Last year, Facebook changed its name to Meta Universe, and it suddenly went out of the circle. But what few people know is that as early as March 2021, Microsoft released Microsoft Mesh, which is Microsoft's mixed reality (MR) solution in the field of cooperative communication, let alone Google, which has been engaged in google glasses for a few years. , and Apple, which is habitually holding back big moves, so when talking about the metaverse XR experience dispute, forgetting that the other three big shots regard Facebook as the XR spokesperson, it would be a big mistake.
The race for metaverse experiences is bound to be fraught with uncertainty, but if we were to bet on who would win the XR race, how would we place our bets? It’s hard to say who will win first, but I think Facebook is the one that is least likely to succeed. I want to declare here that since it is an opinion, it must contain my own prejudice, and it is not an investment suggestion.
First of all, we can speculate from the past experience and look at the development history of PCs and mobile phones. There are countless manufacturers of PCs and mobile phones. However, the real value is created by the application level and the operating system level. Only players who can create ecology at these levels will win the final victory. Then when a new platform is launched, players with an ecosystem on the existing platform only need to transfer users from one platform to another. In contrast, players without an ecosystem want to launch a new platform. Convince users to join a brand new platform.
Which situation is more advantageous is obvious, Facebook belongs to the latter, and he does not have an application or platform ecosystem. To create a VR platform from scratch, Microsoft has an ecology of office teams azure windows in the commercial field, Google has Android's extensive Google service ecology, not to mention Apple's IOS mac OS ecology. In addition, in terms of hard power, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have tens of thousands of programmers and developers, while the number of programmers at Facebook is only about 1/3 to 1/2 of theirs.
In addition, judging from the various classic battles in which the platform competes for users, another important resource is cash. How much incentive can you give developers to create content for the platform? The excellence of the XR products produced is on the same order of magnitude, so Facebook has the least cash, the least programmers, and lacks the ecological support of the hardware operating system platform. In addition, Facebook has always been an app that focuses on people, and the company lacks The genes of an excellent hardware company are basically at a disadvantage compared with the other three in these aspects, so from the perspective of expectations, it can be concluded that the expectation of Facebook becoming the winner is the smallest among the four.
Of course, there is a big assumption in my conclusion. The product is almost at the same level. According to the current resource advantage, the expected value of Facebook is the lowest. If a company makes a product that is far better than other companies, then it is another Never mind.
Then, we might as well analyze the strategic advantages of the four companies from the following angles of XR development and the entry path of ecological hardware, and see which one of them can make better XR products. From an ecological point of view, Facebook has just been summarized. There is no advantage, not to mention Microsoft and Apple, which have always had advantages in operating systems. In fact, if we compare Google and Facebook 10 years ago, we can find that Facebook has always lacked strategic vision in terms of platform ecology.
Let's first take a look at how Google controls the entire ecological chain of its advertising business step by step. After Google has the cash flow of search engines and keyword auctions, in order to prevent customers and competitors from bypassing their services, they began to provide The upstream development of services, in those days it was the service of the portal website, they started to create free and easy-to-use G-mail, and then the upstream was the browser. Further upstream is the operating system. Although Chrome OS on the PC side has not been very successful, but fortunately, Android on the mobile side has become the only competitor of IOS, dominating half of the mobile world. These strategies all show that Google does not let any competitors The determination to control your own upstream ecology.
On the other hand, Facebook’s cash flow is also an advertising business. Their advertising target algorithm goes a step further, not only can it be placed according to the background of platform users, but also cross-platform and cross-site tracking of user behavior can be re-delivered. These advanced advertisements Publishing algorithms has brought huge profits to Facebook’s advertising business, but there is a weakness in this ecological chain, that is, these tracking technologies rely on mobile phones and other hardware devices and operating systems, but Facebook has not tried upstream , In fact, Chen Mas, a former executive of Facebook in the early days of the mobile Internet, proposed to develop his own mobile phone and system, but unfortunately it was rejected by Xiao Ma. Although making mobile phones back then may not be successful, the fact is that he did not try at all. Then let's see what's happening now? Just like the Tathagata Buddha, if Apple moves its fingers casually, Facebook can lose 10 billion US dollars in advertising revenue every year. Why does Apple have such a great ability?
A brief summary is that the main upgrade of IOS in 2021 is privacy. I believe everyone has seen Apple’s advertisements this year. Users can choose whether to allow an app to track user behavior across apps. As a result, most users choose The result of not allowing tracking is that Facebook's CFO admitted in a recent earnings call that Facebook's advertising revenue will lose $10 billion a year as a result. As Safari's Google search engine advertising business is not affected at all.
What can Facebook do about Apple's behavior? Right is nothing more than a mild condemnation, just like the ongoing war, the result can only be used as a pawn. In terms of ecology, I am most optimistic about Apple and Microsoft. Apple’s earliest systems are only IOS and Mac OS, one for Iphone/Ipad and one for PC. They have started to count this excellent system a few years ago. Scaling, from Watch OS to Pad OS, gave them experience developing these operating systems with the same kernel but for different targets. In the future, it will be easier for them to branch out operating systems for other hardware, such as in-vehicle systems, head-mounted display glasses systems, and the VR field that Facebook has placed a heavy bet on. Its most primitive driving force core and the most advanced application in the relative development stage are games. , but what has Facebook done in the ecological industry chain of games? It doesn’t exist on the main PC side, and I haven’t seen Facebook’s works on the VR side. After the mighty name was changed to Meta all in, Horizon World was released at the end of last year. I think the game experience is still Somewhat embarrassing, it is difficult to attract hardcore 3A gamers, it can only be regarded as an experiment, and there is still a long way to go.
On the other hand, Microsoft’s game empire is simply too capable. Not only has it bet on games since the PC era, but it has also released game consoles. Not only has it recently acquired Blizzard, if you ask me who can make the XR field first A 3A game, it must not be Facebook, and it will most likely be Microsoft.
First of all, Minecraft, which Microsoft acquired in 2014, can be regarded as the ancestor of metaverse games, and then look at what this recent acquisition gave Microsoft? The games Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Interstellar, Diablo, and various cartoon games, plus the existing EA New Year’s sports games, the flagship racing game Forza, and the famous first-person design game Battlefield, halo. All of a sudden, XBOX GAME PASS (XGP) looks so attractive, and companies that can suddenly throw out such a luxurious game library and engage in a subscription system can count on a few fingers. The benefits of XP to players and game studios , The Internet has already analyzed it thoroughly, so I won't repeat it.
Such a good ecology is more conducive to the development of excellent XR games by Microsoft itself and many first-party cooperative studios. For Microsoft itself, if the game subscription system works well, it will also add several buffs to its financial cash flow. Refer to SAAS companies such as Salesforce and Snowflakes, streaming media giant Netflix, and manufacturing software giant Autodesk. You can get a glimpse of the stock price trend of the company after the subscription system is gone.
Apple is recognized as a master of hardware. It is reported that Apple is developing glasses AR wearable devices. Judging from some patents obtained by Apple, there are patents related to automatic adjustment of optical sub-components for the visually impaired. Wearing this wearable device like this There is no need to wear usual optical glasses for the device, and there is also a system patent for projecting light directly to the retina. This system can directly project images on the human eye, eliminating the need for a transparent display lens. It is said that it can also eliminate problems such as dizziness, vomiting, and eye fatigue caused by many VR devices. According to Apple's explanation, the root of these problems is that when using VR devices, the brain focuses on so-called distant objects, but in fact these objects are displayed on the screen close to the eyes, and the human brain does not adapt to this contradiction. Seeing these leaked patents can't help but make me, a severely myopic otaku, look forward to Apple's glasses-like wearable devices.
In terms of hardware, another important strategic advantage of Apple is that they have chips specially designed for their own hardware, which will bring huge product design advantages to XR devices in the future, such as smaller battery capacity and higher processing power required under the same circumstances. high.
It is undeniable that Facebook Oculus Quest2 is an excellent VR head-mounted display device at the moment, but what we see now is only a strategy of losing money and making money, and we have not seen the premium rights that breakthrough technological innovations can bring. Apple, Google Judging from the leaked information, they are developing eyewear devices together with Microsoft’s Hellolands. They focus more on AR. I always think that glasses are far better wearable devices than head-mounted display devices. One of the reasons I just mentioned is that The most sickening problems of head-mounted display devices are dizziness and vomiting. Another reason is that even if the technical indicators of visual imaging such as the refresh rate and computing power of VR head-mounted displays have doubled, I don’t think people will I am willing to wear a headset on my nose all day and don’t want to take it off, just like what Ma Yinglong said: I don’t see someone stripping a frogging screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave.
I think the most suitable application scenarios for VR are games, entertainment, and learning, but I still can’t imagine that VR devices can be worn all day like mobile phones or other wearable devices. In contrast, Microsoft has made a big bet The game industry, Microsoft's entry point and the improvement of work efficiency brought about by remote cooperation, I do not deny that the game is a fast-growing industry, but the proportion of gamers and the total time spent playing games are still far below the They work a lot of time, so their CAM is still not at the same level. From another perspective, think about the future competition of XR. In the final analysis, it is a competition for the time of emerging human beings. We sleep for 8 hours, eat and drink regularly. Hours, in the field of medicine, the foreseeable future is fixed, most people work 8-9 hours, and their own free time is only 5-6 hours, which is out of the 5-6 hours Is it easier to snatch a portion of leisure time? Or is it easier to snatch time during an 8-hour workday?
In fact, Facebook also realized that cutting into the XR market from the enterprise scene is another important way besides games, so it launched the horizon workroom. Although it also has some impressive functions, I doubt whether it can compete with Microsoft. One is that the company's image has always been social, and it is geared towards consumers, and has nothing to do with the professional enterprise field. It is difficult to change the user's impression for a while, and there will be a sense of disobedience. The second is that Microsoft has been selling software to companies since the 1970s. His professionalism in this field is completely different from that of Facebook. Let’s take a look at Microsoft’s metaverse solutions in the field of enterprise applications, Mash for Teams. The ecology of cross-platform and cross-system has been opened up. Different devices can be used for cooperation at the same time. For example, some people use tablets, some use PCs, some use Hololens, and even other VR head-mounted display devices for communication and cooperation. In addition, Microsoft With the blessing of the cloud, Microsoft does not need to lock users to a piece of hardware.
So after all that, Facebook has no advantage at all? There are also, that is visible to the naked eye, the advantages of many users of social platforms such as Facebook, the largest number of users may have certain advantages when pushing users to his new platform, but I think this advantage is different from other The ecological advantages of the three platforms are not so important, and the number of Facebook users has grown negatively. It is so afraid of the new generation of social platforms such as Tik Tok, which also shows that its brand image, user base, etc. are not It’s so solid, I believe everyone can see that I’m very pessimistic about the prospect of Facebook all in the Metaverse. Of course, we’re not afraid of being slapped in the face by the small probability of Facebook’s headwind. Facebook is like this anyway The strategy will definitely promote the technological development of the entire industry, or give him a lot of respect, then we will come back in 5-10 years and see how the end will be?