Podcast, Interview
a16z Podcast | Truce for Mobile, Battle for VR
- Google aims to expose millions of Android high-end buyers to virtual reality via the Daydream platform while planning to reduce required phone configurations from 500 to a manageable set compliant with reference designs to abstract fragmentation.
- A standalone Google VR headset faces uncertain outcomes including potential cancellation, announcement at Google I/O, or delay until next year due to internal strategic conflicts and hardware dependencies.
- Google intends to influence smartphone manufacturers through moral pressure and the release of the Pixel phone while seeking to establish a mass ecosystem of 50 to 500 affordable VR cradles to drive economies of scale.
- Oculus plans to release the Santa Cruz prototype as a standalone product potentially next year, featuring industrial design comparable to the $600 Oculus Rift with easier usability and potential 2 to 4 times the performance of Gear VR headsets using the same hardware.
- New asynchronous space warp technology by Oculus is expected to lower minimum GPU specifications, potentially enabling VR viability on Macs pending driver updates, while multi-view rendering and a move to the Vulkan framework could offer a combined 100 percent performance boost on Gear VR.
- HTC has launched a $10 billion VR software initiative signaling a shift toward a competitive stance where hardware manufacturers resist dependency on software giants, while rumors suggest a next-generation untethered Vive requiring high data throughput to stream wireless images at 90 frames per second.
- Sony projects PlayStation VR could sell between 2 million and 10 million units in 2017 based on consumer reaction and E3 announcements, aiming to surpass combined sales of Oculus Rift and standalone units before the holidays and reach an install base of 40 to 50 million units.
- PlayStation VR faces significant risks that poorly executed VR modes in ports like Final Fantasy or Resident Evil could negatively poison consumer perception of the platform before native titles are experienced.
- Apple's future VR success is contingent on maintaining an innovation trajectory post-Steve Jobs, given the absence of a major working product since the iPhone.
- The industry anticipates reaching a standalone headset priced at $300 with hand tracking and 4K resolution four years from now, accelerating from a previously estimated seven-year timeline.
- The market is expected to encounter a "trough of despond" in approximately two years as hype cycles settle, testing whether sales momentum and capital are sufficient to sustain the platform phase.
- If VR remains limited to gaming for the next three years, the market could reach several hundred million active users through Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox ecosystems.
- Initial use cases for VR as a computing platform are likely to be misidentified, with social interaction and network effects predicted to be the most probable killer application.
- Valve is focusing its resources on winning the high-end PC market for the Vive platform, with Gabe Newell's move to the VR team and an expected hardware announcement early next year following the Mobile World Congress pattern.
- Valve's "Destinations" app is expected to grow its user-generated database of photogrammetric worlds, including social features for visiting reconstructed locations.
- High-end VR hardware is expected to drive a trickle-down of quality to lower-tier devices such as PlayStation VR and mobile standalone headsets over the coming years.
- The Android ecosystem faces a future dichotomy where either a limited number of high-end devices dominate or a fragmented market of 100 Daydream-compatible devices squeezes out competing products.