It was the year of XR. But these days, they all seem to be. At his CES this year, the strong presence of Meta, Magic Leap, Sony and HTC led the way, with hundreds of startups following suit. A few demos caught my eye, but ultimately left me wondering what true mainstreaming of AR/VR would ultimately look like.
There’s something about technology that warms your body after a long day at the Las Vegas venue. Put on your headset and feel the show floor drift away for a minute or two. I think most people who try these technologies in a situation like this will understand it, but there are too many barriers for most people to get their hands on these products right now.
Good VR is still very expensive. The content is also very limited. Both of these factors are certainly moving in the right direction, but whether they are moving fast enough to reach critical mass in this multi-year iteration of the hype cycle is a big open question. there is.
HTC’s approach is still in baby steps. It’s the realization that true mainstream adoption is still a long way off, despite years of hearing otherwise. In the meantime, that means focusing on the core audience. It’s carved like a large granite boulder standing between it and the general public.
For HTC, the Vive XR Elite was the star of the show. At $1,099, it’s a few hundred dollars cheaper than Meta’s Quest Pro, but still too high to be considered a breakthrough of sorts for the industry as a whole.
“This is for an audience that wants an upgraded experience,” Shen Ye, senior director and global head of product at the company, said in an interview with TechCrunch.
At this point in the evolutionary process, it might be unfair to set the standard of success for XR headsets in every home, and Leap Motion’s well-known struggles are a decent barometer here. Plus, so is the fact that the company has made a full pivot into the enterprise. You can make a lot of money by selling products to companies. It certainly seems like more money is being made than it is now for pure consumer play.
HTC has definitely done an impressive job here. I can’t say I spent a lot of time with the XR Elite, but the headset was as comfortable and attractive as advertised. It’s a puzzle piece that has long felt like an afterthought for manufacturers. It would be strange to overlook hardware designed to sit on your face for long periods of time.
Image credit: HTC
Ye compares potential buyers to gamers who wait impatiently and impatiently for the pro version of Nintendo’s popular convertible console.
“To this day, people still want the Switch Pro,” he told TechCrunch. “They want something portable, but they want something better. Mobile VR is like that right now. is obsessed with the products of
The “race to the bottom” he is referring to here is precisely the main issue associated with mainstream adoption: price. The market has been flooded with low-cost VR solutions for years, from Google Cardboard/Daydream to Samsung Gear VR. An argument can certainly be made that these things ultimately did more harm than good. It’s easy to imagine people giving up paying big bucks for VR in the future if it’s not particularly good.
Ye said of HTC’s efforts: “But now our focus is on how we move the market to make it better, to be more inclusive and to offer a better experience.”
One thing is for sure, HTC is working on VR on a few levels. The Vive hardware and associated software/metaverse technology is the company’s main focus, and the mobile business is slowly slowing down (remember last year’s “metaverse” phone, the Desire 22 Pro?). The company’s future rests on its ability to push VR/XR forward. It can be a tough road to go all out with the technology while being realistic about the speed and scope of its potential growth.
Much of the industry expects verification, especially from Apple. The hope is that the company will fire its guns and enter the AR or XR category, and the buzz will be a tide that pulls all ships.
“I think the good thing about Apple coming in is that they’re not a social media company,” Ye said. “Truly disruptive giants are joining this race to the bottom, making cheap headsets that are losing money. After all, how much does your personal data cost? We’re not a social media company, it’s not what we do because our business model doesn’t rely on advertising revenue, we want to build great hardware.”
