If Apple couldn't make it work, does Google really think they can? This should be headlining an event, not relegated to a blog post.
I think Google just has a habit of making products that excite techies but then prove unsustainable for a wider audience (reader being the prime example). I think them trying that (and then failing) is better for everyone than them simply not even trying, which is what some other major tech players do(Apple)
If people actually want to use this product and it is selling well and there are a lot of android XR users, then it's unlikely that Google will kill it. If it doesn't sell well and there aren't many android XR users, sure, it may be killed, but I don't think you'll find many examples of companies sustaining an unprofitable line of business just for the goodwill of the few people using the product.
What might save this one is that the Oculus Quest ecosystem being Android based with similar hardware, so it should be pretty easy for an ecosystem of appropriately designed software to get ported over.
Kind of like how big screen Android devices have been an afterthought for most apps (hope you like enlarged phone UIs) but what might rescue tablets this time is foldable phones showing up and making developers consider "what if the screen isn't a tall rectangle?"
I still think there's high chances they have one or two generations of hardware trying to copy the Oculus Quest / Vision Pro and then pull the plug and say "forget VR we're doing AI glasses." They were ahead of the curve with Google Glass, but have that habit of bailing on things and giving up the first mover advantage.
I need to do a Google search every time to recall their history with tablets. I remember the Nexus tablets which came out for like a 3 year streak.
Then it was the Pixel C in 2015, then a 3 year gap until the Pixel Slate, then 5 years before the Pixel Tablet. Do not ask me about any of their capabilities or their intention in the market because every release could have been anything.
I'm so beyond getting on board with anything Google puts out, it's kinda just funny to watch and laugh at this point.
More expensive than the Vive isn't the way forward. Apple had a tech demo and slumping quarterly reports and need some PR wins, so out came the headset. I don't think it was a good faith effort to get into this market. I think it was to get headlines, jazz up stocks, and get attention as an innovator outside of laptops and phones.
I have no idea what Google can do here, but Android is a long running project. The Pixel line has long-ish term support. Google can eat Oculus's lunch. I just think the question is if Oculus's walled garden is now too high to climb, both in software and patents. FB money and Carmack's talents are going to be hard to beat here.
If I had to guess, I'd say Google saw Oculus get good at games, but everything else about it is fairly uninteresting. XR/AR could be hot and those new Meta glasses are pretty much Google Glass on steroids. So who knows, but seeing Google dive back into AR/XR is promising and I think they can compete here in a way they can't with VR games.
I could see myself buying AR glasses branded Pixel or Google. I'd think they'd be a better product than Meta. I don't know where Google is going with this and this product seems underwhelming, but we may have an entirely different product in a year or two. I have a feeling both Apple and Samsung's product are PR placeholders until they can catch up to Meta on shoe-horning this into Ray-Ban-esque glasses format.
To their credit, they did seem to make things right for Stadia.
Meanwhile, if we look at Microsoft and Windows MR, they themselves did not, though one of their employees apparently built a SteamVR driver on his own (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45110883). Microsoft should be embarrassed that they couldn't be bothered to do that themselves.
It looks like Google has a very expensive headset, no controllers, and thus no real games to go along with it.
I had a Note device that on launch was compatible with GearVR, but they killed support for it in one of the few the Android updates. This was back when getting 3 Android updates was "lucky". i.e. they launched and completely killed GearVR (paperweight level) all within 5 years.
I’m still very salty about Samsung never officially releasing their Samsung Odyssey VR headset in Europe. It was the best VR headset among the Windows Mixed Reality headsets at the time of their release.
Of course, the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later, too late for WMR to really take off.
I still believe that if Microsoft had forced Samsung to release the Odyssey VR headset worldwide, WMR could have been a success.
And I’m pretty sure Samsung won’t release this one (the Galaxy VR) worldwide either, which will be the reason it fails and Google will probably take that as an excuse to shut down the project as well.
MS and Magic Leap tried to make holographic AR work, but the state of the art wasn't cheap and compact enough for them to make any money on it.
Not that it matters, apple has dropped support for true VR and now that google doesn't have to compete on this obscure battlefield, it will be cancelled before the end of Q4. I honestly feel bad for the team it was probably a good product. The launch event may have only been done for tax purposes to recover R&D losses.
And those aren't rumors, there is a pretty big effort to get Android ready for ChromeOS and get feature parity. Which to me is really unfortunate, CrOS has such a nice linux base.
That's why I don't like Google abandoning projects so much. Sure everybody does this sometimes, but no one does it as much as Google. It's not because I am a "techie". It's because it has been bad for my business. I don't care what people off the street think.
This is not a meme.
I'm not sure if Microsoft actually wanted to try to make it a success. They made a lot of decisions that didn't help it succeed, with one of those decisions leading to every headset being a brick (officially, although Oasis fixes them) now. I could go on and on about it, because I love my Odyssey+ and it's frustrating to see how they screwed the ecosystem up so badly.
Plus, it gives Android developers a widescreen demographic to target, which might finally give them a nudge to make their UIs adapt to things that aren't portrait candybars.
1: gasp this makes so much more sense read as English, I guess it really was written in an Indo-European language
But I still remember the uproar in various communities about Samsung’s decision not to release what was, at the time, the only premium-tier WMR headset, with higher resolution and refresh rate, a wider FOV, mechanical IPD adjustment, and a few other features.
Only the HP Reverb WMR headset, released about two years later, offered comparable premium features and launched in more regions. But in my opinion, by then it was already too late.
The thing is, even at a slightly higher price point, the Samsung Odyssey would have been a great entry into PC VR for many people, since it was still one of the most affordable headsets compared to its competitors at the time, like the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift.
That alone could have helped WMR gain more traction. But many reviewers weren’t too impressed by the other WMR headsets from different manufacturers. Some even compared them to the Samsung Odyssey and suggested waiting for Samsung to release theirs worldwide, since it was clearly the better one (at that time, in 2017).
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/
Honestly, it was a phenomenal product and is part of the reason I'm considering the Galaxy XR now.