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Meta Reportedly Unhappy With How Much Money Its VR Division Burns

gizmodo.com Meta Reportedly Unhappy With How Much Money Its VR Division Burns

Meta reportedly told its VR/AR teams to cut spending by a fifth, but the team is still expected to pump out Quest Headsets and AR glasses.

Meta Reportedly Unhappy With How Much Money Its VR Division Burns
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  • You didn't have to log into PlayStations back in the day btw.. It just worked. Idk how it is now. (I switched to playing free games on PC and use my gaming budget to gamble on the stock market instead.)

    My point is: Login doesn't need to be a requirement for standalone devices.

    • FYI, you can use a PSVR headset (at least the OG one) on a PC using third party software and not only do you not even need to log in to a Playstation account, you don't even need a Playstation.

    • Hold on, the last time you didn't have to log in to use a PS console was... what, 2005? And you are seriously claiming in public with a straight face that you don't use any gaming services that need a log in on PC? So... you use none of them? Not Steam, not Gog, not Epic, not Xbox, not EA Play or whatever Origin is called... none of those.

      Well, I mean, bully for you, but I'm gonna guess that Meta is after a different demographic than... you know, people who don't buy videogames on their videogame systems. Login absolutely has been a requirement for standalone gaming devices for the past twenty years, with no meaningful exceptions.

      Specifically, though, what VR device do you use with no login? Because last I checked, all the places that deliver VR software have their own. The Oculus app does. Steam does. PSVR does. Apple sure does.

      So... what type of mythical beast are you to be using this rawdog VR device with no login involved? Are you just beaming I Love Lucy to an HMD using the power of imagination?

      • Wow, the old "the others are doing it too!!" defence.

        So lame.

        You're just a corporate bootlicker lol 😆, did you buy their VR set or what?

        • Yes, the old "standard practices for the past 20 years should probably not be the reason you stay away from one product over another if both products are doing the same thing".

          The bootlicking is off the charts.

          For the record, I did buy one of their headsets. I also bought one of Valve's and one of Sony's. Turns out this VR thing has been going on for a while and I find it quite interesting.

          I did make a login with all three of those companies.

      • Hold on, the last time you didn’t have to log in to use a PS console was… what, 2005?

        Oh, SW RotS on PS2 with friends at summer, and SW BFII, and Gran Turismo

        When PS meant something.

        EDIT: 2007-2008 rather, but still

        • Hey, I miss being young, too, but if I'm going to argue for the good old days of actually having friends over to play games I'm not gonna do it over the budget VR headset. People didn't get mad when Xbox Live happened and now this is the world we have.

      • I will just say that I don't think Steam et al. are equivalent to logging onto your device. The account I use on my computer is... just that, a local account for my computer. So, if the Quest requires some sort of authentication, why can't it be local too?

        I have the same argument with consoles as well, but at least with the Xbox One, login still isn't required unless you're playing digital games. You can play all the disc games you like without any account.

        • This is not right. The Steam login is very much an online login, you can't create an account offline or a local-only account. Your login status is used for DRM and rich presence, among other things. Steam does allow a temporary offline mode for travel and so on, but it's not just a local account. This applies to the Steam Deck as well.

          I'm pretty sure you do need an account on Xbox to play at all, including physical media. I don't think a local account will do, but I could be wrong on that one, there's been some argument about how to use consoles in Antarctica and whatnot, so the details are fuzzy.

          Also, pretty sure the current Oculus account system works the exact same way. You can definitely play offline as well. You made me go check because at this point it's borderline gaslighting and yeah, you can absolutely turn off the Quest's Wi-fi and play offline.

          The reason you kinda remember it working differently than the Xbox and all the others is probably the half-remembered outrage from the one year when it did work differently that everybody forgot to get over because Meta is Meta and dunking on Meta is never not fun.

          Which is fair enough, but for Carmack's sake, if you do want an affordable HMD you can use both standalone and with your PC don't hesitate just because of a half-remembered grudge, it's okay to at least research it and give it a fair shake.

          • No no, I was saying the account for my computer is local only. Steam, being a separate application, makes sense to have a separate login.

            And I don't remember anything differently... I don't really have a horse in this race, just playing devil's advocate.

            • Fair enough, substitute "the general consensus" there. I don't mean you as an individual specifically. You all. English really needs an official plural for the second person pronoun.

              Your computer having a local account is fair enough, although MS is trying to kill that too and I genuinely am not sure if it's mandatory on Macs. In any case, the comparison here is with gaming consoles or, yeah, with Steam itself, in that the Quest isn't a display device, it is a full-on integrated platform. There's a store in there, it's digital only, so you can't really do much with it without a login, just like you can't do much with a PSVR or an Index without a login.

              Again, people are displacing the old rage about there being a unified Facebook login tied to your real name, which was fair, with there being a login at all, which was never the point. Oculus required a login before Facebook stepped in and there is currently a separate login for Quest devices.

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