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Time to come clean about my 2023 predictions from last January:
- "Apple will not release or announce its widely-rumored XR headset in 2023." Whoops. Not released, but definitely announced. Award half a point.
- "VRChat will announce 10 million monthly actives in 2023." My research indicates this is the case during high usage months, but the company itself has not announced anything like that publicly. No points for me.
- "Meta will announce some kind of major shift away from the Metaverse." I'd say its very public shift in 2023 toward generative AI qualifies here. Award one point.
- "A major tech news outlet such as VentureBeat or TechCrunch will in 2023 declare AI-related startups like Midjourney or OpenAI as not being 'hot' any more." Unqualified fail on my part. Even though scalable use cases for generative AI have yet to be determined, there's no denying the market perception of them remains unswervingly hot AF.
- "Official Second Life native mobile app will launch in 2023." Does a closed Alpha test for Premium+ subscribers count? I sure think so for one more point.
Final score: 2.5 out of 5 right. Not great! I let my excess bullish-ness on VRChat and bearish-ness on AI hype cloud my predictions.
Reader predictions from January 2023 rated below. Speaking of which, start thinking up your 2024 predictions for next week!
First, from Martin:
- Meta Quest 3 will be released with a better display, better CPU and GPU performance, better video pass-through, and longer lasting battery than Meta Quest Pro for less than half the price.
- Valve will announce but not fully release a new VR headset.
- Meta will announce a new name for "Horizon Worlds".
Nailed Meta Quest 3 prediction. No new name for Horizon Worlds, nor an announcement for a Vive 2. However, Valve did recently release SteamVR 2.0 – a pretty sure sign a new headset is coming soon — so I'll award that half a point, for 1.5 out of 3!
And here's two prediction from Kate:
The new SL Mesh Starter Avatars will roll out. They will be nicer than the current starter avatars. However they will be designed inconsistently with the way bodies, heads, skin, and clothing are currently designed, sold, and used on the grid so that there is no clear or easy upgrade path from the starter avatars to a custom, individually personalized avatar..
LL will announce various performance improvements through the year. New World Notes and other SL, VW, & Metaverse blogs will report on the improvements and the new, faster SL experience. However, Kate will be unable to notice any difference between the new, super-better SL and the old, slow, laggy SL.
I've definitely reported recent performance improvements, and new "Senra" avatars were announced in August, so Kate gets a perfect 2 for 2. I'll leave to readers to decide whether Senra are nicer but inconsistent with the existing ecosystem — and to Kate to tell us whether her performance is any better.
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