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Apple's focus on fitness makes sense
The Immersive Wire - 24 April 2023 (Monday Briefing)
Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Headline: Apple will release its headset in June, and it will feature sports and workouts according to Bloomberg (analysis below).
Stat of the week: VR devs have sold $3bn worth of apps and games since 2016, according to estimations from Tipatat Chennavasin. Conversation-starter: Meta proposed an algorithm-based system to track all of the body - including legs.
Other stories: Beat Saber grossed $255m by October 2022, PwC launched its first public metaverse world on Decentraland, and Snap created a ‘mirror’ tool for people to shop virtually at stores (more below).
Fun fact: When the SpaceX rocket exploded, it was called a 'Rapid unscheduled disassembly.’ Great label for next time you mess something up.
Analysis
Apple will release its headset in June, and it will feature sports and workouts (according to Bloomberg).
The focus on fitness does not surprise me. Don’t get me wrong, I sweat like a piglet when I exercise and I find it annoying to clean the headset after a session. Still, it is one of the few types of services that warrants a recurring payment each month, which integrates nicely into Apple’s services sector. Fitness is also a very popular use of VR; while gaming is the top reason for people to use VR, exercise came in at a close second. It also integrates nicely with Apple’s hardware ecosystem, like the Apple Watch.
Sports make sense too. Apple owns the rights to Major League Baseball, and is considering English football. Apple also acquired NextVR some time ago, which specialises in sports streaming – we may see this come to pass very soon.
What do I hope for? Some WebXR support would be great, so that immersive experiences can work across VR headsets. But Apple has forged a reputation through the control of its ecosystem, so we will put a feather in the book and see what happens.
Other notable stories
Got any stories? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
Beat Saber grossed $255m by October 2022.
Colorintech launched a program for underrepresented founders in the XR / metaverse space.
Meta laid off more employees (with a focus on technical staff), bringing the total to 21,000.
Meta also opened the Horizon Worlds app to 13-17 year olds in the US and Canada.
The Metaverse Standards Forum announced that it is now incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.
PwC launched its first public metaverse world on Decentraland.
Siemens Metaverse accidentally exposed private corporate data.
Snap created a ‘mirror’ tool for people to shop virtually at stores.
The Park Playground announced the release of its latest LBVR game, NANOCLASH FOCUS.
Help corner
Need some assistance from other readers? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
Headonists, a UK-based XR community, is looking to compile XR-related events within a single calendar. The calendar itself can be found here, and the submission is here.
Lowpass is a new newsletter run by Janko Roettgers, who wrote a multitude of XR-related exclusives at Protocol. Check it out here.
Bristol Games Hub is hosting an XR event in Bristol on 27 April. More details.