The XR Week Peek (2023.02.08): Samsung is back to XR, Echo VR gets shut down, and more!
Today is my last day in China. These days have been hectic: I have met very interesting people (you will read about that in some upcoming articles), and I’m super happy about it. But this also created problems with my usual schedule… and that’s why you are reading today a version of the newsletter which is late and much shorter than usual. I’m sorry about that, but it’s still a miracle I’ve managed to write it…
Top news of the week
Samsung is back to XR with Google and Qualcomm
The big news of the week is that Samsung is back to XR. The company has teased it is going to announce soon a new XR device, even if it has not revealed what yet (I would bet on AR glasses or an MR headset, but let’s see). This is huge because we know that Samsung is able to always deliver good hardware.
What is even more interesting is that this device will be built in partnership with Google and Qualcomm. Qualcomm seems a very predictable choice, but Google is less. In the press release, the companies talk about Google’s role as the one providing the software platform. Most probably, if we mix this with other rumors of the past, Google is going to offer the operating system as a modified version of Android that works in AR/MR. An operating system that in the future may expand to other headsets, of course.
So basically Samsung is bringing to XR what already happens on phones: Samsung makes the hardware, Qualcomm the chipset, and Google the operating system. Most probably this announcement has been made to envision a future competition with Apple, bringing to XR the battle Android vs iOS (and Samsung vs Apple) that we already have on phones.
Is this consortium going to succeed? Google already did something similar with Lenovo for the Mirage Solo and then the project was shut down… I hope the outcome is different this time.
More info (Samsung teasing new XR hardware)
More info (Samsung partners with Google and Qualcomm)
Other relevant news
Ready At Dawn kills Echo VR
With a totally unexpected announcement, Ready At Dawn has decided to shut down Echo VR (both Echo Arena and Echo Combat). The shutdown will come to effect in August 2023, and in the meanwhile, all the players will be able to get some premium addons and beautifications for free. The reason for this operation is the fact that the game has now a not huge community (around 10K players) and RAD thinks it’s better to invest its resources on his next (unannounced) project.
The news has caused a big backlash from the community, and John Carmack himself has heavily criticized this decision. Echo has been basically the first real VR-only e-sport, and has a very dedicated community. Killing it entirely, without any chance of letting the community or some indie studio manage it, is a big loss for everyone.
But this happens when a big corporate like Meta has to perform cuts to please the stock market and the investors. Games and products are just numbers in an Excel sheet that must produce some defined outcomes. Echo was a free game with an IAP business model which was probably not profitable enough and so it has been shut down. RIP, you will be missed.
More info (Ready At Dawn shuts down Echo VR)
More info (Meta CTO on Echo VR shutdown decision)
More info (John Carmack comments the news)
More info (An editorial from a Echo VR community manager)
Meta’s financials are improving, but at what cost…
Meta has released its financial data for its past quarters and the situation is slowly getting better. Reality Labs’s revenues, also thanks to the very good sales of Quest 2 during Christmas, have gone up from the terrible Q3 2022. Also the costs have increased, though, so in the end, also for Q4 2022 the company had huge operative losses.
Meta’s stock has had a huge value increase, the biggest one in its history in a single day… making the company earn something like 100B of value in very little time. Investors are getting new trust in it, also thanks to the fact that social media are not falling down as initially predicted, and the company is committing to a spending revenue that is making it more money-efficient. The shutdown of Echo VR is in line with this efficiency, and so is the shutdown of Crayta, which was acquired to try to compete with Roblox (Another loss for a dedicated community). Layoffs and projects terminations are good on the financial side… even if terrible from all the other points of view.
Another good news has been the win of the trial over the FTC for the acquisition of Within, so Meta can now heavily invest in Fitness XR.
More info (Meta Reality Labs revenues)
More info (Meta wins trial with FTC over Within acquisition)
More info (Meta shuts down Crayta)
More info (Meta gains a huge stock value)
News worth a mention
Quest 3 to feature color passthrough AR but not facial tracking
Meta has officially stated that the Quest 3 will feature RGB passthrough AR. In parallel, Meta CTO has said that eye and face tracking will become affordable for consumer headsets only in a few years. This seems to confirm Brad Lynch’s rumor about a Quest 3 all focused on mixed reality.
More info (Quest 3 to feature color passthrough AR)
More info (Quest 3 will not feature face tracking)
Sony may be disappointed by PSVR 2 preorders
A report by Bloomberg affirms that Sony is disappointed by the current preorders of the PSVR 2 and now plans to ship only 1.5M headsets in the next year. But Sony has refuted the report, claiming it is not true.
Snap is exploring generative AI
At a specific question related to generative AI, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel answered that the company is exploring the technology. Specifically, generative AI may be interesting to help Snap content creators create AR content without requiring them to know how to model 3D assets.
Microsoft is still committed to HoloLens 2
All this bad press about Microsoft leaving Mixed Reality has made the company release a press statement in which it states its commitment to HoloLens 2, IVAS, and mixed reality in general. I guess the purpose is to reassure its existing customers, to prevent them all from going to Magic Leap 2.
Investments in African gaming companies are on the rise
We all always think about Europe, East Asia, and North America when thinking about XR, but actually, the world is much wider than that. And an interesting article pointed me to the fact that now also the game development ecosystem in Africa is growing and getting some serious investments. I guess this will lead to more development of XR, too.
Meta changes Quest 2 bundle
When you got a Quest 2, Beat Saber and Resident Evil 4 were given to you for free. Now Meta has changed its bundling plans, and the new provided games are Golf+ and Space Pirate Trainer DX. These are cool games, but less amazing than the previous ones, so for me it is a downgrade.
Some news on content
- Steam Next Fest is going to bring free demos of PC VR games in the next week
- Horizon: Call Of The Mountain will feature a main character that has been specifically designed for a VR game
- Retropolis 2: Never Say Goodbye has just been announced. I’m pretty excited because the first episode was very good
- The original hand-tracking-based game Silhouette has been reviewed (not so positively) by Upload
- Crumbling, a nostalgia game focused on action figures, is arriving in Summer 2023 for the Meta Quest platform and SteamVR
- Sony has shared the gameplay of Gran Turismo 7 for PSVR and it looks incredible
- Upload has reviewed Colossal Cave for VR and gave it an “Avoid” mark. But some of its enthusiastic players contest this decision
More info (Steam Next Fest)
More info (Horizon: Call Of The Mountain)
More info (Retropolis 2)
More info (Silhouette Review)
More info (Crumbling)
More info (Gran Turismo 7)
More info (Colossal Cave)
Other news
Horizon Worlds is coming to Web and Mobile “soon”
Meta CTO John Carmack doesn’t believe in the mainstream success of PSVR 2
HTC may manufacture in the future the lighthouse stations for Valve
The WebXR Awards are coming soon. Don’t miss them!
Hand tracking is now available also in three.js for WebXR
An interesting experiment with object detection and passthrough MR on Quest + PC
News from partners (and friends)
Participate in the NeRF contest by NVIDIA
NVIDIA is organizing a contest for its new NVIDIA Instant NeRF technology. You can use NVIDIA Instant NeRF VR software to create a 3D scene and have a chance to win an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU. The contest runs from January 31 to March 3, 2023.
Learn more
Alan Smithson talks about AI and the metaverse
Linkedin influencer Alan Smithson has written an article on Linkedin about how AI (especially generative AI) can be employed in the M-word. Worth a read if you come from the business background and so you don’t need juicy technical details.
Learn more
Some XR fun
In China I have found where the Apple headset is manufactured. Sort of.
Funny link
Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate for my blog, but to the poor people that are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:
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And now here you are the link to donate:
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(Header image by Samsung)
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