Proving yet again that goggled nausea is a hard sell, Facebook's virtual reality arm Oculus on Thursday said it would shut down Story Studio, its VR production unit.
"We're now entering the next chapter of VR development, where new creators enter the market in anticipation of adoption and growth, and we've been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem," said Jason Rubin, VP of content, in a blog post announcing the closure.
"After careful consideration, we've decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production."
The next chapter in this woeful tale doesn't promise adoption and growth. The best it can do is to tease investors with the "anticipation" of a healthy market and to seed product demand with a $50 million commitment to help other companies develop "non-gaming, experiential VR content."
Yep... the whole VR thing looks like it's really taking off.
This is when I'm supposed to say, "All sarcasm aside," but The Reg was really just getting going:
Not content to let Oculus explore the one proven consumer application for VR – high-end gaming – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains convinced that isolating people behind high-tech blindfolds can be an appealing social experience. [...] Never mind that there's nothing natural or social about the solitary confinement of an Oculus eye prison, the fact is that people aren't buying it. VR hardware and software sales have been underwhelming, with the possible exception of Sony's PlayStation VR.
Oculus' decision in March to drop the price of its Rift headset and Touch controller bundle from $798 to $598 is not the sort of thing a company does when its products are flying off the shelves.
In its unhappy ending, Story Studio couldn't even manage to be original. In January, Envelop VR, the Bellevue, Washington-based VR startup, shut down. In November, Vrideo, a would-be VR video hub, closed. And in February, Facebook shut down some 200 of its 500 Oculus VR pop-up kiosks in Best Buy stores.
Ouch.
It gets worse when the VR apologists try to spin the news. Take, for example, this bit of desperation from Android Headlines:
Sure, now that Story Studio is closing and any projects that were being worked on are being stopped immediately, it means that we’ll never get to see or experience those projects, which might be a bit of a letdown to anyone that was looking forward to seeing Wolves in The Wall, the forth film that was in development. As Oculus mentioned though, now they can use the extra funding to support third-party content creators who are also working on using VR as a narrative art form. This means that there is potential for some really great content coming from these other third-party creators and perhaps even more so now that they will have support from Oculus.Yeah... because business that lack the resources of Oculus a.k.a. Facebook are going to be able and willing to lose money making VR content when Oculus a.k.a. Facebook can't even make a go of it. Riiiight.
They continue:
It’s also opening up Oculus to having more time to devote to figuring out other issues with virtual reality and augmented reality technology. As Oculus stated in their official announcement that went out yesterday, their attention can be focused on solving problems with AR and VR hardware and software. This is a good thing for the VR industry as a whole as there are still some issues with both the hardware and software which could do with some extra attention, and now Oculus is going to be able to provide that extra attention.
"Some" issues? Some issues??? Holy denial of reality, Batman!
This is not complicated: VR is not ready. In its present form, VR is extremely limited in its applications, barely adequate for doing even that limited range of activities, and not useful for anything that people will want or need to do, and that can't be adequately done without VR. And while some of VR's problems might be solvable with enough investment, that requires deep-pocketed companies like Facebook to be willing to lose boatloads of money every single year until those solutions materialize... both on the solutions themselves, and on building a library of VR content so that there's stuff to do with the tech once it's finally fit for prime time.
The one thing, the only thing, that VR had going for it, was that companies like Facebook had deep enough pockets to be able to do that... if they could sell that business plan to their shareholders. Well, guess what? They can't.
At least, Facebook clearly can't, because they're already looking to minimize losses while waiting for the tech to develop on its own, tossing only a token amount of money at the concept of content creation in order to be able to say that they're still spending on that. Make no mistake about it: this is a white flag, and it's the third such surrender (following the price cut, and the the closure of its Best Buy kiosks) just from Facebook.
VR is not a thing, and it's looking less and less like this generation of the tech has any chance of becoming a thing, anytime soon. Cheaper PCVR headsets will not fix that. VR arcades, which only serve to showcase the tech's limitations, will not fix that. And people who were looking to Facebook to be able to throw enough money at the problem to fix that, to basically will VR into being a thing... well, folks, I recommend that you stop waiting, because that ain't happening, either.