Facebook parent Meta made its big virtual reality play last week with the launch of the company’s new high-end Quest Pro headset. But Paolo Pescatore, technology analyst at PP Foresight, told MarketWatch that while technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality have been around for a while, they are a long way from widespread adoption. “Ultimately this is still at early stage and has some way to go before it’s mass market and widely accepted,” he said via email. “People are not rushing out of their seats to buy a VR headset or even watch 360-degree videos.”
Meta Platforms Inc.’s
META,
-1.22%
much-hyped metaverse is at the heart of the company’s virtual-reality push. Last year, when Facebook morphed into Meta, the technology giant described the metaverse as a “hybrid of today’s online social experiences” that can be expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. For Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse is the next era of social technology — but the network of virtual reality worlds has left many people scratching their heads. Now read: Meta’s new VR headset will cost $1,500 as Zuckerberg sets up battle with Apple “There are numerous challenges and even the name (Metaverse) is confusing to the average person on the high street,” Pescatore told MarketWatch. While price will always be a factor, creating demand is far more complex than lowering prices, he said, noting that the $1,500 Quest Pro feels like an “expensive toy.” “That’s my worry for a lot of these technologies that are fast-tracked into people’s hands; 8K is another example,” the analyst added. “There’s no demand, so why rush it?” 8K TV — which has four times the resolution of ultra-HD 4K TVs but requires 8K content to get that higher resolution — is being championed by tech heavyweights such as Sony Group Corp.
SONY,
-1.56%,
…