The XR Week Peek (2023.03.20): Meta to perform new layoffs, Google Glass to shut down, and more!
I’m back in Italy! My time at SXSW has been great, but now it’s time to be back to the usual routine. I still feel a lot tired because of the jet lag and the little sleep I had in Austin, but this is pretty normal, and in one week or such this feeling should go away. And I’m sure that the support from all of you will make me feel better even sooner 🙂
Top news of the week
Meta to lay off people and focus more on AI
It’s been a tough week for Meta. Mark Zuckerberg has communicated to his employees that in this “Year of efficiency,” the company is laying off another 10,000 people and canceling 5,000 open job positions. The layoffs will start affecting the recruiting departments in March, then the tech employees in April, and in the end, the business people in May. Together with the layoffs, the company will restructure itself so that to be more agile, more efficient, and a bit more “horizontal”, cutting down some management layers to make the decision process faster.
The reasons for the layoffs are the ones we already know: the unfavorable economic conditions, the slowdown of the digital transformation after the pandemic, the privacy policies introduced by iOS that hurt the ad-based companies, and the increased competition from TikTok.
Another reason is that the metaverse hype has slowed down, so there is less enthusiasm for what Meta is working on. The hype is now all about AI, and that’s why Mark has said that the company is now heavily investing in artificial intelligence. This is clearly a move to appease the investors, exactly like the layoffs. Many magazines wrote that Meta is abandoning the “metaverse”, but actually, the famed M-word appeared two times in the statement that Mark provided his employees about the new course of the company. So he’s not abandoning it… it’s been his dream since when he was a child, and we all know it’s the inevitable future… but he’s putting it a bit in the background, waiting for more favorable conditions to happen. Which I hope will be quite soon.
More info (Official statement by Mark Zuckerberg)
More info (Meta to lay off 10,000 people — Road To VR)
More info (Meta to lay off 10,000 people — Upload VR)
More info (Meta focusing more on AI — Yahoo Finance)
More info (Meta focusing more on AI — CNN)
Other relevant news
Google is discontinuing Glass
It’s the end of an era. Google is discontinuing Google Glass, even in its Enterprise Edition which found some fields of application in the B2B sector (e.g. inside warehouses).
Starting March 15th, Glass Enterprise 2 won’t be on sale anymore. The support will continue until September 15th, 2023 and its most recent system images will remain publicly available until at least April 1st, 2024.
What will happen after that is not clear, yet. But Google has already made clear that is working on AR glasses, so probably it is planning to launch a new pair of smart glasses and so is discontinuing the old model. What we don’t know is when it is going to happen, and if the new glasses will be for consumers or the enterprise.
The only thing I know is that Google Glasses is what drew me to enter the XR field as a professional together with my previous partner Gianni Rosa Gallina, so this news hurt me a bit. But I think that for what they were able to offer, probably these devices have lasted even more than expected.
Some news about PSVR 2 sales and its connection to PC
This week we had a few interesting pieces of news about the PSVR 2.
First of all, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki has said that he thinks that PSVR 2 may sell more than the 5–6 million units that the original PSVR sold. This shows that Sony is pretty bullish about its device, and it is confident that it will be appreciated by a good share of its base market. This is great news for VR in general.
Then we started having the first reports about the most sold content on PSVR 2. Surprisingly, the usual suspects like Job Simulator and Beat Saber are not topping the charts anymore, while we have at their place titles like Kayak VR and Horizon: Call Of The Mountain. This may have two different explanations. The first is that the headset is just at the beginning of its life, some pieces of content like Beat Saber are not available yet, so this initial data is spurious and over time Beat Saber will be the most sold game again. The other possibility is that, like Ben Lang said, this new PSVR course is more focused on content with cool graphics like Horizon, so it will get more the interest of hardcore gamers that are more into AAA FPS games than casual gamers that play Beat Saber. The second possibility seems more probable to me, also because it would be a great strategy by Sony to carve its niche of hardcore gamers that is completely different from the one that is interested in the Quest, and so can’t be attacked by Meta.
Regarding content, some VR magazines started writing reviews about PSVR 2 games, even if most of them are just repetitions of the reviews of the same games on other platforms. I’m anyway linking a few of them here below, just for your reference.
Some people are interested in PSVR 2 as a headset to be connected not to a PS 5, but to a PC. The news of the week is that someone managed to connect the headset to the PC and use it as an alternative monitor. So it’s still impossible to use PSVR 2 as a PCVR headset, but at least we have some early results. The thing that surprised me the most about this news is that who found this hack discovered that PSVR 2 connects to the PS5 via the VirtualLink protocol. Yes, you read it well. The VirtualLink, the protocol to easily connect every headset to your graphics card via USB-C in an optimized way… the open standard that the whole PCVR market should have adopted and no one used… in the end has been useful for a console headset. All of us thought it had been abandoned, but now it is used by one of the most popular headsets of the moment. How ironic.
More info (PSVR 2 to sell more than PSVR 1)
More info (Most sold games for PSVR 2)
More info (PSVR 2 uses VirtualLink)
More info (The Dark Pictures: Switchback review)
More info (Unplugged on PSVR 2 review)
More info (Pavlov on PSVR 2 review)
We have a hardware leak about Apple headset
I know, you are all here every week waiting for a new rumor about the upcoming Apple headset. And luckily for you, I have one. A pretty useless one, like all the rumors about Apple and its glasses.
A famous leaker has published the first picture of what could be a component of the upcoming device. The picture shows some ribbon cables with some cameras attached to them. Ribbons are used to connect different electronic components, so thanks to this rumor we know that the headset will have cameras and will have electronic components. Such great news! I couldn’t imagine that before… I thought the headset was made of potatoes connected by pieces of cheese. And instead… electronic components… wow, only geniuses at Apple could think about it.
Anyway, if the leak is true, it means that we are starting to have hardware leaks, which usually happen when a product is in the production phase, or close to it. Which may confirm that the headset is close to being manufactured. Let’s see… if we’ll keep having always more hardware leaks, then this is the case.
Together with the hardware leaks, we keep having the usual references to RealityOS found in always more pieces of code of iOS.
More info (First hardware leak about Apple headset)
More info (New software leak about RealityOS)
News worth a mention
Microsoft Teams to integrate 3D avatars
Microsoft is finally integrating Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Mesh, as it was promised some time ago. Thanks to this, it will be possible to use a 3D avatar instead of your webcam feed during your calls, starting in May of this year. While this is kind of a gimmick for now, it is interesting that Microsoft is still working on Mesh and integrating its services with VR-related features.
Meta gives up on NFTs
Meta has officially abandoned the idea of integrating NFTs inside Instagram and Facebook. This decision has probably stemmed from the cut of non-profitable projects that the company is performing. This is another bad news for the NFT movement, which is clearly inside a very cold Winter.
SXSW has come to an end
I have been in the US to attend the SXSW, one of America’s most important tech-related events. At SXSW there has been a great showcase of XR-related experiences, and many panels about XR and the “metaverse”. Many people from our community attended it and was a good event where to do networking. Let me leave you some articles that talk about how the experience was there.
More info (Charlie Fink talks about SXSW)
More info (My thoughts about SXSW in XR)
More info (My reviews about XR experiences at SXSW / 1)
More info (My reviews about XR experiences at SXSW / 2)
Cosmonius High’s new update is all about accessibility
You know that I’m a big advocate for accessibility in XR, so I’m happy to give a big kudos to Owlchemy Labs which just released an update for Cosmonius High that is all about accessibility. In this update, they focus also on people with low vision, implementing in the game a virtual device that describes by voice every element pointed by it. Thanks to this, people that don’t see well can use the audio descriptions to interact with the game. It is the first time I see such a system in a VR game, and I hope it won’t be the last.
Fatboy Slim to perform in Engage VR
I’m very happy to announce that my friends at ENGAGE VR have managed to produce a virtual reality concert featuring the famous Fatboy Slim. On March, the 30th, we will all be able to dance together, for free, on the ENGAGE platform!
More info (Fatboy Slim concert trailer)
More info (Register to attend the concert)
VR Awards are back
The VR Awards are back, and this year they will still be part of the Immersive Tech Week in Rotterdam. The famous awards ceremony will take place on 30th November 2023.
NVIDIA GTC is to take place today
NVIDIA’s flagship event, the GTC, is set to take place on March, 20–23, with the famous keynote by the CEO Jensen Huang set for March, 21st at 4 PM CET. We can expect lots of talks about artificial intelligence, but also about cloud computing, and the “metaverse”, which for NVIDIA means its very interesting Omniverse platform.
For this GTC in Spring, I don’t have an agreement with NVIDIA for the promotion of the event, but I’m still happy to talk about it because I truly think it’s an important event (plus the NVIDIA people I know are pretty cool). So feel free to register, and enjoy GTC!
Enjoy Steam Spring Sale
If you have some money you don’t know how to spend, you had better know that Steam is currently running a Spring Sale with many VR games discounted! Do you want some examples? Walkabout Minigolf is 50% off, and Maskmaker is even 80% off!
Some news about content
- The Rainbow Six Siege-inspired shooter Breachers will officially launch on April 13th for $30
- Walkabout Mini Golf to launch a Pocket Edition for smartphones. The launch is planned for iPhones this summer. There will be crossplay between this version and the VR version
- There is already a VR mod available for Hogwarts Legacy!
More info (Breachers)
More info (Walkabout Minigolf)
More info (Hogwarts Legacy)
Other news
Second Life is launching its mobile app. Better late than never, I guess
An interesting article points out that VR experiences should consider more the sociality aspect to be successful
Many people shared this article about how “VR influencers may save the metaverse”, whatever it means
News from partners (and friends)
Glue adds custom spaces
The popular enterprise VR meetings solution Glue has recently added a cool feature: Glue Space Template Creation Tool. Thanks to it, from now on, you can easily import spaces of your own creation to Glue.
Learn more
Enter the Juicyverse
Alan Smithson’s TheMall and STARBURST have teamed up to announce the launch of their newest virtual world, STARBURST JUICYVERSE, in collaboration with MetaVRse and BambuMeta Web3 Loyalty. The fully immersive virtual world has been premiered at SXSW 2023 at TheMall, the world’s largest virtual mall.
Learn more
Participate in the Playin Pickleball VR Open
Gearbox & Playin Games have announced the Gearbox Playin Pickleball VR Open, an online VR pickleball tournament for players of all skills and abilities. There are also some nice prizes you can win.
Learn more
Some XR fun
So are you saying that VR is dead?
Funny link
When you play too much VR…
Funny link
The current situation of AI and the metaverse
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:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- DeoVR
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image from MacRumors)
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