Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested in a earnings call with investors that consumers aren’t interested in VR headsets with wires.
“Some other folks might try to ship something that they claim is higher quality but has a wire, and I just don’t think that consumers are going to want to go for that,” Zuckerberg said during the call.
The call recapped Facebook’s earnings performance during the first quarter of 2021 which saw the non-ad revenue at Facebook hit $732 million. During a question and answer portion of the call Zuckerberg offered some of his thoughts about the VR market.
“Having wires wrapped around you just really breaks the sense of presence and immersion,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook’s sustained performance in non-ad revenue suggests the price and feature set of the wireless Oculus Quest 2 is seeing continued interest and sales beyond the holidays. Recently, Facebook’s VP in charge of AR/VR suggested the headset would be on sale “for a long while” as Facebook plans monthly software updates for the headset to improve the overall experience.
Facebook’s wired Rift S is at the end of its life and that leaves Facebook entirely focused on the Quest 2, which Zuckerberg suggested has “attributes” like price and the quality of its wireless experience that most other companies aren’t going to be able to deliver.
“I also just look at how the team is executing and the products that we have in the pipeline, and I want to make sure that we can really go all in and deliver this,” Zuckerberg said.
HP ships the wired Reverb G2 while Valve offers the wired Index, HTC is announcing new VR products in a couple weeks, and Sony’s next generation PSVR headset is confirmed to offer a wired experience.
