With the official debut of the Vision Pro at WWDC23 last year, countless XR practitioners have begun to pin their hopes on Apple's entry into the game, which can rekindle this industry that has gone through an unknown number of "first years". It's a pity that a year has passed, and Vision Pro has not changed the XR industry, which has been declining since the ebb of the metaverse.
On September 20, IDC released a quarterly tracking report on China's AR/VR headset market in the first half of 2024, showing that domestic AR/VR headset shipments reached 233,000 units, down 29.1% year-on-year. Specifically, AR headset shipments were 20,000 units, up 101.7% year-on-year, while MR and VR equipment shipments declined significantly, with MR equipment shipments of 66,000 units, down 49.3% year-on-year, while VR devices shipped only 45,000 units, down 65.5% year-on-year.
The reason for the strong growth of consumer-grade AR headsets is actually very simple, because the display technology is more mature. As Micro OLED has built a rapid landing solution that can balance cost and display effect, a series of highly acclaimed AR glasses such as XREAL Air 2, Thunderbird Air Plus, and Rokid Max have been able to meet consumers this year. And with Birdbath, AR glasses have also found a mature commercial solution at the hardware level.
At the same time, AR in the content field has also ushered in a round of benefits. Nowadays, AR technology has been rolled out in the field of e-commerce in an all-round way, from Taobao in China to Amazon in overseas, they have begun to provide users with AR-based try-on capabilities, creating a one-stop shopping experience of "see-try-buy". In the field of games, after the launch of "Black Myth: Wukong", the domestic AR unicorn Rokid showed in the live broadcast that he used AR glasses to experience this 3A masterpiece.
Unlike previous AR games designed for augmented reality such as "Pokémon GO", AR manufacturers have now chosen the path of "AR+ games", that is, AR glasses are used as a screen with a better sense of visual immersion, and the game can be experienced through streaming.
Previously, the design idea of AR games was to use the characteristics of AR to place virtual objects in the physical world, trying to bring users an experience that is different from traditional games. While the selling point of combining virtual and reality is indeed the key to the boom of AR games such as Ingress, Pokémon GO, and even Let's Hunt Monsters, this quality also limits the development of AR games. Although the combination of virtual and reality can not only reflect the characteristics of AR but also have a certain degree of gameplay, it is a huge challenge for game development, which is why after the combination of AR and LBS gameplay in "Pokémon GO", there are no more popular AR games.
AR hardware manufacturers, which suffer from the lack of supply of AR games, have now chosen a more clever way, that is, to directly put traditional games on AR glasses. For example, Rokid invited a group of B station UP owners to experience playing "Black Myth: Wukong" on Rokid AR Lite, and experienced this action game on a high-definition large screen of up to 300 inches plus a wrap-around multi-screen, which indeed achieved a visual experience that transcended the physical limitations of the physical screen.
At this stage, the operation of putting traditional games on AR glasses is equivalent to a number of "pseudo-3D" movies that have emerged in the film industry after "Avatar" became popular. It is true that "pseudo-3D" movies are certainly inferior to real 3D, but it first solves the problem of existence and absence, and cultivates the market for 3D movies that are still in their infancy.
On the other hand, the sales of VR devices that have swooped down, both software and hardware are currently in a state of stagnation. Although the resolution, refresh rate, field of view, and handling of VR devices have been greatly improved, the problem of motion sickness has always left manufacturers helpless. The reason for this is that VR is a technology that deceives the senses, creating a virtual world that is different from reality, which is also fundamentally different from AR that superimposes virtual objects on top of the real world.
At the software level, the problem is even greater. The logic of VR game development is completely different from that of current console/PC games, and adding VR support to a game is basically the same as developing a new game. However, for products with a weak user base such as VR equipment, the high cost of content production is undoubtedly a very fatal problem. At the same time, traditional games are oriented to 2D screens, while VR is 3D.
For example, in a PC game, if you want to show that a character is moving, you only need to play an animation of arms and legs swinging constantly, and handle the beginning and end of the animation to show the movement of the character well, but in a VR game, the character really needs to move in sync with the movement of the player in the real world. As a result, it becomes impossible to move the game directly into VR. Unable to port existing games or convince third-party developers to develop VR games with huge investments but limited audiences, the situation is naturally deadlocked.
Therefore, the gradual maturity of hardware, and the discovery of content supply sources, is the key to the explosive growth of AR glasses. With hardware technology almost standing still and software lacking third-party support, the sales of VR headsets have naturally turned down.