The Sad State of the VR industry

this may be the most important video on my channel yet if you've noticed something has been weird lately this will explain it all we need to have a serious talk about virtual reality its future my future within it and most importantly your future within it something has been on my mind for weeks now and i've thought about it endlessly to the point that it's affected my content and upload schedule it's affected my own excitement for making creative videos about vr and if you can't tell it's even affected my tone i almost feel that i can't move forward with my channel until this is said so here it is this is the state of the vr industry an inside look that most people just don't talk about because it's uncomfortable this is also my stance moving forward on meta oculus and facebook the good and the bad they're doing for vr and this is how we can use and manipulate meta to make them do what we want for a brighter virtual reality future this is how we take vr back for us this is my game plan let's start this conversation here this channel over the past few years i have dedicated my life to making videos about virtual reality in general my channel isn't news it's not reviews it's not commentary or comedy it's all of them i guess it's just a general vr channel i do kind of all of it it's been the craziest most fulfilling adventure i could have ever dreamt of and i feel lucky every single day to have a voice in the vr industry and to be able to make real change in the thing i love and to bring vr to hundreds of thousands of people and my favorite part is the community that's built up around this channel in vrchat and discord and twitch and of course everyone here that clicks on every single video i love you guys and i feel like this is one big family with one common interest and that's an infatuation for virtual reality just like me but you know what none of that means anything if i'm not real and transparent with you guys about my true thoughts on things and give you guys real updates on how things really are there's a sort of responsibility and opportunity to do as much as i can to help lead virtual reality down a path that benefits everyone it touches and if we're gonna get awards i'm gonna use them to further push my voice i either try and do something or i do nothing and i'll try something every single time but at the same time i go from a video titled this is not our metaverse breaking down my concerns for a meta-controlled vr future so just a couple weeks later hey look at meta's new glove prototypes they're insane so what is it thrill are you for meta or are you against it if i dislike meta's vision of the metaverse so much wouldn't the best thing be to just boycott meta or something similar and no i can't it's not that simple and it's not black and white but there is something we can do let me lay down the context i don't want to repeat myself from the metaverse video but this needs to be stated here before i go forward i don't have any direct bias or hatred for meta or facebook i do however have a love and bias for vr and the vr community i am fully aware that meta is a corporation and they will function like a corporation that offers products and services and answers not to the people but to shareholders and with that are positives and negatives it doesn't matter if amazon or google or anyone else was in meta's position right now they would get the exact same treatment and criticisms from me in the hope that we get a more fair and competitive and open vr future but enough with that let's get into the actual video here are the problems the vr industry in the west is monopolized right now at least in terms of consumer vr facebook has a total grip on the entire industry from developers to hardware to the consumer base right now meta has 100 of the standalone vr market if you have a vr headset and you don't have a pc you have a quest request too there are zero competitors there is no alternative they also have market dominance in pcvr with over 60 of all headsets used on steam being meta products the next competitor is the valve index at just over 16 percent of users this is not good total market dominance and monopolization is terrifying in any industry but at the same time the growth for vr is really good millions of people are getting into vr for the first time and it's good vr the quest 2 is such a good headset for such a good price and it does so much more than its competition and its software catalog is more mature than any standalone store out there that it's kind of impossible for anyone to compete especially in the same price range and that gets us on to the second problem the developer snowball because meta has total vr market control at the moment they also control developers we see this already exclusive after exclusive studio after studio getting acquired if you want to make real money as a vr developer and to feed your team and yourself or your family your best shot is to release on the quest store it has the most users and active player base hungry for games and applications more users equals more people buying games which equals more games for that platform which equals more users for that platform because there are more games it's a snowball and because developers options are basically steam and steamvr and accept that you'll probably not make much money playstation vr and except that you'll just have to build your game for limited vr hardware or the fruitful quest store i'm not surprised that so many developers are making games exclusively for the quest it's their best shot at making enough money so that they can make another game and pay their people and this further snowballs the meta monopolization and difficulty for anyone else to enter the industry not only can they not compete in terms of hardware cost and capability but they don't have games or an app store to compete either and since all of the new users are on one platform of course developers are developing for that platform and this is all calculated facebook missed the smartphone craze they won't be missing this one and this is why they're dumping billions and billions of dollars into the vr industry vr will explode in popularity and they will be the leaders of the market when it does or at least they want to be and just being real all the money being thrown in by facebook over the past few years and in the future is helping the vr industry developers are finally making money for the first time so they can make more games and better games vr is getting somewhat affordable and approachable reality labs innovations are crazy but be aware they are doing this not just to help the vr industry but because they want to be the dominant force within it and they want to be the dominant force and key holder of the metaverse as they call it and there's the other issue of them hiring tens of thousands of talented developers that are interested in vr from across the world they are gobbling up vr talent everywhere and holding it for themselves but regarding us immediately there's a bigger problem here that puts us all in a really weird position if someone asks you or me what headset they should get as a total newbie really the only option is a quest too over the course of months thousands and thousands of people have asked me the same question and here's what that usually sounds like i don't have a lot of money but i really want to get into vr if i have 300 what vr should i get now i am primarily an index user on a pc i have a quest to that i use on the go but if i'm by my pc all the time i'd rather just use my index but am i realistically gonna tell someone totally fresh to vr that just wants a cheap taste to go drop a couple grand and build a pc and buy an index or am i just going to tell them to go to best buy and spend 300 [Music] it would be incredibly elitist and privileged in gatekeepy of me to not recommend the best most affordable option out there and honestly it would be more disingenuous and confusing to anyone if i did anything otherwise what do i seriously say nah you only have 300 bucks just save up seven times that amount for slightly better vr that's not meta or nah you just shouldn't get a vr headset because meta sucks do you see what i'm saying here in this position i have no other option than to say just buy a quest because the alternative is don't do vr wait or spend money you don't have when people come to me for recommendations they just want to get into vr they don't care about or know about all of the baggage or potential issues they just want a good cheap introduction into vr and here's where the fun begins i want to clear this up for everybody this is what my introduction and recommendation regarding the quest is it's an introduction most people don't care about all of the problems i just talked about yet because they haven't been in vr and aren't in the vr community yet you shouldn't feel bad about recommending a quest to somebody it's a good piece of hardware and you'd be lying if you said anything different it's also the cheapest gate to entering the vr community to seeing its potential while vr is legitimately in the wild west the more people we have in vr now and in the vr community that understand how important this is to our future directly increases the number of voices that can help shape vr ethically for everybody now and not later because they'll care and understand then on top of that right now we have seen the vr industry with zero competitors google is twiddling its thumbs valve is resting on its laurels of the index because nobody has made anything better amazon is busy picking up twitch and delivering packages in two days and the only real competitors are in china and the ccp isn't any better than meta i'll tell you that much but vr will be undeniable for every big tech company in time once there are enough users and we can use meta to get there use them as a leapfrog to invite competition let them spend the billions and billions to get vr to mainstream and to do the research and to make the cool things and we can enjoy the games and hardware while doing it and let them pay the bill that nobody else wants to pay to make vr financially viable for developers and competition alike and once vr hits a big enough state we jump ship and abandon the one that got us there because right now there's like one and a half ship and maybe a couple little boats meta and valve and a few others they are all charting the oceans for everyone else to join in and trust me there's gonna be a lot more ships once the demand and financial risk has dissolved from the whole vr industry but if we dedicate all of our energy to sinking the ones that we're on we're gonna end up shooting ourselves in the foot instead we pile on as many people as we can onto the ship and mutiny and hold the captain at gunpoint to steer the ship the way that we want why deny millions of people vr when they can help in our cause they can be voices alongside us instead of boycotting we use meta and their investments and we try to shape the future the way that we want it demanding open platforms and transparency and privacy and systems that benefit developers and consumers alike rather than shackle them to closed and controlling ecosystems meta isn't going anywhere whether you like it or not so support others when we can and demand change when we can't in fact this is a call to action i'm incapable of doing this i don't have the skills to do it but one good way to make men listen to us freaking root the quest too someone out there can do it doing things like this is how we get meta to look at us because i stand true this vision that we were given by meta still isn't my metaverse but they're going to do everything they can to make it everyone's metaverse we need to push vr as much as possible so that more people understand and even care about the gravity of the situation and here's where i come in if i ever stopped covering quest or meta or oculus entirely i would be committing total and absolute platforms as more and more quest and meta users get vr headsets i would be sectioning myself off from talking to any of them or accepting them into the community or raising awareness of the issues that we have so we can make this change i would be muting myself and i cannot do that plus meta is doing some good things for vr and i will talk about them including glove prototypes or new headsets or updates and i'll be excited about them too because it's cool vr and it's relevant to everyone that cares about vr or owns a quest and i will continue recommending quests until there is something legitimately better because i will always recommend the best regardless of a bias however i will also always make videos like this because not everything is black and white there's good there's bad and unless you zoom out to see the whole picture how are you going to make any change and let's be real if people like me that talk about this stuff die out or are silenced then we'll just be replaced by puppets that blindly push whatever is new so at least you know where i stand and where i will stand and for the future of vr whether you agree with me entirely or not i hope you can at least stand with me on the core principles that a monopoly of our virtual reality is bad open preferably open source transparent platforms that benefit everybody are good and competition is something that we should welcome the greatest asset we have as a community is the community nobody can take this away and there's no point in being at each other's throats we are the lifeblood of vr the inhabitants and creators of the worlds within it and even if you don't believe this your voice is powerful and our voice can change the future oh man thank you for listening everybody i hope this cleared some stuff up and i'm glad that i said this now so i could go back to making fun videos like tundra trackers and you know catwalk stuff but join up in my discord if you want to keep talking about this and whether you agree or disagree comment down below and i don't know let me know and maybe share this with your vrp because i think it's a decent message to be spread well till the next one much love [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ThrillSeeker

Views: 397,125

Keywords: vr, virtual reality, meta, oculus, oculus quest, quest 2, Thrillseeker, stance, VRnews, tuesday newsday

Id: 1Nl08cUuBsY

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Crafty-Translator-26]

Couldn’t that men go spread his click bait bullshit somewhere else than vr