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No matter how cool the story is, it is difficult to maintain the enthusiasm of capital
Writer/Meteor Editor/Li Wenjie
Source: Zinc Scale
From the current point of view, people’s previous expectations for the metaverse are indeed too high.
In 2021, the sandbox game community Roblox will be listed, and the concept of the metaverse will become a popular spicy chicken. A year later, Robox’s share price halved, and Facebook, which renamed Metaverse Meta, also showed signs of exhaustion. Its second-quarter results fell short of expectations, and its share price fell again and again. In addition, some domestic companies that have previously smashed the popularity of the Metaverse have almost lost their voices this year, and even some companies have even reported economic disputes with their employees.
In just one year, the concept of the metaverse has changed from top-tier to non-accessible. The reason behind this is actually not complicated – it is simply that it cannot make an actual product.
The metaverse concept is cool to talk about, but not easy to do. For example, Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, publicly pointed out at the third quarter financial report meeting last year that no single company has enough content production capacity to complete the products involved in the metaverse concept, and the social system and internal ecosystem involved in the metaverse concept. And other content, “it can’t be done in a few months, or even a year or two.”
If you can’t make “dry goods”, no matter how cool the story is, it is difficult to maintain the enthusiasm of capital. As the metaverse craze receded, industries previously associated with the concept of the metaverse were also in a dilemma—for example, the VR industry, which is considered to be a ticket to the metaverse world in the future.
The Black Shark that was abandoned for acquisition, VR is not the outlet
Speaking of which, when it comes to VR recently, domestic consumers may immediately think of the gaming phone brand Black Shark.
In early October, media broke the news that Black Shark was significantly reducing the number of jobs, with a layoff ratio of nearly 50%, most of which belonged to VR projects.
As for why Black Shark’s wave of layoffs has to bear the brunt of the newly established VR project this year, some media linked it to Tencent’s cancellation of the acquisition of Black Shark, which was reported earlier this year, and believed that Black Shark was in the process of switching to VR. , The situation of hardware research and development failed to satisfy Tencent, which eventually led Tencent to abandon the acquisition of Black Shark, which in turn caused Black Shark’s current large layoffs.
Such a statement is relatively credible. As a trend-setter in the domestic Internet track, Tencent did not miss last year’s “Metaverse First Year”, engaging in NFTs, engaging in Metaverse games, and spending a fortune on the track. Some media even went back to review Tencent’s investment behavior according to the definition of Metaverse, and counted a large sum of nearly 7 billion yuan.
In 2021, VR is considered to be one of the technologies most likely to realize the concept of virtual life in the metaverse. It is not uncommon for Tencent, which is busy “buying, buying, buying” in the metaverse field to invest or acquire companies in the corresponding field. thing.
In fact, last year Tencent tried to acquire PICO, a VR equipment company, but it failed in the end, and the transformation of Black Shark into VR only happened last year. The game between Tencent and Black Shark on the acquisition is indeed very likely to be related to VR. related.
Of course, as to whether Tencent gave up the acquisition of Black Shark because Black Shark’s VR products failed to enter Tencent’s eyes, or because Tencent has a new strategy for entering the Metaverse hardware, we still can’t know the details. But obviously, the cancellation of this acquisition plan is a big blow to Black Shark’s VR business.
The timing of Black Shark’s entry into VR is not very good. It is just in time for the Metaverse fire. At the juncture of the big manufacturers adding more VR tracks one by one, Black Shark itself has no technical accumulation. It has been engaged in VR for more than a year. I didn’t come up with a VR product, but I managed to build an AR glasses RokidAir while sticking to the Yuan Universe. There are also a series of problems such as blurred vision, insufficient AR space functions, and polarized appearance evaluations – of course, the most important thing is that the price is not beautiful. The price of 3,000 yuan is more than the next-door VR all-in-one Oculus quest2. Considering that most consumers do not have high demand for AR applications, if they really want to choose, people will definitely prefer to choose the one with better experience and richer functions. VR equipment.
Black Shark AR ProductsNow, Tencent cancels the acquisition plan, which makes Black Shark lose financial assistance, and the follow-up products of RokidAir, and even Black Shark’s VR products, may be in vain. Even if Black Shark abandons VR and returns to its main business, its main “game phone” has gradually become a false proposition. On the whole, the prospect of Black Shark is probably not optimistic.
Speaking of which, in the past two years, Black Shark is not the only company that has been blocked on the VR track. For example, the well-known technology giant Apple, its VR/AR business can be described as ill-fated. There have been many news of disbanding the team and suspending the project, and seeing that the new VR product Reality Pro will come out to kill the prestige of Meta’s Quest Pro As a result, it was suddenly revealed that the news will be postponed to 2023, which has led to repeated reductions in consumers’ psychological expectations. Now, we only hope that Apple’s new VR products can finally be launched smoothly.
While VR once dominated HTC, in recent years, under the impact of new VR products such as Quest2 and Neo3, it has also shown a decline. According to the statistics of VR devices on the Steam platform, in 2020, the number of users using Oculus devices will exceed the number of users of HTC Vive. In 2021, the active users of HTC Vive will shrink by about 10%. Although HTC is still cultivating the VR track to enhance the convenience and computing power of VR devices, it is obvious that there is no way to restore HTC immediately. declining market share.
From Black Shark to Apple to HTC, these examples undoubtedly point to the reality that VR is not the outlet, and no one (at least so far) can rely on VR to achieve so-called “curve” overtaking. The attention of the company has attracted the attention of VR, but if the manufacturer can’t patiently solve the stubborn ailments that VR has not cured so far, then no matter how hot the track is, it will only be a temporary “return to the light”.
Content is the last word, but don’t worry about VR office
It has been 66 years since cinematographer Morton Heilig created the first immersive virtual reality device, Sensorama, in 1956. However, at a time when the “younger” smartphones have dominated the world, VR still can’t get out of the niche circle, which is really emotional.
The problems faced by VR can basically be summed up in the sentence “What do I buy VR for?”
At present, most consumers buy VR equipment mainly to watch VR video resources, and secondly to play VR games. However, from the perspective of watching movies and games, VR is quite attractive. limited. In fact, the most attractive thing about VR is the function of building virtual reality in digital space, which is also an important reason why VR can act as the “spokesperson” of the metaverse.
However, the reality of people’s actual life integrates many elements such as social interaction, work, entertainment, consumption, etc., and it is still difficult to integrate these contents in the VR space of VR products at present. Just like Chen Rui’s evaluation of the Metaverse mentioned above, it is almost impossible for a single company to build a virtual reality ecosystem. Even Apple, which has dominated the high-end mobile phone market, still cannot. The reason is very simple. Apple can suddenly throw out a VR device whose resolution, refresh rate, and computing power are far ahead of its peers, and it is also difficult for Apple to solve the content problem of the VR device in a short period of time.
As a platform with a low penetration rate, VR has been relatively lagging in the construction of its content ecology. Let alone the VR film and television resources that lack obvious competitive advantages, the games on it as a mainstream electronic entertainment method are also lackluster, although there are developers from time to time.” “Early adopters” VR games, but most of them are light games or shoddy products, and there are so few high-quality platform-native games that VR companies want to sell machines to players, and they can only count a few games if they break their fingers. – “Rhythm Lightsaber”, “Half-Life: Alex”, and some other VR versions of the platform’s masterpiece.
You must know that the game market iterates a batch of objective new products every year. PC and console platforms can almost every year come up with several popular models released in that year as their signatures, and now it is 2022, and the VR platform can only take Rhythm Lightsaber and Half-Life: Alex, which were released two years ago, came to the fore. Under such circumstances, apart from players with ample wallets and no regard for cost-effectiveness, who would be willing to spend money on VR companies?
Of course, it’s not that VR manufacturers haven’t seen this problem, but content production is indeed not an easy task. Today, Meta, which has a high market share in the track, is from a social network, and it is nothing to face the mainstream VR entertainment projects such as video games. Experience, even social games like VRChat can’t be reproduced. Zuckerberg spent $10 billion to build the “metaverse platform” Horizon Worlds, according to the effect of his own Ins. In 2007, the 3D online game “Second Life”, even if Horizon optimized the character models and added legs for them at the press conference on October 12, it never failed to reach 60 points. Terrier complained that his interest was gone – thinking about it this way, it’s not as good as the previous rough version, although it’s bad, it can make netizens have some fun, and it can also add some heat to Meta.
Zuckerberg showcases Horizon platformHowever, in the face of the scoffing of players, Zuckerberg felt good about himself, which also led to the $1499.99 Meta Quest Pro.
Although the performance parameters of Quest Pro can indeed be called the “best VR device” at the moment, this price is obviously not intended to “open arms” to ordinary consumers. Of course, as Zuckerberg himself claimed, this high-end VR product is aimed at enterprises and professional engineers, and the product will also have an office suite built in collaboration with Microsoft.
However, judging from the VR online meeting shown by Horizon before, it really does not necessarily improve work efficiency, and for those employees who are accustomed to using Office software and Adobe software on personal computers, the office scene is transferred to After the VR space, whether it will be able to adapt smoothly and how long it will take to adapt is still unknown. Before some companies give evaluations, it may be difficult to persuade companies to buy Quest Pro with just one mouth from Zuckerberg.
The price is getting more affordable, but the experience is still lackluster
According to the Steam Game Platform’s 2021 annual report data, in 2021, Steam VR monthly active users will reach 2.7984 million, accounting for about 2% compared with Steam’s 132 million monthly active users.
Considering the high overlap between VR headset players and VR game players, the number of monthly active users in the entire VR industry should not exceed this figure by much.
In recent years, the growth of VR industry shipments has been quite good, and when it comes to this, Meta’s Oculus series of products cannot be avoided, especially the popular Quest 2, which is widely praised by players.
Quest2 has many advantages, such as light weight, no complicated cables, 90Hz refresh rate and Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip, etc., but the most important thing is its price of less than 3,000 yuan, which can easily cost four or five thousand in a crowd. The VR all-in-one machine, which started and has not much higher performance, is “out of the crowd”.
As mentioned above, no matter how high the VR performance parameters are, the content ecology cannot catch up overnight. And just like choosing a game console, if there are no games to play on the VR platform, it is naturally difficult for players to pay for it, especially when VR equipment was relatively expensive in the past.
At this time, a number of high-quality and inexpensive VR devices represented by Quest2 appeared. The price of less than 3,000 yuan is cheaper than the next-generation game console, and you can enjoy a completely different gaming experience from the console, PC, and mobile terminals. Even if it still fails to solve the content ecological problem, it does not prevent players from wanting to try VR while there are bargains.
Oculus Quest 2However, although the price of VR has indeed dropped a lot in the past two years, many players have eased their dislike of VR, but looking at the entire VR industry, the experience of these “people-friendly” VR products is actually lackluster.
First of all, it is the lifespan of VR equipment. As mentioned above, the VR equipment purchased by players is likely to be eliminated before the next VR explosion.
You must know that after the entry of technology giants such as Meta, the “involution” of the VR track is actually quite serious. In 2019, Quest1 was released, and Quest2 was born the following year. According to foreign media reports, Quest’s new generation of products It will be launched in 2024, which is basically a new model every one or two years.
In the console market, the PS4 and PS5 are separated by seven years, the Xbox One X and Xbox Series X/S are separated by four years, and the Nintendo Switch has been released for more than five years. For console product players, the “short-lived” of VR is a serious problem, not to mention that any of the three major console giants of Renweisuo can produce a bunch of high-quality new games from their first-party and third-party studios every year. However, the explosion of models on VR platforms that lack content providers depends on luck, which makes the “short-lived” VR may exhaust the life of its models, and it will not be able to run into a few good games, which greatly reduces the cost of VR equipment. Value for money.
Second, there is the issue of wearing experience. In order to reduce costs, VR products represented by Quest2 are less concerned with the material of the equipment. For example, Quest2 uses an LCD screen to replace the more commonly used OLED screen, but the material toughness of the former will be much worse, in terms of color and energy saving. In terms of performance, the performance is also quite inferior. For players who care about the screen, this is undoubtedly a problem in the throat, and this “material reduction” situation also occurs in the handles, headbands, eye masks, etc. of the equipment, although the official also “warm heart ” provides a series of accessories to improve the player’s experience, but the price of these official accessories is ridiculously expensive, which makes people stunned at Meta’s small calculation.
At any time, the above questions can be answered by “influenced by cost”, but this kind of bad experience brought to players due to cost is unavoidable. If it is no longer possible to continue to lower prices and promote the popularization of equipment, at the same time, improve VR equipment The picture quality and wearing experience of VR are just empty talk after all.
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