Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe believes that augmented reality (AR) isn’t quite up to the task of being sold to the mass market yet.
Speaking with UK retail industry site MCV, Iribe said that AR is a more speculative field than virtual reality (VR). While he believes that reaction from consumers to the HoloLens technology has been “ok” so far, he also believes that could all change very quickly.
“It’s one thing to make marketing videos, it’s another to actually try the experience and say ‘I want to buy that’,” Iribe said.
Iribe went on to say that his company’s Oculus Touch is ready for people to actually use and own right off the bat. “Most people come out saying it’s something that they’d want to own, that it’s something they’d want to do a lot more of,” said Iribe. “They want experiences built around that kind of user experience. That’s ready today.”
Iribe continued to elaborate on his comments, saying that he believes AR may have potential for future use, particularly for use in the professional sphere, it just doesn’t have the same kind of broad appeal as VR technology does in the mass market. “The reaction from most people leaving AR demos is not: ‘I want to buy that as a soon as I can’, it’s: ‘I can see the potential of where it is going - one day’. That day has not come yet.”
Do AR devices like Microsoft’s Hololens not carry the same potential in the consumer mass market as VR devices like the Oculus do? What do you think? To help you decide, you can watch this E3 demonstration of HoloLens and the E3 Oculus Rift Gaming Conference below.
