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> There are already concerts with paid tickets going on in platforms like Fortnite, that just happen to be able to act as multi-user VR environments, even though that wasn't their designed purpose. The demand is real.

You have that the other way around. Fortnite was able to host a concert because people like to play Fortnite. There is no demand for VR concerts, there is perhaps some demand for concerts in already-populated online spaces.

People aren't flocking to Fortnite because of the concerts. People who play Fortnite are flocking to these concerts when they happen in their game.

> There is no demand for VR concerts, there is perhaps some demand for concerts in already-populated online spaces.

Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, and the Foo Fighters are all releasing VR concerts this year.

My wife, who has never played Fortnite, attended several VR concerts over the past few years.

Given how popular listening to music is on services like Youtube, I believe it is short-sighted to fail to see the appeal of an immersive 3D-audio VR experience for music fans.

Foo fighters also released 29 tracks for Rock Band, which was really popular for a couple of years.

New toys are fun to play with, for a bit. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to stick around or have much long term relevance.

They’re not only fun to play with, but when someone needs to purchase cachet for a new toy and they come to you to chat about it, cha-ching.

> There are already concerts with paid tickets going on in platforms like Fortnite, that just happen to be able to act as multi-user VR environments, even though that wasn't their designed purpose. The demand is real.

There's no demand to watch computer animated concerts through heavy glasses in Fortnite coming from people who don't already spend a bunch of time playing Fortnite. This is an add-on to Fortnite, not anything that anybody really wants to do for its own sake.

What's the point of watching a computer animated "concert" in VR anyway? Who would get any joy out of that?

Ask the 12.3 million who watched Travis Scott have a concert in Fortnite [1]

There is no way to convey this without being a little bit of a jerk, but I think your take demonstrates being out of touch, in the "no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame, also Dropbox is just some tooling around rsync" sense that HN tends to get sometimes. This is enough of a phenomenon that other mainstream artists are starting to get into it, which means there are enough people getting joy out of it for it to have a market of its own.

I think you ignore the metaverse (the concept, not Facebook's janky implementation) at your own peril. The next generation is growing up with virtual concerts, and in many cases virtual artists.

[1] https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/travis-scott-fortnite-...

ok so a bunch of ppl were playing fornite in april 2020. that doesnt mean that people want to watch vr concerts

On the contrary, more than 12 million people watched the concert live. That's time spent in going to the VR concert, not playing a competitive shooter. Are you suggesting that all of them did something they had no desire to do?

i urge you to examine for any worldwide trends that were occurring in April 2020 that might have made people inclined to attend virtual events

And you think that inclination is temporary? I urge you to examine the history of concerts in that game. A bit under 11 million watched a concert by Marshmello a year prior.

And that's not counting the upcoming stuff. Trying to write off something this successful as a pandemic driven fad kinda speaks to that whole being out of touch thing I was talking about.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/28/22699014/fortnite-soundwa...

Second Life has been doing this for over a decade. I see no reason to expect Meta to do a better job, and see every reason for people to assume they’ve done a maliciously-bad job, given their reputation.

It'll be worse than Second Life because they'll censor anything that isn't brand-friendly to Facebook (and there is certainly a lot of stuff like that on SL - it's a lot of the reason people play it!)

Would you trust Meta with a new social platform? Do you think your friends will?

If they can execute (I believe they can't) and if the Metaverse is the next huge thing that some are predicting (I think their vision is too dependent on VR/AR magically becoming practical)

They still have a huge reputation issue; they are already bleeding users on FB and Insta.

They need a miracle.

Have privacy geeks who keep saying "no one would trust FB with X" ever looked at the numbers? I keep seeing this sentiment around Meta and VR, yet guess which VR company has like >70% market share.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1222146/xr-headset-shipm...

I'd like to see numbers.

I mean, engagement, not market share, total time spent by users with the headset on.

My intuition is that 90% of that "market share" is collecting dust.

Sounds like you just believe whatever you want then, no? How is 80% of sales in Q4 not a pretty good indicator that people do, in fact, "trust Meta with a new X" (or at least don't care enough)?

As for that new intuition, what good reason is there to believe Oculus headsets are so vastly underused after-purchase compared to competitors? And what has that to do with Meta's reputational issues?

> How is 80% of sales in Q4 not a pretty good indicator that people do

Because everybody I know who's bought a VR headset (any brand) lets it collect dust after a month, and I don't think that's a fluke. Buying a VR headset is not using a VR headset.

My point was with regards to the common insinuation that people (i.e. consumers) will not be using Facebook products because of the company's reputation issues, which I think has never showed up in the underlying numbers. Through all the scandals whether it's political weaponization by users and advertisers, privacy issues or else, their userbases never stopped growing ever larger whether it's FB+Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and now VR. There was a single (recovered) QoQ decline in global active users in it's history, seemingly unrelated to any scandal.

The company sure has reputational issues, but as much as people hate it (I have my own deep issues with it), it's not stopping the larger masses of people from using their products. In fact, >85% of humans (ex-China) with an Internet connection to their apps and >70% of VR headset purchasers.

Whether VR is a fad, people who buy headset find long-lived utility from them or the push is a good/bad bet for $META is unrelated to what I meant to say, which is their reputation is not stopping them from currently dominating the VR space (non-premium only so far, but maybe with Cambria). Doesn't seem reasonable to think the 7-8 digits of current VR enthusiasts are less morally principled then the 9-10 figure masses would be.

You’re confirming OP’s point, this is a video-game thingie. I personally don’t know anyone who plays or cares about Fortnite, I’m a man in my early 40s with little to no friends who work in the IT industry.