It’s time to recap last January’s 2023 predictions.
- "Apple won’t launch or announce the widely anticipated XR headset until 2023." oh. It hasn’t been made public, but it’s definitely been announced. Gives half a point.
- "VRChat plans to hit 10 million monthly activities in 2023." My research suggests that this happens during peak usage months, but the company itself has not publicly announced anything like this. No points for me.
- "Meta will announce some sort of major change away from the Metaverse." I would say a very public shift towards generative AI in 2023 would be a good fit here. I give you 1 point.
- "Major tech news outlets like VentureBeat or TechCrunch are expected to declare that AI-related startups like Midjourney or OpenAI will no longer be ‘hot’ in 2023.." An undeserved failure on my part. Even though scalable use cases for generative AI are yet to be determined, market awareness of it remains hot AF.
- "Official Second Life native mobile app will be released in 2023." Is closed alpha testing included for Premium+ subscribers? Just one more point: I think so.
Final score: 2.5 out of 5 Correct. not really! Forecasts have been clouded by over-optimism about VRChat and bearishness about the AI hype.
Reader predictions for January 2023 are below. Speaking of which, think about our 2024 predictions for next week!
First, Martin says:
- Meta Quest 3 comes with a better display, better CPU and GPU performance, better video passthrough, and longer-lasting battery than Meta Quest Pro at less than half the price.
- Valve is expected to announce a new VR headset, but not release it outright.
- Meta will announce a new name. "horizon world".
Nailed MetaQuest 3 Predictions. There’s no new name for Horizon Worlds, and no announcements about the Vive 2. However, Valve recently released SteamVR 2.0. This is a sure sign that a new headset will be released soon, so I’ll give it a 0.5 out of 1.5. Out of 3!
Here are Kate’s two predictions:
A new SL Mesh starter avatar is released. It will be cooler than your current starter avatar. However, there is no clear or easy upgrade path from a starter avatar to a custom, individualized avatar, as the bodies, hair, skin, and clothing are designed inconsistently with how they are currently designed, sold, and used on the grid. .
LL will be releasing a variety of performance improvements throughout the year. New World Notes and other SL, VW and Metaverse blogs will report on improvements and a new, faster SL experience. But Kate won’t notice the difference between the new, very improved SL and the old, slow, sluggish SL.
I’ve definitely reported some performance improvements recently, and the new "Senra" Avatar was released in August, so Kate gets a perfect two-for-two. Senra is better, but I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether it doesn’t match the existing ecosystem, and I’ll leave it to Kate to decide whether it performs better.