HTC's death spiral, continued

Way back in 2017, I was confidently predicting that VR would not be a widespread thing in 5 years time, as some were predicting, and that companies which were betting their futures on VR would come to regret those bets. In particular, I'd called out HTC, the former darling of the Android smartphone business, as being especially poorly positioned to make such a bet.

Fast forward five years, and most of those predictions are still holding up. VR is still not a widespread thing, in spite of Facebook Meta dumping $10 billion USD into their VR business and counting, and "Meta" is just the latest attempt to rebrand VR as something else. Do you remember XR? I do, but I'm probably the only one.

And HTC, having already pivoted from VR to Meta, and then to blockchain, is still desperately searching for the buzzword which can save them.

As reported by The Verge:

HTC’s slow-motion fall from smartphone grace is reportedly set to continue in 2022, with the company said to be working on a new “metaverse”-focused phone in April as the remnants of the once-flagship smartphone company continues to desperately cling to whatever zeitgeist term it can to stay afloat, according to DigiTimes.

[...]

The news sounds a lot like HTC’s last major pivot towards relevancy: its Exodus line of blockchain phones that its offered for the past few years. Promising decentralized apps (“Dapps”) and a built-in cryptocurrency wallet, the phones could run blockchain nodes and even mine paltry amounts of cryptocurrency, but — like many instances of blockchain technology — it was a solution largely in search of a problem that never really took off. 

[...]

HTC’s main announcement at MWC 2022 was the debut of a nebulous “Viverse” — the company’s metaverse concept that promises to fuse VR, XR, 5G, blockchain technology, NFTs, and more together into a new, futuristic platform.  

[...]

Given that HTC’s Viverse doesn’t really exist — nor does widespread adoption of any modern metaverse concept — it’s easy for the company to just say it’s making a metaverse app or phone. After all, who’s to say that you aren’t?

I will give HTC this much credit -- they've lasted longer than I thought they would. But considering that consumers are not showing any appetite for Metaverse, or for blockchain products in general, outside of a small group of well-heeled early adopters, I don't see why anyone would want HTC's blockchain-based Metaverse knockoff.

I mean, seriously.... Viverse? So much for dignity, I guess.

VR 2.0? Seriously?

Was it only four days ago that I was blogging about VR advocates'/apologists' attempts to rebrand VR as something other than VR, and saying that it was clear evidence that this generation of VR technology had already failed?

Well, just to prove that "XR" wasn't some sort of isolated incident, I give you VR 2.0, courtesy of Fast Company:

In the two years since consumer virtual reality hardware first hit store shelves, it has struggled to catch on. There are numerous reasons, but one is that all current VR systems work only when connected to an external computing device—a gaming-quality PC, smartphone, or game console.

In 2018, that dynamic will change with the release of several standalone VR systems. Get ready for VR 2.0–an evolution that could help the technology fulfill some analysts’ predictions of it becoming a $38 billion industry by 2026.

Horse hockey.

Fast Company's entire argument is predicated on a single, outdated assumption: that "computing systems of all sorts inexorably get smaller, cheaper, and more efficient." That might have been true ten years ago, but it really isn't anymore. The simple reality of computing today is that new computing systems aren't getting smaller, cheaper, or more efficient. There's a reason why sales of new PCs have declined year-over-year for six years now, and counting; there's a reason why even smartphone sales are levelling off.

As the size of processor elements shrinks below the micro-, and towards the nano-, quantum mechanics replaces classical electromagnetism as the dominant force governing your designs' properties and performance. This "quantum threshold" translates to an increase in the cost and difficulty of reducing the size and efficiency of processors, rather than a reduction. With costs increasing exponentially, and sales decreasing, the economics of processor design all trend in a single direction, which is why my seven-year-old PC sports a six-core, 3.4 GHz AMD CPU which can still keep pace quite nicely with the six-core, 3.6 GHz Ryzen processors of six months ago.

Moore's Law really has stopped being a thing, and tech writers need to start thinking about what that means, rather than reflexively repeating decade-old common wisdom which no longer applies to the current reality of tech development. VR headsets are not poised for a leap forward in onboard processing power, which means that gear which leverages more powerful PCs for their processing will continue to provide more varied and better-performing experiences than their standalone cousins. Which means, of course, that the likes of Oculus Go are unlikely to supplant the likes of HTC's upcoming Vive Focus as the main drivers of VR innovation.

Which brings us to "VR 2.0," which, much like "XR," is an attempt to convince consumers and investors that weaksauce, crippled VR is somehow much more appealing than the higher-performance, PC-driven VR experiences that haven't exactly set the world on fire, either, up to now. Which is why Alphr and Fast Company are trying to rebrand VR in the first fucking place, and using exactly the same M.O. to do it: weak arguments, vague promises, and a goalposts which are perpetually moving down the field.

VR is not useful, and it's not new anymore. Until the VR industry grapples with these fundamental facts, it will continue to struggle to catch on with consumers who haven't been awed into dumbfounded compliant consumerism by vague promises and a few neat tech demos. It's not enough to build them, and hope that customers will come. Consumers aren't coming now unless you convince them; it's time to figure out why they should come, so that you can tell them why they should be spending money on VR... whatever initial consonant or version number you choose to stick on it.

Beyond VR?

If you're looking for more evidence that VR in its current incarnation has already failed, I think one need look no further than the fact that some of VR's proponents are already trying to rebrand it as something other than VR. Something more useful and less problematic, perhaps.

From Alphr:

We are at a frontier. Just ahead, almost within reach, are a series of technological developments that are finally growing out of their infancy and will change not just the way we think about technology, but the way we think about reality and existence itself.

These developments will form part of what is called extended reality, or XR. The term describes the entire spectrum of reality, from the virtual to the physical, from augmented reality to augmented virtuality, virtual reality and everything in between. But what it implies is a dramatic, potentially species-defining change in human experience.

To many people, this kind of talk will likely sound overly conceptual, but XR’s implications are highly tangible. Psychiatrists could treat a phobia using VR to simulate, with near-perfect precision, the physical and psychological environment required to induce the phobic response. At the Tribeca Film Festival, ‘Tree’ gave guests the opportunity to immerse themselves in a rainforest and take in the sights and smells of the Amazon while running their hands on the trunk of a centuries-old tree. These examples barely scratch the surface of what is possible. XR’s potential is nearly limitless and in 2018, it will arrive.

[...]

This arrival of XR represents the collapse of the virtuality/reality divide. Within the new XR framework, virtuality and reality are no longer opposites. Neither are digital and biological. XR implies a far more complex relationship between these things – one in which virtuality can make things real.

If you're thinking that this all sounds a lot like the case that VR's advocates and apologists were making for VR itself, not that long ago, then you're not alone. From the promises of "nearly limitless" and yet somehow still vague potential, with the same tired old examples that still "barely scratch the surface of what is possible," to the promise that it will all arrive next year, in exactly the same way that VR has been predicted to explode into mass adoption sometime in the next year ever since Oculus Rift was released in 2016, this is exactly the same tired, old, VR sales pitch that has utterly failed to captivate consumers for two years now, and counting.

What's new, though, is the deliberate attempt to shift the discussion away from the VR label, to a new term, "XR," which allegedly combines Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Microsoft Mixed Reality, and any other, similar technology, into a seamless spectrum that "represents the collapse of the virtuality/reality divide," with virtuality and reality ceasing to be opposites.

Of course, exactly why consumers are supposed to want this next year, when they didn't last year and don't this year, is not specified; neither is there any mention of a specific technological development or breakthrough which will make this happen (next year, remember), in precisely the way that all existing VR/AR/MR headsets have so far failed to achieve. There's still no mention of a specific use for "XR" which is quantitatively different from any existing experience, desirable for the average consumer, and which also requires "XR" technology in a way that simply isn't the case for existing VR technology.

That qualitative enhancements to existing experiences are simply not enough to shift large volumes of expensive VR headset is plainly evident in VR's still-lacklustre sales numbers, and in the VR content developers who are retooling VR offerings to work without the tech. Neither is there any reason to think that the "XR" technologies of literally tomorrow will be able to "simulate, with near-perfect precision," any sort of environment at all, when existing VR headsets can't, and when the PCs that drive them are not increasing significantly in processing power. Have I mentioned lately that Moore's Law isn't a thing anymore? And while VR hardware developers are making incremental improvements by iterating on the display technology, there are any number of other problems with VR that aren't directly related to the quality and feature sets of the displays.

Let's be clear: VR is not currently a thing. It wasn't a thing last year, it didn't become a thing this year, and absent divine intervention, it's not going to become a thing next year, either. AR might have more potential, as demonstrated by the likes of Pokemon Go, but it's still in a profoundly primitive state, and years away from enabling any "dramatic, potentially species-defining change in human experience." While machine learning and automation are definitely fuelling profound changes our society and economy (the Singularity, already in progress), there's no reason to think that it's going to have any specific application to VR/AR any time soon. And Microsoft's "MR" headsets are just VR headsets with different branding... which is exactly what is being attempted in Alphr's article.

"XR" is not on the verge of taking off, any more than VR is on the verge of taking off, and the folks at Alphr are whistling past the graveyard. I stand by my prediction: VR will continue to not be a thing, and 2018 will be the year when tech media outlets finally start to admit it.