Merry Christmas and Happy 2024! (+my Santa Wish List)

One of the traditions of this blog is my usual greeting message for the Winter Holidays… and this year could not be an exception.

So, if you celebrate Christmas, I wish you would spend a wonderful day with your family, feeling joy, happiness, and human warmth. I hope you will receive wonderful gifts and that Santa Claus will surprise you with what you always wanted. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, well, I still wish you a wonderful day, maybe with fewer gifts, but still cool.

And then I wish you all a wonderful 2024, in which all your dreams can come true. I love being part of this community, and I really hope that all of you can have a bright future.

This year has been sweet and sour for our ecosystem, and our emotional rollercoaster keeps going at crazy speeds. As bad pieces of news, we had the end of the hype for the metaverse, the bad economic conditions that are preventing investments in XR, the disinvestment of Bytedance, and the lukewarm sales of promising headsets like PSVR 2. On the pro side, we had the launch of the Apple headset we were all waiting for since forever, the Quest 3 launch, the great sales of Queset 2 after the price slash, and some cool games like Vertigo 2, Resident Evil 4 VR, and Asgard’s Wrath 2. Let’s say we are still in an Autumn of XR, but it’s getting slightly warmer.

On my personal side, it has been a continuous emotional rollercoaster, too, with one day believing I’m a genius, and the next one thinking that I’m as smart as Forrest Gump; one day thinking that success is close, and the day after envisioning me frying potatoes at McDonald’s (which can still be considered a success). This is the classical startup life, and every entrepreneur could say the same about him/herself. Talking about the startup of which I’m CTO, that is VRROOM, we obtained some important results, like the launch of the alpha of our XR concerts platform in January, the Early Access release in November, and now a cool concert for the 400 years of Versailles on Christmas Day. If I look back, it seems to me 5 years have passed in one year. It’s been a very interesting adventure and I have learned so much in the process that when I look back at the things I did 10 months ago with the knowledge I have now, I think “How the hell could I do that thing in such a crappy way???”. And I’m sure in 10 months I will say the same about what I am doing now… and this is actually a good sign, it means I am moving forward. If you too are growing as CTO in a company, let’s exchange notes about what we have learned these months! (and yes Boz, this invite holds also for you).

Because of the hectic work, I had less time to work on this blog, and I miss not having reviewed Quest 3, but I’m happy that I still managed to keep this platform up, in one way or another. At least, I’m still preparing for you a curated list of XR news every week, and I know many of you do find it useful.

Let’s see what the next year will bring for me and for the whole ecosystem… in my opinion, 2024 will be slightly better than 2023, especially because of the launch of the Apple headset and of the rumored $199 Quest Lite. Also, Samsung will probably unveil its moves, so… it is going to be interesting. And it will be cool to discover all of this with you!

For now, I’m more curious about what Santa Claus will bring to me tonight. So let’s make this game: what would you like XR Santa Claus to bring to you? Of course, I want only wrong answers! Mine are:

• The Decagear 2 headset. After the success of the first non-existent headset of the story of XR, I hope Santa brings me the second edition of this device, which will not exist even more!
• All the personal data of Mark Zuckerberg. After Zuck has got all the data about my friends from Facebook, and all my sexual tastes because of… Quest, it’s time for me to have my revenge. I want Zuck’s personal data and know all about his kinks (I mean, I already know about his passion for Barbeque Sauce, personal data, and metaverse, but I would like to know something more)
• The specifications of Deckard. All Valve fanboys are discussing this mythological headset with 450° FOV, 24K resolution per eye, mind-reading control, and an incorporated fridge and microwave. The expectations are for VR people the same that gamers have for Half-Life 3. I want to know how this headset actually is. In my opinion, when it is released, people will be disappointed like when in South Park Kenny wakes up from surgery and has a potato instead of his heart.
• A Monkey JPEG toilet paper. After the burst of the crypto bubble, now all the monkey JPEGs that were sold for 50K each are just worth less than a potato. I want toilet paper with them on… and still, the toilet paper roll will be worth more money than a monkey JPEG is today…
• An explanation of what the hell happened at OpenAI. Sam Altman was fired because of “reasons”, then he was re-admitted because the reasons were not reasons enough and there were new reasons to take into count. There have been 5 days of super-chaos and then they got back doing business as usual, and we all are here wondering WHAT HE HELL HAPPENED THERE. Santa, you have elves hidden everywhere… tell me the secret!

• The only investor still interested in the metaverse and not AI. All investors are now into AI, and look at us XR people like hobos looking for money at traffic lights. But I’m sure there is still one investor out there who still believes in XR… he is hard to find like BigFoot (or maybe it’s exactly BigFoot that invests in XR himself), but I’m sure it’s there. Santa bring this guy or this girl to me!
• The XBOX VR headset. Ok, this is maybe impossible even for Santa…

And you? What gifts would you like to receive? Let me know in the comments here below or on social media channels!

Have wonderful Winter Holidays! I love ya!