It's March of 2016 and I've just brought home my brand-new Samsung Galaxy S7 on launch day. Because I've pre-ordered it I've also come away with a free bonus, the Samsung Gear VR headset. It's a clever bit of kit that you slot your phone into, transforming it into a VR display panel.
The Gear VR headset was designed in partnership with Oculus, which is now owned by Meta, and it's where my love of virtual reality headsets truly began. So you can imagine my excitement starting to build throughout 2024 as rumors swirled about Samsung and Google teaming up to create their own fully-fledged VR device. After all, Meta makes some of the best VR headsets both in the gaming space and for the spatial computing crowd.
The Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree
I've been trying to make sense of it since the keynote, especially since the presenters at Unpacked only hit us with a brief "we'll tell you more later in the year lol".
I know that Samsung is willing to die on the hill of being an Apple rival, but Apple's one foray into VR hasn't exactly been the glaring success everyone thought it'd be. Yes, the Vision Pro arguably reignited a dormant mainstream interest in this technology but, by all accounts, its high-end approach has hamstrung it, with the latest whispers suggesting a more affordable sequel may not be coming after all. So I'm a bit confused. How could Samsung have looked on at the Apple Vision Pro's brief stint in the spotlight and thought "oh yes, we'd love some of that"?
Admittedly, this is all conjecture until we hear more about Samsung's headset, which is said will operate via a new form of Android called Android XR. But one look at the teaser or prototype images will tell you that this looks like a high-end, premium device that takes a lot of design lessons from Apple's ski mask. The thing smells expensive, and that doesn't fill me with a lot of excitement.
It doesn't take an expert in VR hardware to tell you that one of this technology's biggest problems is that it's always been prohibitively pricey. Apple's $3,500 foray is a testament to that, and if it hasn't been that popular, it's because hardly anyone can afford it. In my eyes, the reason Meta conquered the XR world is its accessible pricing. The Meta Quest 3S offers a lot of the same mixed-reality power that The Vision Pro does, and its starting price is $299.
The other reason is that Meta hasn't had any direct competition to worry about. PSVR 2 is probably the closest thing the Meta Quest 3 has to a rival right now, and that's only because it offers gaming capabilities at a similar price. It's not exactly a standalone mixed-reality competitor, and very few of those exist. Even the Pico 4 Ultra won't launch in the US, meaning that only select territories have that as an alternative.
I've heard it said that Meta takes big losses by pricing its devices so low, so maybe that's why it seems like every company that enters the VR world is afraid to go after its market share.
Fortunately, this isn't the only headset that's rumored to launch this year, and another brand might be making the VR device I want to see.
If you can't beat em, join em... sort of.
There have been more rumblings this week that Asus is also gearing up to launch a VR device, with the latest word on the street being that it'll use Meta's Horizon OS. So, it would kind of be like the way the graphics card industry runs. Nvidia and AMD supply GPU chips to their partners along with architecture and funky upscaling software, but brands like Asus, Gigabyte, and PNY manufacture their own versions of each and price them accordingly. Here, Meta will supply its experienced operating system, presumably with the same access to games and apps, to a device that Asus designs and manufactures.
Asus, as we know from its many gaming peripherals, chairs, and gaming PC components, is well-versed in the gaming hardware realm. It's also not afraid to lead the pack in a relatively new direction. I can't see that brand following in Apple's footsteps, pricing its headset through the roof and expecting non-gamers to welcome it with open arms.
Of course, this Asus VR headset could well end up being slightly more expensive than the Meta Quest 3S, but the Asus ROG Ally is proof that this is a company that knows how to step into new waters and come out the other side with a lot of success.
The other scenario could be that Asus isn't targeting the affordable end of the market either. There aren't that many PC-tilted VR headsets these days, with the HTC Vive Focus Vision being a rare breed of DisplayPort-compatible devices. Pimax's Crystal range occupies this space too, but both models cost a lot for what they are. An Asus standalone headset using Meta's OS, but offering better PC potential than USB-C offerings could go down very well with gamers.
We'll need to see what's in store for 2025's VR releases. I hope Samsung's premium-looking prototype does have the gaming potential that Apple Vision Pro hasn't really prioritized. Either way, Asus seems primed to pick up the slack.
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