In the real world, an alliance has just been formed that will impact the development of the metaverse. Meta and Qualcomm have teamed up to develop chips focused on Virtual Reality (VR) products, according to an announcement the two companies made.
Both companies announced this new agreement through a statement, where they highlighted that their objective is to collaborate to build “a new era of computing” for several years, but did not specify the duration of the alliance and its financial terms. .
“We are working with Qualcomm on a custom VR chipset, powered by Snapdragon XR technology and platforms, for our future Quest product roadmap,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Currently, the Quest line of VR glasses use a Qualcomm chipset, so one of the purposes of this alliance could also be to promote the efforts of Extended Reality, the one that combines VR and Augmented Reality (AR), of both companies.
This movement by Meta can be compared to what happens in the smartphone industry, where companies like Samsung or Apple are designing their own processors to stand out from the competition and have a better offer than the general industry.
In this way, Meta’s Quest products could offer a differentiator with respect to its competitors. In addition, it demonstrates Mark Zuckerber’s interest in betting on metaverse technologies, something that was demonstrated with his rebranding in October 2021.
“Unlike mobile phones, creating virtual reality presents novel, multidimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor. Those chipsets will help us continue to push virtual reality to the limits and deliver amazing experiences,” Zuckerberg said.
This announcement may boost efforts related to the metaverse, which have not been the best performers, specifically its Reality Labs business unit, which posted a net loss of $10.19 billion on $2.27 billion in revenue for 2021.
Meta will launch new VR products, but they will be more expensive
A few days ago, during a talk on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Zuckerberg confirmed that his company will launch a new VR product, which will be focused on features to experience a sense of “social presence”, as it will contain more advanced eye tracking features. and facial for non-verbal communication.
However, this new gadget will cost at least $800, which is a significant increase from its last product, the Quest 2, which costs between $399 and $499.
It should be remembered that in mid-July, the company decided to raise the price of the Quest 2 scope by $100, arguing that production and shipping costs had also increased.
