If there is a technology that has overpromised and underdelivered more than AR/VR over the last five years, I am not sure what it is.
Facebook paid $2bn (or possibly more) for Oculus in the spring of 2014 and maybe a couple million Oculus headsets have been sold since then. And Facebook is reportedly continuing to spend billions more on Oculus.
So when is all of this investment going to pay off? Maybe sooner than people think.
Oculus Quest is a wireless (untethered) VR headset that shipped this spring and sells for $399 to $499 depending on how much memory you want.
In the past few weeks, a number of friends of mine have suggested I get a Quest (which I will do but have not yet done) and that I will be impressed by it.
I have long thought that an untethered headset that can deliver real VR experiences are what we need to unlock the VR market.
There aren’t many games or experiences for the Quest yet. Hopefully that will change soon.
Most technologies go through a cycle in which the promise is hyped up, followed by the reality setting in and going through a downturn. That has certainly been the case for AR/VR.
But it may well be that the technology is finally catching up to the promise in AR/VR. At least that is what the smartest people I know in this sector are telling me right now.
