Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Virtual Reality
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Via VR scout Adeon, here's a very good case from YouTuber ThrillSeeker to keep an eye (and a haptic finger in the wind) out for BONELAB, from indie studio Stress Level Zero, creator of the unexpected VR hit BONEWORKS from 2019. Like that game, BONELAB has highly responsive physics and avatar customization, with this new…
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With Meta's Q1 2022 earnings report now out, it's once again time to engage in some Meta-ology. (You know, like Kremlinology, except with a publicly traded company.) The core question for us XR/metaverse obsessives being: What's the install base of the Quest 2, which is central to Meta's metaverse strategy? Short answer: From what we…
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What's our evidence that Meta's Metaverse strategy is helplessly muddled? Well, there's Business Insider confirming what I reported, citing an insider last year. But even more evident is Meta trying to market its metaverse platform in the real world: Meta said Monday that its first physical retail space will open on May 9 in Burlingame,…
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This is the mixed reality application of the month and is probably the Peak Japan moment of the year: A giant construction robot.. controlled through an XR headset. According to this Japanese news site (and Google's so-so translation), it is very much in production: [Railway company] JR West announced on the 15th that it is developing…
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Just got this pretty amazing breaking news note from Shawn Whiting, Head of Influencers & Partners at Rec Room: "Shortly after the holidays, Rec Room crested 3 million VR monthly active users… A majority of those VR monthly active users are Quest 2. [Emph mine – WJA] "We're very happy with the VR growth but…
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If you've been following the news about Facebook/Meta's metaverse project lately, you'll recall the slew of bad press when a female user was sexually assaulted in Horizon Worlds, leading the company to hastily add an avatar "boundary" system. And if you've been following virtual world/metaverse development for any substantial amount of time, you've probably been…
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Just posted my 2022 predictions just last week, and this news already dropped this week: Apple was reportedly planning to put the headset on sale sometime after the [June 2022] WWDC announcement. Now, however, Apple is said to be exploring the possibility of delaying the announcement by at least a few months, or potentially pushing it…
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If you're following VR news across various social media platforms, you probably saw this article on The Verge yesterday: Meta has sold 10 million Oculus Quest 2 headsets, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon at the company’s 2021 investor day, giving the best benchmark yet for sales of Meta’s standalone VR platform since it launched last…
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In case you missed it (and I meant to blog this last week, sorry), Rec Room is hiring like crazy, with around 60 open positions. "We're growing a lot," as Rec Room Influencer/Partner Head Shawn Whiting tells me. "Mobile (iOS and Android) is growing very quickly so almost every team is hiring to keep up,"…
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In the Atlantic, longtime Internet activist and scholar Ethan Zuckerman takes textual fisticuffs to Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and Metaverse ambitions, going through the long evolution of the technology like an avuncular Bane. ("Ah you think the Metaverse is your ally? You merely adopted the Metaverse. I was born in it, molded by it.") Because Ethan's…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 