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Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

It'd be great to have a trilateral collaboration between Valve, Google, and HTC on that. Google would have the mobile platform stake, Valve the high end stake, and HTC the hardware stake.

However, they bought an RF lab from HTC, so it's probably a mobile product, not the VR product.

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The notion of such a collaboration sounds interesting. For most industries, it would healthier for consumers in the long run if the major stakeholders competed, rather than collaborated, at this early stage. But in the short term, it means framework fragmentation, publishing pains for indie app developers as the big guns vie for exclusive contracts. Not to mention potentially delaying technological progress in the space, what with all the R&D occurring within isolated silos keeping their trade secrets close to the vest.

> For most industries, it would healthier for consumers in the long run if the major stakeholders competed, rather than collaborated, at this early stage.

For what it's worth, I figure they have lots of competition in terms of Samsung, Oculus, and Microsoft.

Yup, that's what it seems like. Which means I was probably wrong. I believed, when announced, that they were interested in the VR hardware department.

Well, more like I hoped it would be the goal. I'd love good AR, which I see as being similar enough to VR. I also want it tied to some sort of big data along with ease of discoverability.

I'd like to be riding down the road, see a bridge, be able to identify the bridge, be able to see when it was constructed, be able to see the plans and capacity limits, see who did the construction, see if there were accidents during construction, and things like that. I'd like the same for buildings, airplanes, cars, etc...

So, Google married with VR would be a potential start to something I'd really like to see. Alas, I was wrong. I'm a bit disappointed, but not really surprised.

Since we already have a fairly decent platform between Valve and HTC, what exactly can Google bring to the table?

Personally, I would prefer Google stay out of it.

Half Life 3 confirmed!

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