BY MARIA KOROLOV · OCTOBER 21, 2016
There’s a battle raging now for who will be the dominant platform of the coming virtual reality metaverse.
Facebook, which has been getting a big chunk of the media attention with the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and its $2 billion acquisition, has suffered a few blows lately, even as rival Google picks up steam.
I’m not including Sony in this race because while its Playstation VR platform seems to be doing very well, it’s a gaming platform, and will likely coexist along side any eventual general-purpose platform. It has a good price point for mainstream adoption by video game enthusiasts, good relationships with developers, a strong brand, and a large install base of the console itself. But, just as consoles don’t compete directly with personal computers, laptops, and mobile devices, I don’t think that the Playstation’s closed ecosystem and strong gaming focus will broaden its appeal much beyond games and media consumption.
