It's time to take stock of the week's XR events, what are the big events in the XR space this week?
domestic
Although there are not many news to take stock this week, they are basically some important content worth paying attention to. Let's start with China.
At the recent special event of vivo imaging, Yu Meng, vice president and vice president of imaging of vivo, revealed that vivo will release MR wearable devices in 2025.
In fact, as early as this year's Boao Forum for Asia, Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, revealed that an MR prototype would be launched on vivo's 30th anniversary.
Now, many traditional mobile phone manufacturers in China seem to have begun to lay out the XR field. In addition to vivo, OPPO and Huawei also have plans to launch similar products. Vivo is currently innovating in imaging technology, such as realizing 3D image capture capabilities for the first time on the vivo X100 Ultra series, and working with partners to create a closed-loop experience that integrates photography and viewing. The accumulation of these technologies will provide strong support for vivo's MR wearable devices.
INMO Shadow Technology recently announced that the company has received nearly 100 million yuan in Series B financing.
On July 26, Chengdu Chenghua District People's Government signed an investment cooperation agreement with Shenzhen Yingmu Technology Co., Ltd. After the signing of the agreement, Yingmu Technology will build the company's headquarters in Chenghua District, build a complete metaverse industry ecosystem in Chenghua District in the future, and build Chenghua into a cultural tourism metaverse demonstration area with national influence.
In addition, there is news of new products.
At 2 o'clock in the afternoon on July 31, the latest member of the XREAL series of AR glasses, XREAL Air 2 Ultra, was officially launched in China, and it has been launched on platforms such as JD.com, Tmall and Douyin, with an initial price of 3999 yuan.
It is understood that this AR glasses is a flagship product mainly created for developer groups, aiming to lower the threshold for developers to enter spatial computing.
international
Now let's talk about the international news.
Meta
Let's start with Meta.
Meta announced its Q2 2024 earnings report this week. Among them, Reality Lab's revenue increased by nearly 28% year-on-year to $353 million, while the loss was -$4.49 billion. Zuckerberg commented that the sales of the Quest 3 exceeded the team's expectations, and that the metaverse business remains a long-term focus for the group.
Although the loss of $4.49 billion was slightly better than market expectations, the Reality Labs division has accumulated a loss of about $50 billion since the end of 2020. Under Zuckerberg's leadership, Meta has been investing heavily in hardware and software. For the AI-powered metaverse, Zuckerberg said that he will pay long-term attention, and in terms of smart glasses, they will also continue to cooperate with EssilorLuxottica.
Judging from the financial report, although Meta Reality Lab is still in the red, the Quest 3 has indeed received a lot of praise from the market, and the rest of Meta's projects are also progressing steadily.
But sadly, all of Meta's work is really not as glamorous and easy as it seems, or Zuckerberg suggests.
Recently, Yahoo Finance published an in-depth report on Meta's Reality Labs division, which is responsible for VR, AR and the metaverse, revealing the inside story of the huge cash loss in the past few years. According to Yahoo Finance, Reality Labs has spent $45 billion in just over four years due to frequent reshuffling of the department and the appointment of senior leaders who do not have AR or VR expertise in development.
Yahoo Finance interviewed more than a dozen former senior employees who left Meta, and they said the lack of a clear vision and mismanagement were the main reasons for Reality Labs' financial troubles.
Faced with huge losses and leadership issues, Meta has begun to adjust its investment strategy in the metaverse space. According to reports, the Reality Labs division has been asked to reduce spending by almost 20% between 2024 and 2026.
I hope that with the rectification, Meta's metaverse strategy can achieve better results.
Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Meta Reality Labs, recently reviewed the decade of VR development and described the challenges of the next decade in a podcast forum with Meta CTO Bosworth.
Michael Abrash said that VR is progressing more slowly than he thought, and that the biggest technical challenge is in the display space, but also in areas such as lasers, micro LEDs, waveguides, etc.
Manufacturing consumer electronics is indeed a difficult road, and hopefully tech companies such as Meta will reap the rewards they deserve once VR really develops.
There's also an interesting fact about Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
On July 30, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Meta founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down at SIGGRAPH 2024 to discuss accelerated computing, generative AI, and research that will drive the next wave of innovation, virtual worlds, and robotics breakthroughs.
This is the first public conversation between Huang and Zuckerberg. In the hour-long conversation, Zuckerberg talked about the vision for the future of AI chatbots, while Huang praised Meta's new open-source model, Llama 3.1.
At the end of the conversation, Huang and Zuckerberg gave each other a leather coat. Zuckerberg joked, "This dress of yours is obviously worth more because it was worn by you." ”
Huang and Zuckerberg's conversation looked relaxed, and the two of them also attacked Apple's closed-source platform together, so if you're interested, you can check out the video posted by our VRAR planet.
apple
Apple's related news is, of course, related to the Vision Pro.
Recently, Korea media reported that LG and Samsung have developed a prototype of a micro OLED display using series OLED technology, which also paves the way for Apple's Vision Pro to adopt this technology in the future.
While it is not known when LG and Samsung will be able to mass-produce tandem micro OLED displays, the second generation of the Vision Pro will not be released until at least the end of 2026, so there is still a lot of time left for both companies. It is conceivable that the Vision Pro equipped with a tandem OLED display will have a higher brightness display, and the energy consumption and service life will also be more advantageous.
In addition, Vision Pro has also ushered in one of the strongest "accessories". With the help of startup Synchron's brain-computer interface (BCI) device, Apple's Vision Pro can now be controlled directly by mind. A 64-year-old patient (Mark) with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has successfully used the Apple Vision Pro directly through his brain-computer interface technology.
This is simply a boon for millions of paralyzed patients. The power of the Vision Pro's system is evident, and it will also open up a new world for paralyzed patients.
The Vision Pro is indeed excellent in many ways, both in terms of display and its pioneering handleless operation. But for game developers, it may not be so enjoyable.
On July 30, Mobilegamer reported that several game developers provided anonymous information about what it was like to make games for Apple Arcade and their recent collaboration with Vision Pro.
One of the developers working with the Vision Pro said that even Apple's engineers don't seem to know how the device works. "The tech support is terrible – the worst I've ever seen." According to the developers, "Developing for Vision Pro is like going back 10 years, and it was difficult to get any complex game to run on the platform. ”
In addition to objective development issues, Apple's attitude towards developers is also difficult to explain. Two sources said they were approached by Apple to make a Vision Pro game, but they were not paid anything and there was no guarantee that the game would be promoted or marketed in any way. After all, Meta still provides funding to VR developers, but Apple doesn't have any financial incentives.
This is not good news for Apple's content ecosystem. Although Apple did not specifically indicate which market it was targeting when the Vision Pro was first launched, it seemed to be pointing to the B-side in the publicity for a long time, that is, for enterprise customers.
This week, Apple released its earnings report for the third quarter of fiscal 2024, which ended on June 29. According to the financial report, Apple's revenue in the third fiscal quarter was $85.777 billion, less than the $90.753 billion in the previous fiscal quarter, but higher than the $81.797 billion in the same period last fiscal year, a year-on-year increase of 5%.
After the earnings report, Apple CEO Tim · Cook talked about Vision Pro again, saying that companies have great interest in Vision Pro.
Cook has repeatedly emphasized that using the Vision Pro has become a daily routine, including watching Apple TV content and multitasking. But there seem to be very few use cases that really belong to VR. It's true that the Vision Pro is not built for games, but Apple has not paid enough attention to this aspect, and if you want to play a new triple-A masterpiece on the Vision Pro, it is estimated that you will have to wait for a while.
Sony
Finally, let's talk about Sony's PSVR2. In the past two weeks, PSVR 2 has begun to be discounted at major retailers in the United Kingdom, and the list price has dropped to a new low of 349 pounds (about 3256 yuan), which is 180 pounds (about 1678 yuan) cheaper than the original price of 529.99 pounds (about 4944 yuan) and lower than Meta Quest 3.
This is by far the lowest price of the PSVR 2 in any market. Officially, there is no indication of how long this promotion will last, but many merchants have indicated that this is not a permanent price reduction, but only temporary. And with this price reduction promotion and PC support that has been launched, PSVR 2 has finally ushered in the "second spring" since its release.
According to foreign media reports, on July 28 alone, PSVR2 sales surged by 2,350%, even exceeding the sales in the seven months so far in 2024.
Many consumers who were otherwise hesitant to make a purchase quickly after learning about the news, further boosting sales. Despite this, there are also industry insiders who advise players not to buy PSVR5 for PS2, as Sony's goals for this device are becoming increasingly unclear.
In March, Bloomberg reported that Sony had suspended production of the PS VR2 and may still be clearing the backlog of unsold devices. It's hard to say whether PSVR 2's current price cuts, including PC support, are just a way for Sony to clear up the backlog.
brief summary
That's all for this week's XR content roundup. As we enter July, we can clearly feel that various companies in the domestic XR field have begun to launch their new products this year. PICO's new products are said to be released in August, and there are also some AR products to be released, which is worth looking forward to.
Next week, we'll also bring you a week's worth of XR content at this time, so stay tuned.
Text/R Star Man
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