That's the thing with life; no one makes it out alive.
Throw the body in the pit, it's useless to us now in the future that is METAVERSE. When we all transcend our frail physical bodies and it's limp limitations so that we can spend our waking lives hooked up to daddy Zuck's Mean Dream Machine and have our lifeblood slowly be drained out of the brain jar that makes up our new evolved forms. In the metaverse there's a place for all of us. A place as- powerless peon under Mark's boot, indentured servitude cleaning Mark's virtual mansion, or the premium toilet plunge cleaner at Zuckerberg's communal seminal sewers. Finally we all become functional members of Mark's society just like humanity was born to be. Aren't you excited to toss behind your fleshbags for Mark's dream vision? You better be, because it's coming at you whether or not you like it! ALL HAIL OUR META OVERLORDS!
But seriously, Facebook's whole Metaverse project has been an utter failure of marketing from the word go, and it's actually somewhat humbling to know that someone with the apparent monopoly on siphoning personal data out of you (with the exception of TikTok, I guess) can't put together a decent presentation selling their biggest life-line business scheme to outlive their Facebook platform which isn't going to last past it's current generation of users. You'd think people like that would have the hardwired exclusive access to our frontal lobes with perfect advertising to trick the whole world, but unless Mark Zuckerberg has a humiliation fetish, and with him who knows, this whole project of theirs has been a disaster. Their meaningless 'Metaverse' buzzword has been stolen by every company under the sun, the very idea of what a Metaverse even is supposed to be has been lambasted daily by anyone who grants it even the laziest critical eye and their own fledging work to start their Metaverse is such a mystery that one of the top searched Google suggestions in reference to Facebook is "What's Facebook's Metaverse called?"
Horizon Worlds, is the answer to that. Which yes, means that if Google recognises you as a gamer than the second you try to type in the name of that online you're going to have the Horizon games starring Aloy shoved in your face. (-5 points to brand recognition) But what if you do manage to find the thing and source the relevant equipment in order to play it? What can you expect? Well Horizon worlds is currently attempting to be a social hub for life-less looking avatar's to enjoy a lazy neon sunset themed world with nothing of substance or value to it. That's right, all those game developer's that were coming out trying to tell Facebook that the whole 'online social hub' thing was essentially just the MMO worlds they'd been creating for the past twenty years; Facebook has proved you all wrong by releasing its social space as an MMO without the game. Groovy.
Okay so there are actually games spread about here and there but almost all of them totally suck ass. They're embarrassingly amateur programs that wouldn't even cut it as an inconsequential minigame in a Watch_Dogs game; that's how lazy they are. All while the actual talented developers trying their hands at Horizon Worlds are scratching their heads wondering how in the hell they're supposed to get all these systems to sing for them so they can construct anything worthwhile to do in here. Of course, those developers also have to contend with the lack of interest around Horizon Worlds, so that any effort they do put in is likely to have some waste when no one is around to actually play it. Try balancing the problems with developing VR games beneath the misbalancing factor of it having to run on a program that actively repels most able-minded players to even look at due to the Facebook connections. Really makes one consider their current contracts and allegiances.
All of which is to say that META's platform is undergoing some pretty rough growing pains for the express moment, which it makes it so very laughable that Mark, and at this point it's important to divorce the machinations of Facebook and the personal directives of it's pale-skinned dictator, drove up the price of the Oculus Quest VR headset specifically because of their Horizon Worlds project. As if he suddenly just realised that the incredible added value of his lifeless and empty platform warranted a flat retail increase for a console that is years old at this point. What is Mark, a Nintendo sleeper agent or something? And it's no twenty dollar jump like when Bethesda decided that it's Fallout 4 offerings needed to be overpriced to account for the total dogs dinner of DLC they wanted to put out between their two expansions. This is a big $100 dollar hike, across the board of headsets. Everything is just that large leap more expensive, and it's a trainwreck worth watching.
Think about the degree of unshakable delusion that has to have been running through the heads of everyone involved in that decision. First, they had to have been looking at the unimpressive adoption rate of Horizon Worlds, and realised how their current growth strategy was failing their overriding ambition. Then they must have totally ignored the value proposition of that software, and why that might turn people off from trying it out and straying, and instead tricked themselves into believing that the people just weren't taking the headset seriously enough and decided to hike the price. Or, even more damning, they saw the lack of revenue generation and thought that gouging their own console price was the way to supplement for it. Which is just... so wrong. What ever the case, Zucks might actually being doing the world a favour by grinding any feasible chance his ecosystem had of getting a grip in the market down by way of pricing his own hardware away from public interest.
As if VR needed another barrier to entry. It's already a criminally underserved and underadopted form of gaming that optimists are failing with their naïve belief that just because the tech is finally sound the product itself is going to just magically catch on. Sure, it's slowly getting more popular. Agonisingly slowly, however. Anyone looking to make a genuine living out of being a solely VR developer needs to either be one of the slam dunk mega hit games, like Beat Saber, or have a truckload of outside investing ready to keep the company afloat. There's just not the numbers to support an ecosystem. And the way to supplement those numbers, funnily enough, is not to raise the price of the damn thing in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis! (Does anyone in the tech industry ever look outside the bubble they live in to try and get a feel of their market? I'm thinking not.)
But if you're a late comer to VR and rush to quickly get a headset you have a scant few weeks before the hike gets into effect. And if you miss it don't worry; the new version of the headset comes with $30 VR hit Beat saber. (Good luck trying to dig up the other $70 of that value somewhere) Oh, and that offer is only temporary. After six months of the new price the headset will come alone. As much as it pains me to see an increadibly dumb pricing choice, it is ingratiating to acknowledge it's Facebook that are going to suffer the brunt of the bad decision. Maybe that will be enough to grind this vaccous concept of the 'Metaverse' down to an ignoble and deserved halt. At least until Amazon gets on developing their own, because these companies are like hydra; cut one head and three more take it's place.
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