Last week, videos of people debuting the Vision Pro, Apple's new Virtual Reality glasses, spread like wildfire all over the Internet (that is, all over the world).
The excitement about the viral phenomenon is understandable: Apple is an impact machine and the videos have a genuinely revolutionary appearance.
It truly seems that we are on the verge of a technological revolution.
All the news programs opened these days with their glasses on.
The truth is that it's not that big of a deal.
There have been companies before Apple that have gotten into this Virtual Reality thing.
HTC, Sony, obviously Meta (the proof of how involved a company like Facebook is with the Metaverse is its name change).
And the truth is that none of them have done particularly well.
To get an idea, between 2020 and 2024 the Meta division that manages Virtual Reality lost 42 billion dollars.
To get a more precise idea, when a week ago the company presented the accounts for the last quarter of 2023, they were genuinely happy to have “only” lost $4.5 billion in that division.
Obviously, only a company like Meta, which is one of the 10 most valuable in the world, or now Apple, which should not expect a massive influx of public towards glasses that cost $3,500, can afford that.
All in all, Apple must be granted a certain revolutionary will, but not so much for its technology as for the philosophy behind its new device.
A moment from 'Asgard's Wrath 2' and 'Assassasin`s Creed Nexus'.
And, broadly speaking, the apple company's commitment is, in reality, not so much to virtual reality but to mixed reality.
That is, Apple's philosophy breaks with that of Meta and other previous glasses, which were basically based on teleporting us to a virtual universe while we were sitting at home.
Apple wants to make us walk, go outside, interact with the world with glasses designed to anabolicize reality;
Now the idea is not so much that you have a work meeting from your sofa as that you approach a restaurant and next to the door a pop-up window appears with the ratings, offers or menus of that restaurant.
And from this negotiation, that of video games, we cannot stop paying attention to the virtual universe.
We have already complained here about Valve, which, in a very conscious and somewhat classist strategy, does not want its
Half Life: Alyx
, the best 3D video game ever created, to interact with the rest of the world.
But
Alyx
aside, the truth is that Virtual Reality has given us some pleasant surprises lately.
Specifically two.
Asgarth's Wrath II
and
Assassin's Creed Nexus
.
The first, released at the wrong time in December, could have been among the best games of the year if Meta's dissemination and press were greater and better.
It is genuinely good: a medieval fantasy adventure full of magic, with a solid plot and very remarkable length and depth, which ranks in its own right among the best ever created for this technology.
The second, the translation to three dimensions of the
Assassin's Creed
universe , is a wonderful recreation of the sensations carried out by the heroes of the saga.
It is short, but very intense and successful in many ways, from combat to
parkour
, to the recreation of spaces and cities.
Without a doubt, this is the way forward for a space (video games) that functions as a canary in the mine of the entire digital world.
What succeeds here will end up succeeding on the street.
Virtual reality glasses need to be refined as a product, it's true.
They must completely avoid dizziness, they must reduce their weight and the discomfort they cause in the eyes and nasal septum.
They must be more autonomous, more functional.
In a word, they must be comfortable, which, today, they are not.
They must do many things, yes, but anyone who tries them becomes immediately aware of the transformative potential they contain.
Anyone who tries them verifies, in a few seconds, that where the glasses point, in the end, everything we talk about here is pointing.
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