February 2024 is a historic month for the world of extended reality (XR) and its creators. And in more ways than one. If the launch of the Apple Vision Pro is an expected marker of wider adoption (to come), it does so with several important brakes, starting with its purchase price. But it also comes at a time when the market is discovering its obvious maturity, while celebrating 10 years of its acceleration towards the general public.
In recent days, the share of VR users on Steam has again exceeded 2%, thanks to the ramp-up of Quest 3 (launched in October). At the same time, Meta’s Reality Labs announced that it had exceeded $1 billion in revenues for the first time (but also, and still, larger losses), again thanks to the launches of its latest products at the end of 2023. Finally, VR video games can be successes before being officially inducted on the main store, like GHOST OF TABORS and its 10 million in revenues earned on Meta’s App Lab and in Steam Early Access.
All the indicators are therefore green for a bright future under the sign of the immersive XR. Apple’s bold promise to offer a technological bridge between closed VR (by its very nature) and augmented reality must be convincing in the coming months. Initial sales of 200,000 units (expected to rise rapidly thereafter) have already made the XR an instant success, with the help of technology and XR enthusiasts who are already feeding the social networks in the first few days (hours!) of discovery. It’s a frenzy quite different from previous VR headset unveilings, even if the enthusiasm seems relatively identical. It’s just multiplied by the marketing power of the Apple brand. As a result, Vision Pros can already be seen on the streets of American cities (the headset is not on sale outside the country), on airplanes or even… behind the wheel of Tesla…. Something Apple strongly advises against.
What will change? In the coming months, not much. The purchase price ($3,500, not including accessories or insurance) is largely prohibitive. Nonetheless, Apple is offering itself a successful launch for its new product (the first since the Apple Watch in 2015, now selling tens of millions a year), and with a target audience likely to carry its message. The Vision Pro is a multi-purpose headset, which already embeds +600 applications at launch (including Max, ARTE, …), but above all the default iOS application library. That’s millions of possibilities, while we wait for these specific use cases to evolve. Of course, many of our competitors did not want to be included, as Netflix and Spotify in particular made clear. Discussions surrounding Apple’s pricing policy for access to its devices are intractable… It remains to be seen how this will evolve.

In the shorter term, it’s usage that will tell us whether Apple’s gamble is right. Everything is being done to democratize the Vision Pro as much as possible. Sport, entertainment… If it’s the professional tech influencers who will be talking about it the most, we can imagine a fairly rapid consumer future for the second- or third-generation Vision. Apple has just closed the XR’s R&D period, and opened it up definitively to freer uses. Initial feedback has praised the product’s UX and finish, although there are some technical reservations about certain functions. The community aspect is strengthened, delivering a version of the famous metaverse (virtual worlds) dear to Mark Zuckerberg, but anchored in the real world with personalized avatars. If they are still relatively “strange”, they are based on Apple’s messaging tools, and by default on the brand’s other devices. But the ultimate question remains, as with any XR headset, its use beyond the single individual: it remains unlikely that “Vision Pro” parties or meetups will be organized in physical form, beyond a few concepts reserved for fans of the brand or certain applications. Even “cinema” use, which can be highly relevant, is unlikely to replace the idea of a TV evening with several people, and the same goes for sports matches… except to connect with several friends online. The community aspect of such a device (wearing a mask on your head) is not obvious, and the Apple Vision Pro is unlikely to stand out from its VR cousins on this point.
And yet, the Vision Pro has enormous room for improvement when it comes to interacting with the outside world. In itself, this new headset confirms the promise of mixed reality that was already apparent in the Quest 3 and other recent devices. A mixed reality based on the real world, our environment. It lets us open or close the door between a 100% digital and virtual world, or an experience based on our physical surroundings. The field of possibilities, which obviously goes beyond the cultural realm, is immense. But whatever happens, we’ll keep both feet on the ground.
More on this wild week
Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us?, The New Yorker, par Jaron Lanier
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