I.
It is a time of considerable doubts about the metaverse.
Part of that comes down to doubt in Meta, which saw its stock fall 61 percent this year as it grapples with stiff competition, a worsening economy, and two incredibly difficult product pivots. The company renamed itself last year in an effort to signal how much conviction the company has that the metaverse — a more embodied internet, accessed through virtual and augmented reality — represents the future of technology. But its current product lineup can feel primitive, or inessential, to all but the most diehard VR enthusiasts. The path to get from the Meta Quest to a Ready Player One future isn’t immediately obvious.
But there’s doubt about the broader industry, too. Companies like Roblox and Fortnite maker Epic Games have succeeded in creating the kind of massively popular virtual worlds that are foundational to most visions of a metaverse. Fortnite even managed the rare feat of bringing together intellectual property from Marvel and DC Comics, among many other brands — a bona fide example of the corporate cooperation necessary to bring sci-fi visions of the metaverse to life. And yet both products remain dependent on other companies’ platforms and rules, and have shown few signs of branching out beyond their core gaming features.
With skepticism mounting, some have called for Meta to ease up on its all-in commitment to mixed reality. On Monday Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, published a widely read open letter to the company that among other things criticizes the company for spending so much building the metaverse.
People are confused by what the metaverse even means. If the company were investing $1–2B per year into this project, then that confusion might not even be a problem. You would simply do R&D quietly and investors would focus on the core business and the breakthroughs in AI.
Instead, the company has announced investments of $10–15B per year into a metaverse project that largely includes AR / VR / immersive 3D / Horizon World and that it may take 10 years to yield results. An estimated $100B+ investment in an unknown future is super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.
Until very recently, investors tended to reward Silicon Valley companies for excessive ambition. It seems telling, and not only about the metaverse, that investors are now getting wide attention for telling those same entrepreneurs to rein it in.
II.
It was with all of that in mind that I spent the past few days using the Meta Quest Pro. The $1,500 headset, which goes on sale today, represents an effort to address both groups of skeptics: the ones who believe Meta can’t invent the future, and the ones who believe the metaverse is mostly a mirage.
And at its best, the Quest Pro offers satisfying answers to its critics. In every way, it represents an improvement over its much cheaper predecessor, the $400 Meta Quest 2. With its battery now placed in the rear, the device now has much better balance, and sits more comfortably on your head. And a significantly upgraded display means that you’ll spend more time focused on whatever you’re doing in VR than on how muddy it all looks compared to your phone.
Over a couple hours in demonstrations earlier this month, and in conversations I’ve had with executives, Meta has positioned the Pro as a device that will be of interest primarily to two groups: VR enthusiasts who simply want to use the best device, no matter the cost; and workers who find value in the various enterprise uses the Pro is meant to enable:
Those uses include meetings made more vivid by spatial audio and new sensors that track and animate your facial expressions; showing off new interior designs and architectural plans to clients in mixed reality to give them a visceral sense of how it will feel; and virtual desktops that allow you to multitask on three giant virtual displays no matter where you’re sitting.
I enjoyed having these uses demonstrated for me on the Pro, even if I can’t see myself regularly using any of them myself at the moment. In part that’s because so few of the people I work with are spending much time in VR. But it’s also because I’m not sure that VR represents much of an improvement over Zoom: whatever I’m losing in terms of a sense of presence is more than made up for by the fact that I can simply click a link and join, rather than mount my headset, navigate to the Workrooms app, and find the room I’m supposed to be in from there.
What I enjoyed more, though, was simply having a headset that felt good to wear and strained my eyes a a bit less. Using the Pro, I watched a series of immersive 3D videos on YouTube. I took a highly trippy journey using a meditation app. I learned a bit about how to DJ on a high-end virtual rig, and nearly missed a meeting playing a souped-up VR version of Tetris.
I did all this seated, with my headset tethered to a power outlet: the Pro’s battery lasts just one to two hours, and I wanted to be able to try as many apps as possible during the time I had to test the device. With the right experience — and here I’m thinking of some of the time I spent painting in Google’s art studio app Tilt Brush — I really do have the sensation of losing myself in VR; of being swallowed up in some digital experience and feeling a sense of magic.
Unfortunately, Meta’s version of the metaverse has a lot of dud experiences, too. Opening up its Horizon Worlds app, which lets anyone create and design virtual spaces and invite strangers to hang out in, I intended to watch a Billie Eilish concert that had been recommended to me by the device’s Events app. But by the time I got Horizons up and running, the concert wasn’t available. And so I clicked on the first world it showed me: a Halloween-themed brand activation for Cheetos.
After teleporting to Cheetos world — it looked like a typical suburban neighborhood, with the houses decked out for Halloween — I was invited to create “mischief” in various ways. I picked up some some sort of orange wand and used it to shoot Cheetos logos all over the neighborhood. Eventually, I had created enough mischief that a gate opened to a nearby mansion. I walked inside to claim my prize: the right to vote for which flavor Cheetos should bring back from the dead. (I voted for Chipotle Ranch.)
Suffice to say that none of this really captured my imagination. Stumbling around Horizon Worlds, I found myself wondering over and over again whether anyone’s heart was really in it. Other reporters have had some amazing times in Horizon, and I should spend more time there before rendering a final judgment. But so far I haven’t found much that would regularly bring me back.
And that’s my current feeling about the Pro overall. As a piece of technology, it does some wildly impressive things. As an upgrade over its predecessor, it’s clearly a success. Technology only gets better through iteration, and the Pro feels like a milestone on the way toward truly compelling VR.
At the same time, in various ways, it still feels like we’re only about halfway there. There are some games, fitness apps, and communication apps that some people might find so compelling that I can see them buying a Pro to use. But for the most part, the device still feels like a novelty more than a must-have computing platform.
That’s not a criticism, though. Most tech we now depend on started out feeling this way — like a toy, unworthy of serious attention; or of a rich person’s folly, too expensive for a normal person to consider buying. As long as Meta and its peers keep making progress on this stuff — the kind of progress you see in the Pro — I can imagine mixed reality being a major part of our future.
In the meantime, we’re left unsatisfied. The tech is good, but not good enough. We’re getting there, but we’re not there yet. We can begin to imagine how the future might feel, but it still feels out of reach — even if you have $1,500 to spend on it.
Governing
Elon Musk met with bankers yesterday and pledged to close the Twitter deal by Friday. Here we go! Whee! (Jeannine Amodeo, Gillian Tan, Paula Seligson and Ed Hammond / Bloomberg)
India’s antitrust watchdog fined Google $113 million for abusing the dominant position of the Play Store, and ordered the company to allow app developers to use third-party payments processors for in-app purchases. (Manish Singh / TechCrunch)
Apple repeatedly rejected a new version of the Spotify app from the App Store, fueling an ongoing feud between the two companies over Apple’s strict App Store rules and high fees. If India wants to fine another company for abusing its dominant position it could start with Apple! (Tripp Mickle / New York Times)
ByteDance clashed with TikTok’s global head of security as the Biden administration probed whether the company posed a national security risk. He’s out now. (Emily Baker-White / Forbes)
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority launched an inquiry into Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta, related to their growing interest in payments and lending. (Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times)
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt invested in AI startups while acting as chairman of the United States AI commission, an advisory body that helped craft laws to regulate the AI industry. The moved raised ethical concerns. (Eamon Javers / CNBC)
Australia is strengthening online privacy laws following several major data breaches, and will increase fines from $1.4 million to about $32 million. (Daryna Antoniuk / The Record)
Japan is trying to force people adopt digital IDs by saying they could lose access to their public health insurance if they don’t. (Yuri Kageyama / Associated Press)
Industry
Alphabet shares dropped more than 5 percent in after-hours trading after the company reported weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue for the third quarter. (Jennifer Elias / CNBC)
YouTube star MrBeast is looking to raise $150 million for his business at a roughly $1.5 billion valuation. (Sara Fischer / Axios)
Spotify now has 195 million paying subscribers, an increase of 7 million since last quarter. (Ariel Shapiro / The Verge)
Microsoft narrowly beat analyst expectations, but cloud revenue was still lower than expected and shares fell roughly 2 percent in after-hours trading. (Jordan Novet / CNBC)
Microsoft is buying up Chinese video game content to compete with Sony and its hit game Genshin Impact. (Josh Ye / Reuters)
Shutterstock is partnering with OpenAI to integrate DALL-E 2 into the service in the coming months, and the company will reimburse creators whose images are sold to train AI models. (James Vincent / The Verge)
Amazon will now allow all US customers to make payments through Venmo. (Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch)
The Amazon Labor Union withdrew its bid for a union election at a warehouse in Southern California following a defeat in New York last week. (Matt Day / Bloomberg)
WhatsApp went down for two hours this morning, but is now back online. (Tom Warren / The Verge)
Wikipedia announced new features designed to help users make their own edits in an effort to encourage new editors to stick around. (Adi Robertson / The Verge)
Celebrity deepfakes are showing up in ads, sometimes without the famous person’s permission. (Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal)
Bumble open sourced its AI tool that detects and blurs nude images on the app, allowing users to choose whether to view them or not. (Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch)
Investigators cracked the Bitcoin blockchain to track down the criminal mastermind behind AlphaBay, in part one of this Silk Road-style mystery. (Andy Greenberg / Wired)
Matt Levine wrote a cover-to-cover issue on Crypto for Bloomberg Businessweek, and it is very Matt Levine-y and very good. Matt Levine / Bloomberg)
Those good tweets
Talk to us
Send us tips, comments, questions, and your favorite Horizon Worlds: casey@platformer.news and zoe@platformer.news.