The XR Week Peek (2024.08.27): App Lab apps migrated to Meta Store, Quest Pro 2 canceled, and more!

Tomorrow I’m going to fly to China for a long trip that is going to last a few weeks. It is going to be a very exciting journey and of course, I will keep you posted about the most important things that I will do there! For now, I’m preparing for the big journey and setting up some strategic meetings… don’t forget to contact me if you are in one of the cities I will go to (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Beijing) and you want to meet me!  But today we still have a thing to do: let’s analyze the best XR news of the week! In the last few years, the summer has been mostly boring, but this year, we keep having interesting AR/VR things to talk about every week, and this is cool! Top news of the week (Image by Meta) Meta is completing the transition from App Lab to

The XR Week Peek (2024.08.06): PSVR 2 sales skyrocket after the price slash, Meta reports revenue growth, and more!

In the middle of the summer, let’s enjoy this week’s most interesting pieces of XR news! Top news of the week (Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment) PSVR 2 sales skyrocketed with the discount Last week I reported about Sony heavily discounting PlayStation VR 2 in the US and UK: the original price was $550, but after the discount it amounted to just $350. This week, The Shortcut reports that the sales of the headset may have skyrocketed by a 2350% factor from the day before the discount to the day after. According to the same magazine, more PSVR 2 were sold on the first day of the discount than in the whole of 2024 until that day. This is pretty insane.  It’s not the first time that we see how price is critical for the success of a headset: the Oculus Rift CV1 was lagging in sales far behind the HTC Vive until

The XR Week Peek (2024.02.27): Meta reported to release Quest Pro 2 in 2025, Apple Vision Pro affected by the crackgate, and more!

The hype for the Apple Pro is starting to deflate and it is possible to see that from some cues: for instance, there are more critics of the headset and fewer articles are talking about it. It’s still the gadget of the moment, but a bit less shiny than before. Honestly, I’m glad about that, I was getting bored from reading only articles about it.  Before getting into the interesting XR news of the week, I invite you all to attend the new Awe Nite that Cecilia Lascialfari and I are organizing for this Thursday (29th) at 6 pm CET that will be about XR and AI with very interesting speakers like Rafael Brown. It’s free, so you have no excuses not to attend! You can find all the most important information about it at this link: https://area6dof.com/awe-nite-florence-ai-xr-a-match-made-in-heaven/ Top news of the week (Image by Meta)Meta and Samsung prepare their answers to

The XR Week Peek (2024.01.30): Vision Pro prepares to ship, PSVR 2 sales are stagnating, and more!

This is going to be the week of the Apple Vision Pro, with the first people who preordered it finally receiving the device at home! Finally, we will have some real impressions on the device not coming from scripted demos. I’m not envious, no… absolutely no, don’t worry…  And it will also be a bit my week… Top news of the week (Image by Apple)Apple Vision Pro preorders were a success, but… As I’ve said in the introduction, this is going to be an epic week for Apple and XR in general, because Apple is going to ship the first Apple Vision Pros on Friday, February, 2nd. According to Mark Gurman, we should have the first genuine reviews of the device starting today, that is Tuesday. It will be very interesting to discover how the headset actually is, outside of scripted demos. This is the moment we’ll read if there is something beyond

Looking for the iPhone moment of AI in Spatial Computing

I’m finally back to writing articles after a long time. And since it’s Sunday and it’s a bright day outside of the window, I want to restart writing articles with something bright and funny… a satirical post about all the hype around technology that I’ve seen these months. I hope you will move some muscles around your lips while reading it… The iPhone moment The only true iPhone momentIn my 9+ years in XR, I’ve heard countless times that something that was happening was the “iPhone moment of XR”. The Oculus Go was an iPhone moment for XR, then the Quest was the iPhone moment, then the Quest 2, now the Quest 3. In the middle of this, of course, the Apple Vision Pro was also an iPhone moment, without forgetting Half-Life: Alyx in the mix. We had 749 iPhone moments of XR, more than the actual iPhone devices launched,

The XR Week Peek (2023.11.14): Quest Lite is coming to China, Samsung XR headset expected for 2024, and more!

Finally back to normal with these newsletters! Let’s dig into the most interesting pieces of news of this week! Top news of the week Meta and Tencent are bringing the Quest to China According to the latest rumors, after one year of negotiation, finally, Meta and Tencent have found an agreement to bring the Quest to China. But it won’t be the Quest 3 to be distributed there, but a “cheaper version” of the VR headset, which may be the rumored $199 Quest 3 Lite device that many analysts are speculating will be released soon. Tencent should start selling the headset beginning in late 2024, with Meta getting most of the device revenue, while Tencent most of the content revenue.  I think this can be an important moment: China is a huge market that Meta has never been able to enter properly and now, with this headset, it could finally be able to

The XR Week Peek (2023.09.25): Pico 5 to come in three models, Quest 3 is launching, and more!

Happy Autumn everyone! Temperatures are getting colder, but not in VR… here it is going to be a very hot week with the launch of the Quest 3! Today I was thinking “Oh it’s cool that the Quest 3 is coming in a few weeks…” and then I realized that is going to be fully launched in just 2 days. Oh wow. I’m super excited, and you? Top news of the week (Image from Upload VR)Pico 5 leaks show a very ambitious product line The leaks on the Pico 5 are intensifying, which usually means that the device is going to be announced quite soon. Last week we had a first look at the controllers, while this week we had quite a confusing leak about its product line, which, if confirmed, would show an ambitious plan by the Chinese company.  The leak came from China and talked about the Pico 5 product line

Talespin Launches AI Lab for Product and Implementation Development

Artificial intelligence has been a part of Talespin since day one but the company has been leaning more heavily into the technology in recent years including through internal AI-assisted workflows and a public-facing AI development toolkit. Now, Talepsin is announcing an AI lab “dedicated to responsible artificial intelligence (AI) innovation in the immersive learning space.” “Immersive Learning Through the Application of AI” AI isn’t the end of work – but it will change the kinds of work that we do. That’s the outlook that a number of experts take, including the team behind Talespin. They use AI to create virtual humans in simulations for teaching soft skills. In other words, they use AI to make humans more human – because those are the strengths that won’t be automated any time soon.

“The Future of Business Travel” Report by Booking.com Gives Metaverse Predictions

The metaverse can be summed up as the augmented world. So, naturally, it has implications for travel. How and when people travel may both seriously change as spatial communication and digital twins make some kinds of travel less likely, while AR and automation reimagine the travel that we do engage in. A report by Booking.com for Business, titled “The Future of Business Travel” explores the next 30 years of travel. AR and Space Hotels The report begins with “A Timeline of Future Business Travel Predictions.” To the potential dismay of augmented reality enthusiasts, the report puts AR in 2027 – the same year as “space hotels”. The report acknowledges existing AR use cases including augmenting areas with contextual information. However, the authors are waiting for something better. .ueea79c34cc93012709802bc574a8f92b { padding:0px; margin: 0; padding-top:1em!important; padding-bottom:1em!important; width:100%; display: block; font-weight:bold; background-color:#FFFFFF; border:0!important; border-left:4px solid #E74C3C!important; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0,

The XR Week Peek (2023.07.24): Apple opens applications for Vision Pro devkits, Meta may stop the production of Quest Pro, and more!

This week VR is dead again. Sorry to inform you about that. It’s been good to dream about the metaverse, but now we can all get back to frying potatoes at McDonald’s and binge on Twitter during the free time. Ah no, not even that because also Twitter is dead. Now it’s called X and aims at becoming the Western WeChat. Luckily there is AR that is still strong, and we can hope to wear Google AR glasses soon… ah no, they are dead too. But we can still rely on Meta that is still spending billions on XR and… OH NO, THE QUEST PRO DIED TOO.  Long story short, this week has been a cemetery. Like an out-of-season VR Halloween. But I hope you’ll enjoy this newsletter coming from the world of the undead anyway… Top news of the week (Image by Apple)Apple starts accepting applications for Vision Pro devkits Apple has started