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Big Money, Big Dreams, Big Expectations and a Lot of Hype: Magic Leap One AR Headset Goes on Sale for $2,295 in Certain US Markets (cnet.com)
After earning the moniker "tech's most secretive startup" from Wired and telling Forbes in 2016 it was going to ship its system "soon-ish," the company is finally releasing the $2,295 Magic Leap One. For now, it will be available for purchase in limit U.S. markets. CNET: It includes a high-powered, moon pie-shaped computer called the Lightpack, a handheld remote called Control and a steampunk-inspired headset with round lenses and patented optics. That's called Lightwear. There's just one thing: Regular folks like us aren't the intended audience. At least not yet. This "Creator Edition," says CEO Abovitz, is part of a "controlled market release" in just a handful of cities in the United States for the developers and creative types Magic Leap will woo this year and next. The goal: for those makers to dream up the experiences (aka content) it needs to convince us to become Leapers. The company is already showing investors and partners prototypes of its smaller (and hopefully less expensive) Magic Leap Two and Magic Leap Three, but won't say when they'll be released. Magic Leap, valued at $6.3 billion as of two months ago, counts Google, Alibaba, Warner Bros, AT&T, and several top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and about a dozen other big names as its investors. More about the product going on sale here.
All the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley startup scam: initial, extremely high-priced product made available in limited quantities, illustrious sponsors spoken of in hushed tones, and absolutely no value proposition of any kind whatsoever.
Other companies have better tech for cheape, I'm not going to waste over $2k on something that cant do touch like the vr stuff can for cheaper.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Translation: Fraulein: Mila Kunis, when available, OR
Natalie Portman petrified with hot grits
whomever is willing to spend $2295, zat is. I veel take care of ze shipping undt handling, ja?
Vood you like to touch my monkey?
I hate to say this but the product seems a little too expensive compared to what people are willing to pay for. Occulus Rift and HTC Vive which are both working VR solutions are at least half this amount (not including needing a really powerful PC) are struggling to survive. I don't see how this is going to work. Also people joked about Google Glasses looking goofy considering it was a version of AR overlay. So good luck, but it seems destined to fail.
It's exciting to see another computer independent headset coming out this year - I was hoping we'd get past the VR-only devices like the Oculus Go and Lenovo Mirage Solo. Good opportunity for wealthy early adopters to get to play with the new tech and help support it as we move into an AR enabled future! I don't think I can justify the cost for this first generation device, but it's a step in the right direction!
I can just see silver-spoon hipsters wearing these meandering about "certain US markets".
On the bright side, it'd be a lot of fun hacking these things and using those hipsters as playing pieces in a real-life game of Frogger. "Ooops. The 18-wheeler got him. Guess you win."
I'll just wait till the price comes down when/if they start mass producing them. I don't have 2300 bucks to waste on fancy headsets, I got bills.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
Jealous much?
At that pricing and with the mystery market it was released on Magic Leap does not anyone to buy ML1.
"Handful of cities"? What does that mean? You have to prove residency in L.A. to buy one? You have to queue up in line physically in one of these "cities" to get one?
Even if they are stupid, some of those writers are kind of cute. They can eat my shorts :-)
is $2,295 considered to be a good price.
Do I have to fork up $2300 to buy a thing you made, and then you're like "now get to fucking work making stuff for it and advertise it so our business doesn't go under, dipshit"? Who the hell is running that shit show? Steve Jobs?
Another "Developers Developers Developers" push.
They'll probably fuck it up licensing.
biomechanical creatures called Leapers that attach to people through a bio-tether proboscis and induce hallucinatory visions of an imaginary world
OMGWTFLOLBBQ
anyone find a link to the comic book?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I can buy a MBP with that kind of money! More useful...
HOW MUCH DID ROONIE, MAJIK LAEP et al,
PAY YOU FOR THIS ADVERTISEMENT?
Pathetic
>95GB actual available storage capacity
30-40GB is typical size for modern AAA games lately, even stripped mobile games are starting to dip into 5GB+ for me, this kind of storage is very limiting. Although I don't think big games could/would ever be ported to this to begin with, it is probably only going to see the same crappy shovelware that early VR had.
>3 hour continuous battery usage
The whole point of this to me is that you can see your environment and move around, having to plug in a charging cable to use it for a suitable time defeats this purpose, you are now tethered. If you're going to be tethered, why use this at all instead of VR? You're not going to leave the charging vicinity all the same.
>To help you take your first step into spatial computing, we're going to hand deliver the device to your doorstep and personally get you set up.
What the fuck?
A brand new system costing more than double what a VR setup could provide, with no content whatsoever... I see ZERO future for this magic bleep. The only possible use I can think of is a technical usage by big companies, like providing a visual overlay for automation, maybe medical, or various types of training purposes like an improved VR training that militaries already use around the world. This does not sound like a device intended for people to have fun or play games.
Magic Leap, valued at $6.3 billion as of two months ago
No consumer product yet, no track record, no available experiences, so exactly how are they valued at $6.3 billion?
For like $10 for the cardboard viewer and a smartphone with greater than 'retina display' resolution, you can actually do quite a bit of VR-ing right now.
But thats too fucking easy and cheap for some people lol.
Magic Leap into the poor house.
At $2,295, this is no longer an easy purchase for a developer. Especially for something which at this time should be seen as â€oeI as a developer add more value to the platform than the platform adds to my productsâ€
At that price, I would have to go through way too much pain to order the 3 units I would need to even consider using time on this. There needs to be one for developers, one for QA and one for business folks. Thatâ€(TM)s almost $7000 just to get started.
Whatâ€(TM)s more, itâ€(TM)s a large investment to make in a market which is unproven from a vendor that is very much unproven. I seriously doubt they will even have a logistics strategy sorted out by the time I manage to ship a product on the platform. What I mean is, all their resellers will try it and stock a few and then give up. All sales would then end up being direct or through Amazon.
Also, with a product priced to sell hardly a few thousand units at that price point, there will be almost no usable bug reports generated. The result will be that a truly substandard platform will be shipped.
Developing quality products on platforms like this depends heavily on mass economy. If you donâ€(TM)t have at least a hundred thousand users, there will simply not be enough user feedback to make anything worth using.
And good grief:
"My name is Sparkydog. You can call me Zander, all my friends do"
No they do not. That's no-friend-having-guy talk. Also that zoot-suit makes you look like a child molester.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"We're very conscious of how the product looks on your face. "
It looks like the peak of sophistication.
...does it run Linux? This "lightpack" that is.