world. In an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg said, “If I could give all of our engineers a piece of equipment that would increase their productivity by 3%, I would definitely spend that $1,500.”
Enterprise users are indeed not bad at $1,500, but it is still unknown how many enterprises are willing to pay for XR like an office computer. The last mixed reality giant to take the high-end ToB route was Microsoft, and both generations of HoloLens cost more than $3,000. According to data analyzed by the outside world, the first-generation products released in 2016 have only sold about 50,000 units so far, while the second-generation products have been released for three years, and the cumulative sales are about 200,000 units.
Microsoft, the “number one player” in the enterprise market, has done this. Meta has embarked on this old road, where is the confidence?
01 “The best VR device so far”
As soon as the price of Quest Pro came out, the comment area of the live broadcast platform was in an uproar. Some netizens questioned: “The price is very different from expectations, and the upgrade is not 4 times worse than Quest2.”
Zuckerberg positioned the target audience at this price as “people who want the best VR equipment”. Unlike the previous Oculus series, the Meta Quest Pro is a high-end headset product positioned as a productivity tool. ” If I could give all of our engineers a piece of equipment that would increase their productivity by 3%, I would definitely spend $1,500,” Zuckerberg said in a talk published by The Verge.
On the Quest Pro, the Meta stacks pretty much the best hardware and technology available in an XR device today.
First of all, the biggest upgrade of the Quest Pro this time is the “full color transmission function”, that is, the use of four cameras outside the device to capture the external space and display it to the user wearing the device, superimposing the digital content on the user’s reality. In order to provide a mixed reality experience, users can observe the surrounding physical environment in full color, combine the real physical environment with virtual elements to socialize, work and collaborate, and build a more three-dimensional mixed reality world.
MetaQuest Pro
This is also Meta’s first full-color mixed reality device, and on the previous Quest 2, users could only use Passthrough to view the world outside the device in black and white.
In terms of optical imaging, compared to Quest 2, Quest Pro uses a more advanced pancake lens (pancake), which can reduce the weight of the device. In addition, the device’s interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment range is 55-75 mm, allowing users to get a better visual experience and reduce eye fatigue. The latest VR LCD display technology gives Quest Pro a 25% increase in full-field visual clarity in the center view, 50% in the peripheral area and 1.3 times the color gamut compared to the Meta Quest 2.
On the processor, the Quest Pro uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chip with 10 advanced VR/MR sensors, spatial audio, 256GB of storage space, and 12GB of RAM. Both controllers are also equipped with a Snapdragon 662 processor and three cameras.
At the same time, the headset’s internal sensors can also provide facial expression capture and eye tracking, which means that when the user raises an eyebrow, grins, or even makes eye contact, the avatar’s avatar does the same.
But more powerful features also brought new problems: battery life has shrunk significantly. Compared to the 2-3 hours of battery life on the Quest 2 headset, the battery life of the Quest Pro headset is reduced to 1-2 hours. For target users – “enthusiasts, industrial consumers and those trying to get work done”, this It is difficult to satisfy them with battery life.
But this “best VR device” at this time still makes a lot of sense. For Meta, this high-end device can complement the product line and mark the concept of “VR is the next generation of PC”. Meta executives previously revealed in a media briefing that they plan to start selling the Quest Pro in consumer channels, while adding enterprise-level features such as mobile device management, authentication and advanced support services over the next year, Reuters reported. They say the device is designed to complement rather than replace the entry-level Quest 2, which costs $399.99.
But such a high price does not mean that Meta wants to use the hardware to make money. In the interview, Zuckerberg said, “It’s fair to say that we charge more for equipment than we put into equipment, but if you take everything in research and development into account, it’s impossible to calculate. Our overall strategy is not about Make money on hardware, but let it help grow the ecosystem, and the business model will be based on software and services.”
For the entire VR hardware industry, all aspects of this product also represent the best level that the VR industry can currently put into the market, giving the market a “sample”.
02Marriage with Microsoft to create a more realistic virtual office
The office scene is one of the key contents of the Meta Connect conference, and it is also the direction that Zuckerberg has been working hard to promote since he announced the name change to Meta for a year.
In the introduction of VR office, the biggest easter egg is the appearance of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. These two companies that are competing in the metaverse suddenly joined forces to create a new office in the metaverse. Scenes.
Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella said that in the past period of time, Microsoft has had thousands of people working in Horizon Worlds and using Microsoft services. Microsoft wants to bring some work collaboration apps to the Quest VR device.
In the future, migrant workers can access Microsoft suites through Quest devices – Microsoft applications, including Team’s chat application, Microsoft 365 work software suite and the company’s Xbox cloud gaming service, etc., making VR devices a productivity in the new generation of Internet tool.
In addition, Nadella said that he is looking forward to the linkage between Xbox and Quest. Xbox Cloud Gaming will introduce Quest, allowing players to use the Xbox controller to play these console 2D games in the VR headset by projection. Although it is still in the early stage, Xbox’s entry into Quest through cloud gaming will bring a broad imagination to the content ecology of VR games.
Another big productivity tool in the PC era, Adobe is also embracing VR . It is reported that Adobe will launch a set of online VR design tools, users only need to use the handle of Quest Pro to create 3D.
Quest Pro Adobe VR Design
Horizon Workrooms, previously launched by Meta, is a free VR remote collaboration application and Meta’s first Metaverse office suite. However, Horizon Workrooms at that time was complained about “spiritual” because the virtual avatar only had the upper body. Now it will finally have legs. Although there are more details, there is still room for improvement in the accuracy of the virtual avatar.
At the meeting, Zuckerberg demonstrated his new image with legs, which is achieved by building an artificial intelligence model to predict the position of the entire body. Horizon will be upgraded next year, but the specific launch time of the full-body image avatar is undecided.
Zuckerberg shows off full-body avatar
In addition, Meta has added more features to Horizon Workrooms, such as joining Horizon Workrooms (launching in 2023) via the video conferencing service Zoom.
However, some netizens asked: “Why not use Zoom directly?”
The answer to that question, why to use 3D office software and even everything else in 3D, Zuckerberg has repeatedly mentioned in various places throughout the year.
In an interview released today, Zuckerberg mentioned, “When you’re on a Zoom call on your phone, your brain doesn’t imagine you’re with them, you obviously know you’re in another room. But the magic of VR is that , it basically instantly convinces your brain that you’re in another place, with the people there. We’re focused on the real presence that VR and AR provide, and no other technology can do that.” Kerberg believes that working with the PC version of Zoom will be completely different from the VR version.
Horizon Workrooms virtual office scene
In the future, avatars will be available in more applications. In addition to the currently supported Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, more applications such as Zoom will be added in the future. It will also be animated through such as Reels. The Avatars Store, which will launch in VR later this year, is scheduled to partner with real-life clothing and sports brands. Avatars will also offer more body shapes and more realistic skin shaders to choose from.
In the technical presentation that followed, Meta also showed the latest progress of Codec Avatars 2.0. Not only do avatars have more realistic and vivid facial expressions, so they can understand each other through micro-expressions and tone of voice when socializing, and they can even control lighting.
With the Instant Codec Avatars, which are being developed, it is possible to generate such a detailed virtual avatar in a few hours by simply scanning the face from different angles with a smartphone, and then scanning various expressions, and this time will be further shortened in the future.
03 Meta Ecology: Social, Gaming, Fitness
Although this year’s focus is on the office scene, Meta introduced the latest developments in the consumer content ecosystem at the meeting.
Meta showed some new data on the performance of its games on the Quest Store, including the Quest Store with more than $1.5 billion in cumulative revenue from games and apps; more than a third of its 400 Quest games with more than $1 million in total sales, 33 of those games have grossed more than $10 million in total…
The VR games on Oculus have already been out of the circle to a certain extent, such as the previous Beat Saber and Walkabout Mini Golf, etc., and have accumulated some loyal players.
The game is obviously the direction that must be exerted to let more people enter the VR world. At the conference, Meta also announced a series of upcoming new VR games, including many high-profile big IPs, such as the Marvel series Iron Man, which was previously exclusive to PS VR, and the once-popular werewolf killing game “We Werewolf”. Among Us, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, and the new game Behemoth.
Iron Man VR
Meta also announced the addition of three game studios to Oculus Studio, including acquired Armature Studio, creators of Resident Evil 4, and Iron Man VR and Road to Warrior developers Camoflaj Team and Twisted Pixel.
Based on the fact that VR devices are more flexible than PCs, the VR fitness direction is also favored by platforms such as Meta and PICO. This time Meta aimed at this demand and released more fitness applications.
Meta has released its first $69.99 fitness accessory pack, the Meta Quest 2 Active Pack, which includes a new wipeable head-worn facial interface, an extra set of wrist straps, and new adjustable knuckle straps for users to use with their Quest fitness train. Meta Quest’s built-in fitness tracker Move is also launched, which allows users to view their exercise time, calories burned, etc. in VR on their mobile phones, and can also be integrated with Health in Apple’s mobile phones.
In the fitness space, Meta said they will also release a new Fitness API beta for select developers this fall, allowing more people to build fitness content for the Quest platform.
Basketball VR
In addition, Meta has launched a number of VR fitness classes and games, of which Basketball VR can be played with up to six people online.
In social, Meta’s old fashioned line, Andrew Bosworth, principal of the Metaverse business, believes that VR is also social. “Now on the Quest platform, VR social software such as “VR chat” and “Youtube VR” are being loved by users,” said Andrew, who is in charge of the Metaverse business. “When your friends come to your Metaverse home, You can open Youtube VR with your friends and watch related videos.”
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