<story><title>In a Sign of Broader Ambitions, Facebook Opens Hardware Lab</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/03/technology/ap-us-tec-facebooks-hardware-ambitions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustSomeNobody</author><text>&amp;gt; Oculus has potential to be as profitable as Apple if they absolutely nail the execution and the experience.&lt;p&gt;No.  VR won&amp;#x27;t be that popular. I know that&amp;#x27;s hard for people on HN to hear, but it&amp;#x27;s true. Sure it&amp;#x27;ll make money selling to geeks and nerds, but that&amp;#x27;s all.</text></item><item><author>KaoruAoiShiho</author><text>Hardware is commoditized but brands are not. Anyone can make handbags but only some can sell them for $5000. Oculus has potential to be as profitable as Apple if they absolutely nail the execution and the experience. But it remains to the be seen if the Rift is an iphone or a newton.&lt;p&gt;Being tethered to a high end gaming pc &amp;quot;dooms&amp;quot; it to be a niche product. How soon can Oculus either ally with a console or make a console?</text></item><item><author>aresant</author><text>FB&amp;#x27;s hardware strategy is confusing.&lt;p&gt;Oculus was their first, real consumer hardware release and effort.&lt;p&gt;The rollout was amateur hour between delays, customer service, etc, but that&amp;#x27;s forgivable and understandable at some level for a first major release.&lt;p&gt;But then Vive showed up to the party, shipped nearly on the same time frame, and delivered a product that&amp;#x27;s in striking distance of headset quality and WINS in interactivity.&lt;p&gt;This underscores how commoditized hardware is and will continue to be.&lt;p&gt;But then FB doubles down on protecting their &amp;quot;hardware play&amp;quot; and fucks everybody over with their bizarre Oculus &amp;quot;store&amp;quot; experience which launched with a ridiculous walled garden approach and an experience that&amp;#x27;s far secondary to Steam.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile FB and Zuck keep making noises about wanting to support VR in general to bring about critical mass on VR as a platform so they can take the obvious step and execute THE killer-app for VR, - a truly connected social metaverse.&lt;p&gt;I get that having a hardware lab provides an incentive to new VR devs to come on board, and lets them press the medium forward.&lt;p&gt;But if owning that &amp;quot;metaverse&amp;quot; is the end game why bother dickering around with consumer hardware and pissing off &amp;#x2F; breaking trust with devs &amp;amp; consumers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hawski</author><text>I think that I partly agree with you on it. It is not hard to imagine two iPhones per person - private one and company one. And yet I doubt that more than one VR in household will be that common. Probably in case of smartphones cost hiding thanks to carrier plans helped in making it popular. Can similar mechanism work for VR? It is true that nowadays you can get additional things with your mobile plan - laptops and tablets for example. But in case of VR you have to consider also beefier machine. GearVR would probably have advantage in this case.&lt;p&gt;Then it is the issue of having something on your face and not being able to hop-in and hop-out of the experience in case of a second. It makes the experience deeper, but that means you need more time and people don&amp;#x27;t have time. Even if you play with someone on a console you can, in split second, see them smiling or see that you need to turn off cooker under rice. Never mind about actual appearance of having something on someones pretty face. VR devices are looking probably too Sci-Fi than somewhat elegant iPhone to appeal to public. Elegance appeal to rich people and what appeals to rich people appeals to everyone that would like to be rich. One thing that overcomes elegance is price and it does not apply to VR.&lt;p&gt;It is deeper experience so it may be closer to cinema than to TV. TV is certainly more popular. I hope that it will enable not only great gaming experiences, but also remarkable development (or professional) environments. Current gen VR is probably not yet there to be used in professional setting, but maybe subsidized by gaming - same as with GPUs - it will get there.</text></comment>
<story><title>In a Sign of Broader Ambitions, Facebook Opens Hardware Lab</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/03/technology/ap-us-tec-facebooks-hardware-ambitions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustSomeNobody</author><text>&amp;gt; Oculus has potential to be as profitable as Apple if they absolutely nail the execution and the experience.&lt;p&gt;No.  VR won&amp;#x27;t be that popular. I know that&amp;#x27;s hard for people on HN to hear, but it&amp;#x27;s true. Sure it&amp;#x27;ll make money selling to geeks and nerds, but that&amp;#x27;s all.</text></item><item><author>KaoruAoiShiho</author><text>Hardware is commoditized but brands are not. Anyone can make handbags but only some can sell them for $5000. Oculus has potential to be as profitable as Apple if they absolutely nail the execution and the experience. But it remains to the be seen if the Rift is an iphone or a newton.&lt;p&gt;Being tethered to a high end gaming pc &amp;quot;dooms&amp;quot; it to be a niche product. How soon can Oculus either ally with a console or make a console?</text></item><item><author>aresant</author><text>FB&amp;#x27;s hardware strategy is confusing.&lt;p&gt;Oculus was their first, real consumer hardware release and effort.&lt;p&gt;The rollout was amateur hour between delays, customer service, etc, but that&amp;#x27;s forgivable and understandable at some level for a first major release.&lt;p&gt;But then Vive showed up to the party, shipped nearly on the same time frame, and delivered a product that&amp;#x27;s in striking distance of headset quality and WINS in interactivity.&lt;p&gt;This underscores how commoditized hardware is and will continue to be.&lt;p&gt;But then FB doubles down on protecting their &amp;quot;hardware play&amp;quot; and fucks everybody over with their bizarre Oculus &amp;quot;store&amp;quot; experience which launched with a ridiculous walled garden approach and an experience that&amp;#x27;s far secondary to Steam.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile FB and Zuck keep making noises about wanting to support VR in general to bring about critical mass on VR as a platform so they can take the obvious step and execute THE killer-app for VR, - a truly connected social metaverse.&lt;p&gt;I get that having a hardware lab provides an incentive to new VR devs to come on board, and lets them press the medium forward.&lt;p&gt;But if owning that &amp;quot;metaverse&amp;quot; is the end game why bother dickering around with consumer hardware and pissing off &amp;#x2F; breaking trust with devs &amp;amp; consumers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blahi</author><text>VR is the next on the shelf next to Segway and smart bands and watches.</text></comment>