Coatsink’s latest game is an enchanting puzzle game narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart about a lost girl who was last seen at the Shadow Point Observatory. It is your job to find her, and along the way you travel on a journey through beautiful stylized scenes with tremendous color palettes and intuitive puzzles. I tried Shadow Point at this year’s Game Developers Conference, and I’m eager to play the full version at release.
The demo started off with the expected tutorial — Touch controllers are used to grab, throw and rotate components. Both hands are used to climb certain obstacles, as well as rotate statues on podiums, and light fixtures. The demo took place in small room with glass walls on the GDC show floor. Tracking on the Quest was very smooth throughout.
One of the outdoor portions of Shadow Point. Photo: Coatsink
The game’s puzzles are solved using lights, shadows and depth and all of the puzzles in Shadow Point that I encountered were lovely. They were intuitive without being too frustratingly complicated to figure out, and seemed to progressively get more difficult as I advanced.
One of the various puzzles in Shadow Point. Photo: Coatsink
One particularly memorable puzzle involved reflection. I saw the puzzle area but there were no lights to use. After walking around for a bit, I noticed a mirror. Through the mirror’s reflection I could see the light I was looking for. Locating an object to hold up and create a shadow, I realized the shape of the object and the shape I needed to make didn’t match. I decided to throw the object into the mirror, and what came right back at me was the object I needed. The whole path to that solution was incredibly satisfying.
The final game will be on Quest and Rift with over 80 “mind-bending puzzles” alongside a deep story and a full voice cast. Shadow Point is $19.99 and should debut at the release of Oculus Quest.
Last week at GDC Oculus revealed their first new PC VR headset in three years, the Rift S. We sat down with Facebook’s Jason Rubin, VP of AR/VR Content & Partnerships, to learn more about the strategy behind Quest and Rift S, and where Oculus is trying to steer its ecosystem.
Jason Rubin joined Oculus in 2014 and has been a key figure in guiding the company’s content investments and strategy. Following the recent Oculus shakeup and deeper absorption into Facebook, Rubin is now overseeing AR and VR content & partnerships at Facebook. Rubin has been a key spokesperson and a tempered voice for Oculus throughout his time at the company; he is also seen as one of the last visible pillars of the ‘old’ Oculus.
In a wide-ranging interview with Rubin at GDC 2019 last week, we got to learn more about why the company believes that the Rift S is the right choice to push its VR ecosystem to reach a critical point of sustainability.
Rubin was quick to say that Oculus expects to deliver a next-gen headset down the road, but explained why the company doesn’t believe that now is the right time for a ‘Rift 2’.
“Beyond any shadow of a doubt, at some point we will have a next generation [headset] where we add some sort of feature that breaks all the old stuff and makes it either not work or seem obsolete,” he said. But the company presently believes that growing a cohesive audience is more important than pushing technical boundaries.
“Our goal is to bring as many people into the ecosystem as possible. Bifurcating the ecosystem with a Rift and a Rift 2—just to put that out there—is not the right thing to do right now.”
Alluding to the initial $800 price of the Rift and Touch controllers back at their launch, Rubin explained that the company believes price is a critical factor.
“We know from Rift we don’t want to sell an $800 system. […] We think these two devices [Quest and Rift S] are the right thing to do to suck more people into the business. Once more people want VR, are in VR, and love VR, some subset of them are ready to go to the next generation.”
When pressed on whether or not the company could have approached the PC segment with both the Rift S and a higher-end headset (like a ‘Rift Pro’) for the enthusiasts and early adopters that form the foundation of the company’s PC VR business, Rubin explained that the company doesn’t believe that a multi-tiered approach is worth the costs and complexity.
“There’s a cost to everything that a company does. And while there might have been some people we’d make very happy with much higher resolution screens or something along those lines, some group of people would have to prototype that device, some group of people would have to deal with the supply chain for that device, some group of people would have to deal with warehousing, shipping, and everything else,” said Rubin. “And those people—when you can only have a company of a certain size (we can’t grow infinitely)—those people would be taken away from the other things we’re working on. […] I can tell you, sitting around the room these are hard discussions [internally], but I think we’ve made the right tradeoff with where we are right here.”
When I asked Rubin if this was still on the roadmap for Oculus, he said he wasn’t up to date on the company’s OpenXR plans. And while Oculus publicly committed last week to providing an OpenXR app runtime, our understanding is that this is primarily focused on allowing developers to easily port apps into the Oculus ecosystem, not enabling support for third-party headsets.
On the content front, Rubin said that Oculus isn’t slowing down, and believes content is the key to selling hardware to grow its ecosystem.
“Our content [investments have] remained consistent if not expanded every single year since that statement was made [in 2016, about committing $500 million to VR content]. So we’re still wholly committed to making software that drives the hardware purchase,” he said. “And frankly, we think that the content that is on the system is the single most important reason that somebody would want to get into VR. So we’re a little… dumbfounded, if you will, by companies that bring out headsets with no content to drive them, or aren’t investing in content.”
And finally, we touched on the still unannounced VR FPS that’s in the works by Respawn Entertainment. Rubin doesn’t expect that the success of Respawn’s breakout hit, Apex Legends, will impact the development of the game in any way, and Oculus Studios is taking a hands-off approach to let the studio work its magic.
“You do not partner with Respawn and then get involved in designing games for Respawn. Respawn is a fantastically talented company—as far many of the others that we work with: Insomniac, Sanzaru…—we let them design the product they want. So, absolutely, a Respawn product is a Respawn product.”
We weren’t certain the PSVR title Golem would ever see the light of day after its lengthy delay. It wasn’t until the studio assured us late last year that yes, the game was still in production well after its prospective March 16th, 2018 launch date had come and gone. Now it appears PAX East-goers will get a fresh whack at the game, which was unveiled way back in 2015.
Sony today announced via its PS blog that seven PSVR titles are heading to PAX East in Boston next week, one of which is the long-overdue adventure game Golem from Highwire Games, an indie studio consisting of former Bungie veterans Marty O’Donnell and Jaime Griesemer, and a team of established industry devs.
After its March 2018 delay, the studio announced the game was pushed back indefinitely back in August as Highwire wanted to ensure they could “release a polished VR experience that we are proud of […].”
“Things are still proceeding; we want Golem to be the game we envisioned and we’re taking the time we need to get it there,” a Highwire spokesperson told Road to VR late last year. “[We’re] not going to talk release timing until we are absolutely sure about it this time.”
We still aren’t exactly sure what sort of game Golem is shaping up to be. From our 2016 hands-on and previous talks with Highwire, it seems the studio’s PSVR title involves the ability to jump between various avatars—ranging in size from dolls to giants—as they explore the world around and go mano a mano with some pretty nasty looking rock golems.
In case you’re attending, here’s the seven titles Sony is trotting out at PAX East:
Valve’s resident experimental psychologist Dr. Mike Ambinder took the stage at GDC 2019 today for his talk on the state of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and how they’ll inform the future of game design. In his talk, Ambinder put forth a near future where VR/AR headsets are kitted with non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG) devices that could one day provide data to game designers so they can create a new generation of smarter, more reactive games. The long-term view is definitely trending towards neuronal implants, Ambinder says, but we’re not there yet.
Ambinder explained that many of the traditionally measurable ‘bio-feedback’ such as heart-rate, galvanic skin response, eye movement, facial expression, muscle tension, and physical posture are all important to understanding what’s happening to the player at any given moment, although he argues that reaching into the core of the matter, the brain itself, is the frontier that holds the most promise for game developers.
Brain-computer interfaces are basically a communication method that translates neuronal signals into actionable input for computers. In the context of gaming, the Ambinder’s envisioned goal is to acquire physiological data from a player and use that to inform the game whether a player is happy, sad, frustrated, bored, focused, distracted, etc; the idea is to figure out why that happens in each circumstance—be it anger from experiencing a game-breaking bug, or happiness when a specific goal is achieved—and build systems to leverage this data.
And it’s not as far-fetched as you may think, Ambinder maintains:
“We can measure responses to in-game stimuli. And we’re not always getting [data] reliably, but we’re starting to figure out how. Think about what you’d want to know about your players. There’s a long list of things we can get right now with current technology, current generation analysis, and current generation experimentation,” he said.
Valve’s Mike Ambinder donning an OpenBCI EEG helmet, Image captured by Road to VR
Moment-to-moment insights into the user’s cognitive state could provide a sort of adaptive, immersive gameplay which could include variable game difficulty, on-the-fly AI responses tailored to the player’s mindset, and even replacing traditional input systems all together—all within the purview of BCI’s gaming future, Ambinder said.
In the near-term, Ambinder sees EEG as the easiest way to start collecting that sort of psychological data and organizing it into something actionable for developers to create more immersive games. In the case of EEG, electrodes are non-invasively placed on various points of the scalp, and used to measure voltage fluctuations of the brain’s neurons. Things like attention, learning, memory, and intention have been measured in some respects using EEG, and Ambinder hopes these things, which have previously been the subject of scientific research, will make their way into mainstream game design at some point. But people aren’t just going to wear a full 35-electrode location EEG helmet like the one from the OpenBCI initiative on its lonesome though; that’s where AR/VR comes in.
“If you’re going to measure brain signals, you need a way to get people to wear a helmet. If only us as game designers had a way of doing that,” Ambinder said jokingly, showing a slide of an HTC Vive headset. “One advantage of AR and VR as well is you’re getting consistent contact with the source of brain activity. So you might be able to do interesting things if you could convince them to wear a helmet with EEG sensors.”
Companies like Neurable have already begun productizing EEG devices especially built to work with VR devices, letting people “control software and devices using only their brain activity,” the company claims.
That said, EEG data isn’t a perfect solution. Ambinder compared it to sitting outside of a football stadium and trying to figure out what’s happening on the field just by listening to the intensity of the crowd’s reaction. The current generation of BCI devices are noisy, and EEG is one of the noisiest due to its job of picking up neuronal signals through the skull, scalp, and hair.
Image captured by Road to VR
There’s still plenty to learn from EEG, Ambinder says, although deeper knowledge and a push towards more immersive, adaptive games would likely necessitate invasive brain implants. Before that happens, they’d need to pass what he calls the ‘Lasik threshold’ though—a procedure that is technically invasive but confers enough potential benefits to the user while minimizing the procedure’s overall risk.
Ambinder had nothing to announce regarding the company’s plans for potentially kickstarting BCI with something as monumental as a consumerized virtual reality-EEG headset (or brain implants for that matter), although he sees EEG as a definite early avenue for capturing the sort of large data sets needed to start building out interaction systems that could span everything from creating better tutorials by learning about the user’s individual ability to learn, to making games capable of learning how players want to play as opposed to how they should play.
Making this knowledge more granular (and accurate) is still in its early phases, something that needs both sufficient time and a large enough userbase to gather data across a wide set of people. There’s a long list of powerful uses and equally powerful pitfalls yet to come.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty, Ambinder’s full talk will be up on the GDC’s YouTube page in the coming days. We’ll toss the video down here when it comes, so check back soon.
One of the more compelling and exciting virtual reality (VR) titles to be announced this year is Oculus Rift exclusive Asgard’s Wrath From Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios. Aiming for a big action-adventure experience with lots of bloody combat and giant boss battles to contend with, information has slowly been appearing since the videogame was first revealed just over a month ago. First, there were screenshots and this week there’s been more gameplay footage to enjoy, so VRFocus has compiled all the video footage released so far right here.
On a Quest
Oculus went all out for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 this week, announcing the Oculus Rift S, as well as letting guests get some hands-on time with its latest videogames, including Asgard’s Wrath. It also just so happened to release a couple of new videos showcasing the most gameplay footage yet. The first is called ‘Questing’ and as the title rightly suggests this is the player out on their epic journey, giving you a chance to see the core of the title, exploring ancient ruins, collecting useful items, and having the odd fight without getting killed as a mortal.
And then there’s god mode. As your all-powerful alter ego who’s on the rather tall side – like any god – this next video is much more of a showpiece where players have to fight the legendary Kraken.
Blood, sweat and more blood
The following videos are shorter bite-sized pieces showcasing smaller fighting elements of Asgard’s Wrath. One thing is for sure, Sanzaru Games is holding back when it comes to the visceral quality of the combat, as it looks quite easy to remove an enemy’s head from their shoulders or carve them up like a Sunday roast.
So that’s your lot for now, as Sanzaru Games release further footage of Asgard’s Wrath VRFocus will be sure to keep you notified.
Valves Präsentation auf der diesjährigen GDC 2019 drehte sich um die digitale Distributionsplattform Steam und dem damit verbundenen Wachstum dank eingeführter Features. Das Thema VR wurde dabei nur kurz angeschnitten, erhoffte Neuigkeiten blieben vorerst aus. Dennoch steht die Technologie weiterhin im Fokus des Unternehmens. Entsprechende Updates sollen in “nicht alzu ferner Zukunft folgen.”
Valve auf der GDC 2019 – VR-Updates nach hinten verschoben
Steam verzeichnet in den letzten zehn Jahren kontinuierliches Wachstum, das auf eine Vielzahl eingeführter Features zurückzuführen ist.
via: Upload VR
Rund um die Wachstumskurve drehte sich die Präsentation von Valve auf der GDC 2019. Außerdem erwarten uns neue Events und eine visuelle Überarbeitung der Spielebibliothek. Spannende Ein- und Ausblicke in ein großes Unternehmen, die VR-Enthusiasten allerdings missmutig zurücklassen.
Stattdessen wird das Thema Virtual Reality innerhalb des GDC-Vortrags nur kurz als Feature angeschnitten. Erhoffte Updates blieben aus. Dennoch besteht Hoffnung, denn Doug Lombardi, VP of Marketing bei Valve, verspricht gegenüber Upload VR, dass die Technologie weiterhin im Fokus des Unternehmens steht:
“Wir sehen VR weiterhin als wirklich wichtig an, wir beobachten immer noch, wie viele Leute die Technologie annehmen. Schon sehr bald, oder zumindest in der nahen Zukunft, werden wir mehr darüber sprechen können … darüber, was auf Steam in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft rund um das Thema VR passiert. Aber es wird nicht auf der GDC 2019 sein.”
Wir dürfen gespannt sein, wann die versprochene “nicht all zu ferne Zukunft” eintritt. In den Maßstäben des Unternehmens könnte es sich um Wochen oder Monate handeln. VR-Enthusiasten müssen sich also vorerst weiter in Geduld üben.
Asgard’s Wrath is an upcoming combat RPG from Sanzaru Games, the studio that created Rift exclusives Marvel Powers United VR (2018) and Ripcoil (2016). It’s slated to launch on Rift and the newly unveiled Rift S in 2019, although to whet our appetites in the meantime the studio released some fresh footage at their public GDC 2019 debut this week, showing off what to expect from the game’s combat and puzzle-laden quests.
We only got a chance to play some of the beginning storyline and learn the basics of combat during our hands-on with Asgard’s Wrath, so everything seen in the questing video (linked above and below) is news to us.
The setup is this: in Asgard’s Wrath you’re a fledgling god who must help a set of Nordic heroes through their own discrete story lines. Each hero as their own load-out and abilities, and the objective is to complete each hero’s story to obtain a special rune stone for Loki, who basically plays as the game’s grand task master.
Clocking in just under eight minutes, the video presents a number of classic RPG tropes to go along with the game’s decidedly involved combat system, making use of shields, swords for attacks and parrying, and some magical weapons such as a throwable axe that you can recall with the flick of the wrist.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
On top of that, some of light puzzles seem to make use of your weapons, forcing you to throw your axe accurately to cut down a rope suspending a plank bridge.
The level seems to be brimming with items such as a cross-bow, crafting items such as berries and mushrooms, and treasure too, which all nestles into the game’s classic-style RPG inventory menu. Only a few things are actually holstered to your body in the game, all of which seem to relate directly to combat.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
One of the major mechanics in Asgard’s Wrath is the ability to magically transform the world’s animals into chimeric allies. A battle-toad pal follows you around automatically, taking down the level’s brutish enemies with his trident and giant lily pad-shaped shield.
You can order your toad buddy to do specific tasks too, like grab a key with his long tongue from behind the bars of a jail cell or attack a specific group of baddies on command.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
There’s no denying that Asgard’s Wrath is a visually stunning game. You can also probably tell that it’s not an easy game either when it comes to the game’s combat system. Multiple enemies put your melee skills to the test, as they barge in with increasingly tough attacks and armor plating that you have to break before getting a good shot at finally knocking down their HP bar.
Unlike the popular combat sandbox Blade & Sorcery, Asgard’s Wrath isn’t entirely physics-based, meaning you’ll have to pay close attention to when baddies are charging up, or telegraphic vulnerability to land those head-slicing hits.
Sanzaru isn’t ready to talk specific release dates yet, although they’ve said it’ll be headed to the Oculus platform sometime this year. It’s said to offer a 30+ hours of adventuring, promising to be the “deepest title yet” from Sanzaru Games.
Justin Roiland’s VR studio Squanch Games announced last year that their upcoming game Trover Saves the Universe was exclusively targeting PSVR and PS4 consoles. This week at GDC 2019 though it seems the studio has reversed that decision, as the comedy platformer is also slated to arrive on PCs via Steam and Epic Game Store. To make things even more interesting, it appears PSVR users have a firm May release date now.
Update (March 27th, 2019): Squanch Games now says it will be doing a staggered launch, coming first to PSVR on May 31st, then shortly afterwards to PC VR platforms on June 4th. The studio also whipped up a new trailer, which is linked below.
Original Article (March 21st, 2019): Squanch Games wasn’t able confirm which specific PC VR headsets will be supported at launch, although VR support is definitely coming to the PC version for its targeted 2019 release, I was told.
Neither the Epic Game Store page nor the Steam page have information regarding supported headsets at this time. An educated guess: we’re likely to at least see support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
There’s no exact launch date yet, although the studio says we should learn more on that front at PAX East, which takes place in Boston on March 28th – 31st. We’ll most likely learn whether it’s a staggered or simultaneous launch there too (see update).
In case you’ve never heard of it, Trover Saves the Universe is another madcap fever dream from the mind of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. It’s not a platformer in the traditional sense, as your character (called a Chair-opian) is seated and relies on teleportation to follow your controllable pal Trover, who can be controlled to specific warp nodes where he battles enemies and solves puzzles in search of your lost dogs. There’s plenty of fourth wall-breaking moments here that are sure to appeal to fans of Roiland’s disarming and infectious sense of humor.
It seems the GDC 2019 demo on the floor is more or less the same from when we first saw it at E3 2018, albeit shortened somewhat to accommodate more GDC-goers. You can see the full demo I experienced below.
As part of the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2019 this week, eye tracking specialist Tobii has announced a new software development kit (SDK) for XR applications.
The Tobii XR SDK features a number of tools and resources for developers to use, enabling them to design immersive interactions that take advantage of head-mounted displays (HMD) with built-in eye tracking technology. Features include Tobii Intelligent Objects which allow users to select items intuitively using machine learning and algorithms to map eye tracking signals to objects in a scene.
Or how about improving user interfaces so that navigation can become smoother and faster, with streamlined menus and unnecessary UI elements hidden when the user is looking elsewhere. Another use for videogame makers or social VR app creators is that eye to eye social contact, either with an NPC or chatting with someone on the other side of the world. Humans naturally respond to eye movement during a conversation, making for a more natural response.
“GDC is all about developers, so this year we wanted to provide the developer community with the most advanced and easy to implement set of APIs, guides, code samples, and tutorials that have ever existed for eye tracking integration,” said Henrik Eskilsson, CEO Tobii in a statement. “With the launch of these new SDKs, development tools and resources, it is now easier than ever before for developers to take advantage of eye tracking technology to create extraordinary experiences for users.”
“Eye tracking is quickly becoming a required standard in XR devices. Tobii is the leading supplier of eye tracking technology and the most experienced company in the eye tracking ecosystem,” Eskilsson adds. “We are bringing all of that knowledge to these new development tools and giving application developers a powerful advantage for creating extraordinary eye tracking interactions.”
In addition to new libraries and APIs for XR interactions, Tobii is making code samples, videos, tutorials and debugging tools available for XR development, along with packages and assets for Unity with Unreal support coming soon. For further updates from Tobii, keep reading VRFocus.
While to some Oculus’ announcement of the Rift S represents the newest and best version of a good VR headset, to others it’s a far cry from what they hoped Oculus would be able to deliver three years after the first Rift. Facebook’s top priority with Rift S is clear: jumpstart a sustainable ecosystem for developers, even if that means drawing ire from its base of loyal enthusiasts.
The Oculus Rift S announcement made its way to the front page of most major tech blogs yesterday, and the tone was pretty straightforward: ‘The new Oculus headset is here, it works better, there’s cool content, and it’s a pretty attractive package at $400’.
Image courtesy Oculus
Find your way into any VR enthusiast haunt however, and you’ll find an entirely different narrative about a headset that doesn’t go far enough (or in some cases is a ‘step backward’).
‘Damo9000’, a regular around the Oculus Subreddit, always seems to find the right moment to capture a snapshot of that community’s sentiment with a satirical ‘front page’ clipping of a fictional tabloid. Today’s edition is filled with community in-jokes, but is ultimately underscored by a painful reality: Rift S was not made for Oculus’ most passionate fans.
Image courtesy Damo9000
For Facebook, it’s a calculated move, made clear by the headset’s naming scheme: ‘This is Rift S, not Rift 2′.
But for many of those hardcore fans (some of whom have been rooting for Oculus and its vision since before it was acquired by Facebook) the moniker that comes after ‘Rift’ doesn’t matter—it doesn’t change the fact that this is the first new PC VR headset from Oculus in three years. And it doesn’t change the fact that those fans have patiently waited and watched as Facebook and Oculus talked about their commitment to VR and all the resources and R&D going toward the tech—only to announce something that feels more like a tune-up than The Future.
But Rift S isn’t for those enthusiasts. It’s for developers.
Not in the sense that Rift S is a development kit, but in the sense that Facebook knows that it must build a sustainable developer ecosystem or VR will come crumbling down. Specs that excite enthusiasts might sell headsets to True Believers®, but content drives usage, and Facebook can only pour so many hundreds of millions of dollars into content—eventually the ecosystem has to stand on its own.
So while Rift S isn’t for enthusiasts, Facebook believes that they are making the right choice for those enthusiasts in the long term—by ensuring the survival of the ecosystem—so that it can one day deliver The Future that enthusiasts crave. Facebook wagers that Rift S, with its price point and improvements, is their best shot at growing the ecosystem so that developers can take root and eventually thrive.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing an audience at F8 with ‘VR/AR’ shown in the background as part of the company’s ’10 Year Roadmap’ | Photo courtesy Facebook
But it is a wager. Facebook is trading on the good will of the only VR customers it currently has, for the customers it hopes it can have in the future. And there’s no guarantee that it will work.
In fact, there’s some key figures who think Facebook is making the wrong choice in exactly the opposite direction. Namely, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, who left the company back in 2017, three years after selling the company to Facebook.
“You could give a Rift+PC to every single person in the developed world for free, and the vast majority would cease to use it in a matter of weeks or months,” Luckey wrote to illustrate his point. “I know this from seeing the results of large scale real-world market testing, not just my own imagination [his emphasis] – hardcore gamers and technology enthusiasts are entranced by the VR of today, as am I, but stickiness drops off steeply outside of that core demographic. Free is still not cheap enough for most people, because cost is not what holds them back actively or passively.”
Luckey tells Road to VR that his article was specifically written with Rift S in mind, among others.
Facebook’s wager on Rift S may also be why one of Oculus’ other co-founders, Brendan Iribe, unexpectedly left the company late last year. Months before the Rift S was known to the public, TechCrunch reported that Iribe left in part because of the cancellation of a ‘Rift 2’ in favor of a more modest headset which would reportedly turn out to be Rift S.
Iribe and the Facebook had “fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time,” TechCrunch reported a source saying at the time. And that Iribe wasn’t interested in a “race to the bottom” in terms of performance. Enthusiasts were quick to connect the dots.
Facebook has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to VR content development, but their ecosystem still needs to reach meaningful sustainability.
For Facebook’s part, recent restructuring has aggressively fused Oculus with the core Facebook team, apparently in an effort to bring more central oversight and control to the VR initiative which had significantly more autonomy in prior years. With the reigns now more firmly in the hands of Facebook leadership, the Rift S aligns well with the reason that the company bought into VR in the first place—a gambit to outmaneuver Google and Apple by being the first to conquer XR.
Creating a bastion against Google and Apple—so that in XR Facebook is not subservient to those companies as they are in the mobile landscape—is the overarching goal; using Rift S as an effective lure for new customers (even if it means upsetting an enthusiast base), moves Facebook closer to that goal.
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