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Lenovo is winding down XR in the US. Another alarm bell? 😱
According to Skarred Ghost, Lenovo is shutting down its US XR division and changing course. Instead of corporate VR/AR solutions, the company is going to rely on consumer wearable devices with AI under the Motorola brand.
Lenovo is winding down XR in the US. Another alarm bell? 😱
According to Skarred Ghost, Lenovo is closing its US XR division and changing direction. Instead of enterprise VR/AR solutions, the company plans to focus on consumer AI wearables under the Motorola brand.
It is ironic because Lenovo produced the Rift S, perhaps the last mass-market wired Oculus headset. ThinkReality VRX, Legion Glasses, and other devices followed, but there was no longer a sense that Lenovo intended to compete seriously for the XR market.
The news is not a sensation in itself. But it is far from the first signal: VR winter is coming.
The clearest harbingers of a possible apocalypse, in my view, were the mass closure of VR game studios, cancelled games, and Meta’s* circus act as it abruptly reversed course and took an axe to its VR division. Those were the first three horsemen; since then, a whole herd of omens has appeared. One trend in particular has worried me: former VR exclusives receiving “flat-screen” PC versions. First came the news that Moss would launch on conventional PCs. Then we heard about a port of Arizona Sunshine—a game that, for many people, symbolized VR’s heyday.
Now Lenovo is effectively admitting that AI wearables are a more attractive investment than XR. This is not yet the “death of VR,” but the feeling of late autumn across the industry is growing stronger 🍂
Meta is designated an extremist organization in Russia.