Why Meta’s CTO is bullish on VR
Some observers found the presentation sweaty and overbearing; at the very least, it lacked the polish we’ve now come to expect from virtual briefings from Apple and even Snap.
That’ll be particularly true after developers have had a year or two to build for it: to take advantage of the color video passthrough on the device that allows mixed-reality experiences, for example, or just to play that Iron Man VR game the company showed off Tuesday. That increases the value that it drives to the consumer, and over time advances us toward being a more generalized platform for computing. We have a few unique challenges — obviously super-talented competitors, ATT [Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature], so we’ve got this headwind that is relatively unique to us, or to least our sector of the tech industry.
Some observers found the presentation sweaty and overbearing; at the very least, it lacked the polish we’ve now come to expect from virtual briefings from Apple and even Snap. But the company legitimately has momentum on its side: the estimated 15 million-plus units of the Quest 2 sold to date make it the most popular VR console and arguably (as Zuckerberg likes to put it) the first mainstream device in the space. And while Apple ’s likely arrival into the space next year will undoubtedly challenge Meta’s leadership, in the mean time the company has a solid claim on innovation.The Quest Pro can track your facial movements if you let it, and the result is a much more expressive virtual meeting. The Meta employee smiled at me and nodded his head; once, just to prove that he could, he winked at me. Zuckerberg has been saying for a couple year s now that VR’s killer app is the sense of presence it can create, but until now that has felt rather limited to me. The added expressiveness felt like a step forward.That’ll be particularly true after developers have had a year or two to build for it: to take advantage of the color video passthrough on the device that allows mixed-reality experiences, for example, or just to play that Iron Man VR game the company showed off Tuesday. I don’t imagine the company will sell all that many of these things at $1,499, but I do think it has moved the industry forward, and the benefits it sees from being first may compound over time .And so what you’ve seen us doing over the last several year s, and Quest Pro is another step in that direction, is adding more reasons for which this device could be helpful for you. That increases the value that it drives to the consumer, and over time advances us toward being a more generalized platform for computing . And that doesn’t just happen overnight. Especially not for something that’s so tremendously novel as virtual reality , relative to these 2D screens where they kind of bleed into each other.It certainly stands among the pantheon of time s. You know, 2008 was a hard year for everyone — that was the last major recession. And we were still a private company that needed to fundraise at the time . So 2008 was a tough year in a lot of ways. And we had, at that time , really serious competition coming down the pipe. Then 2012, the shift to mobile plus the IPO, was a super tough year . This is in the pantheon of those things.I always try to resist the urge to feel like the time s that we live in are particularly special. I think that’s a very egocentric indulgence that a lot of us get away with. Like, recessions happen, they happen kind of on a roughly once-a-decade cadence. We’ve had 14 year s since the last one, so it’s maybe a little bit longer than that. But still, they happen, you know they’re gonna happen, they’re going to be annoying when they happen. They affect everybody. They affect really everyone in every industry in every sector. So you’re not uniquely special in that from a macroeconomic standpoint.And then within our own industry, no one really knew how to manage the pandemic, and the economics that came with it, as those recede. So we’re kind of all in the same boat there. We have a few unique challenges — obviously super-talented competitors, ATT [ Apple ’s App Tracking Transparency feature], so we’ve got this headwind that is relatively unique to us, or to least our sector of the tech industry. But even then, you’re gonna have competition and you’re gonna have changes to policy. So it’s certainly a tough time . It doesn’t feel uniquely tough in the world, it doesn’t feel uniquely tough relative to my career. But it’s a challenge and that’s, you know, that’s the job.
