Apple may have stopped making their foray into VR, the Apple Vision Pro.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, a news outlet called The Information confirmed that Apple is no longer making their mixed reality headset. They claim to have sources who work with Apple’s production partners.
The Information goes on to say that Apple already ended manufacturing of the headset last year, after they figured out that they had enough stock to match estimates of how much demand they could have for the headset until the end of its life cycle.
Apple made as strong a push for the Apple Vision Pro as any VR headset manufacturer could make. They designed the headset so that users would not be tethered to a dedicated VR room, or have to build a complicated, expensive setup to prepare such a VR room.
Apple Vision Pro can run on a battery and its own power, and the company even advertised the device to have continuity with their pioneering mobile devices, such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPad.
On the video game front, the Apple Vision Pro also came with a large sample of the Apple Arcade library, bundled onto the device without needing an Apple Arcade subscription. That certainly sounds like a great deal, until you learn that Apple actually priced the device at $ 3,500.
Even with Apple’s always controversial inflated prices, this was staggeringly expensive for what it was offering. One could argue that this was still the right price for the innovating work that Apple tried to do with the Apple Vision Pro.
But then, Apple users were also somewhat infamous for making even Apple’s most expensive products to at least be decently successful. So what was difference this time? As we reported in April of last year, many loyal Apple fans experienced discomfort from using the gadget, for many of the reasons we already expected people to be uncomfortable with VR and even mixed reality. As a result, the device had an unusually high amount of returns.
In spite of all these woes, Apple may not be done with VR quite yet. There are reports that Apple is working on a second generation of the Apple Vision Pro. The Information claims that Apple is making “an incremental update to the product with limited changes to its physical design.”
There are also rumors that this potential Apple Vision Pro 2 could come bundled with Apple Intelligence. But Apple’s rush to join the AI revolution may be too late. As Reuters reported last December, leading AI companies like OpenAI admitted that the latest generation of AI modeling technology is not improving as quickly as earlier generations. This announcement had real consequences to their businesses, as this vaunted tech bubble may burst before it even got a chance to be too big.
Apple’s overall business may turn out just fine if they ended up avoiding spending too much in AI. But with a short or no future for Apple Intelligence, there may be no way forward for the Apple Vision Pro to keep going.
And we will admit, if Apple bows out of VR, this may not entirely be the complete end of VR and mixed reality. But with such a huge player exiting the market, VR may never go truly mainstream, relegated to a niche who can afford and are healthy enough to use it.
