Fortnite Festival, the game’s Rock Band-like music mode where you play along with real songs, is getting local multiplayer for up to four people on PlayStation and Xbox on January 14th.
Currently, you can only play Fortnite Festival multiplayer online, but with this change, you’ll be able to get your former Rock Band back together and jam out on the same TV screen — well, with a major asterisk. Fortnite Festival currently only supports certain Rock Band guitar controllers, so if you’re on vocals or drums, you’ll be relegated to playing on a controller.
Epic Games didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment about when drum kit or microphone support might be added to Fortnite Festival.
The new local multiplayer mode is being added as part of season 7 of Fortnite Festival. The featured artist for the season is rumored to be virtual pop star Hatsune Miku — and Epic Games is has already dropped a hint that she might be joining Fortnite soon.
This is the alert that inadvertently went out to everyone in LA County. | Image: The Verge
After two days of dealing with wildfires that have burned thousands of acres, residents across Los Angeles County received a wildfire evacuation alert on Thursday afternoon that was a mistake. Shortly after, officials sent a follow-up alert saying that the notice was intended only for people near the Kenneth Fire in Woodland Hills.
Los Angeles County shared a message on X explaining what happened: “An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued Countywide. This alert was only intended for residents of Calabasas and Agoura Hills.”
CBS News quotes a local official who said that the alert, which included a broken URL, was sent “due to a technical error.”
Image: The Verge
This is the alert to disregard the other evacuation warning.
Many wildfires are burning in the LA area, and officials have confirmed at least six deaths, CNN reports. LA County has a population of nearly 10 million people, which is the “largest population of any county in the nation,” according to the county’s website.
An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued Countywide. For updates on wildfires currently burning in LA County, including evacuation information please visit https://t.co/p46PbDz31o. pic.twitter.com/JRQhOCBx3j
New day, new Nintendo Switch 2 leaks. Nintendo is getting ever-closer to its April 2025 deadline to reveal its Switch successor, but thanks new renders from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles, we may now have an even better idea of what the new console might look like.
If you’ve been following our coverage of otherSwitch 2leaks, these renders shouldn’t look too surprising. According to the new renders, the console will resemble the original Switch, but it will be bigger, with an 8.4-inch screen. Interestingly, OnLeaks and 91Mobiles report that the screen will “most likely” be an “OLED panel” — previous reports have said the console would have an LCD screen.
The renders show that the top of the Switch 2 will feature a power button, a volume rocker, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a game card slot, and, new for the Switch 2, a USB-C port. OnLeaks and 91Mobiles also say that “there also seems to be a sensor of sorts” and they speculate that “this might be an ambient light sensor or something else.” These renders also have a U-shaped kickstand that has appeared in other leaks.
As for the Joy-Cons, OnLeaks and 91Mobiles’ renders show the mysterious second new button on the right Joy-Con. However, they say the new button is above the Home button; other leaks have included the new button below it. The Joy-Cons in the renders have the large buttons in the back that are apparently used to detach the controllers from the console, which are apparently attached magnetically.
The renders also show an interesting color scheme for the Joy-Cons: they are mostly black but have color accents — light blue on the left one and orange on the right — under the joystick pads and on the bumped-out part of the controllers with the SL and SR buttons. A similar design popped up earlier this month for an alleged Switch 2 left Joy-Con with light blue accents. I love it, personally.
Hopefully, given the tidal wave of recent leaks, we don’t have to wait too much longer for Nintendo to officially announce the new console. But whenever the console actually launches, it’s going to have some stiff competition.
Ubisoft announced a “strategic update” today, and the changes include a delay for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the upcoming entry in the franchise that takes place in feudal Japan, from February 14th to March 20th.
“As part of the renewed focus on gameplay quality and engaging Day-1 experiences, it has been decided to provide an additional month of development to Assassin’s Creed Shadows,” Ubisoft writes in a press release. “This additional time will allow the team to better incorporate the player feedback gathered over the past three months and help create the best conditions for launch by continuing to engage closely with the increasingly positive Assassin’s Creed community.”
This is the game’s second delay — it was previously scheduled to launch on November 15th before getting pushed.
Ubisoft also says it has “appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.” The company says that it will “inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes.”
Ubisoft has had a bit of a rough go of things as of late. Star Wars Outlaws didn’t sell as well expected and the company also announced that it would be shutting down XDefiant, a live-service shooter.
The first Nintendo Switch basically had the road to itself, and Nintendo instantly proved just how awesome a hybrid console and handheld could be, leading to massive success. The next Switch is imminent, but it will launch into a world that’s packed with very capable handheld gaming PCs that could present an interesting challenge to Nintendo, especially following news from CES 2025.
Valve’s Steam Deck kicked off the handheld gaming PC push in large part because its Linux-based SteamOS makes playing your games just about as easy as it is on consoles. That’s why one of the biggest CES announcements is that Valve is going to let people install SteamOS on other handhelds as soon as April, potentially making the entire handheld PC gaming market a lot more appealing.
The first official non-Valve device with SteamOS is set to be Lenovo’s $499 Legion Go S, which launches in May. But it’s not hard to imagine a near-term future where many other hardware makers announce their own SteamOS handhelds, meaning the magic of SteamOS might be available in all kinds of interesting devices very soon. (And hopefully, the increased competition means Valve will make the eventual next Steam Deckreally good.)
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
The Lenovo Legion Go S next to a Steam Deck OLED.
CES 2025 featured a bunch of other handheld gaming hardware, too, like the chonk that is Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11. It has a gigantic 10.95-inch screen, detachable controllers, and a kickstand. It’s huge! Intel and Tencent also made a handheld with an 11-inch screen, and theirs has stereo 3D. My colleague Sean Hollister finally got to see the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus. Razer made a docking station that works with handheld gaming PCs. And in a CES panel, Microsoft promised news about changes to the handheld Windows experience for later this year, which could improve things for people who already own Windows-based hardware.
That’s a lot of cool stuff! But Nintendo is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and as interesting as all of the PC gaming hardware is, the Switch’s imminentsuccessor will almost certainly be a very compelling upgrade. The original Switch was released nearly eight years ago, so the successor will likely be much more powerful and will probably have splashy new games in marquee franchises like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. (I’d bet already-announced Switch games like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A will get some kind of boost on the next Switch, too.)
Right out of the gate, Nintendo’s new console will also have an enormous library. The company already announced its next console will be compatible with original Switch games — a catalog that includes many of the indie hits that are also some of the best games on handheld PCs.
Back in 2017, when the original Switch launched, there wasn’t anything like it. The Switch’s successor will compete in a much more crowded field — and one that’s getting even more crowded after CES 2025. Hopefully, the competition means everyone makes better hardware and better games. It’s a great time for handhelds.
One of the biggest announcements in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s CES keynote was the small “Project Digits” AI supercomputer, and if you want to get an idea of just how tiny the $3,000 machine is in real life, we snapped a couple photos of the device under glass today at the show.
Take a look: we’ve captured the front of a Digits computer in the photo at the top of this post, and below this paragraph is a photo of the back featuring the computer’s ports. I really like the textured design.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The Digits computers will come with Nvidia’s GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which offers “a petaflop of AI computing performance for prototyping, fine-tuning and running large AI models,” according to Nvidia’s press release. It also includes a GPU built with Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, 128GB of unified memory, and up to 4TB of NVMe SSD storage.
This isn’t a computer for most people; Nvidia says that Project Digits is intended to provide “AI researchers, data scientists and students worldwide with access to the power of the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell platform.” It definitely isn’t something I will ever buy.
But it is impressively tiny given its capabilities — small computers have been on a tear lately!
As part of Meta’s sweeping changes to content moderation announced today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the company will also be moving its content moderation teams from California to Texas to “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” he wrote on Threads.
“We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas,” Zuckerberg says in a video about the changes. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
Meta’s other moderation changes include ditching its independent fact-checking program in the US in favor of an X-inspired Community Notes feature, removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, and bringing back civic content to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Nvidia plans to release a native GeForce Now app for Steam Deck “later this year,” according to a blog post. It’s already relatively straightforward to get Nvidia’s cloud gaming service set up on Steam Deck thanks to a special script from Nvidia, but a native app should be easier to install and will support up to 4K resolution and 60 fps with HDR when connected to a TV.
Nvidia also plans to bring GeForce Now to some major VR headsets later this month, including the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and Pico “virtual- and mixed-reality devices.” When GeForce Now version 2.0.70 is available, people using those headsets will be able to access an “extensive library of games” they can stream by visiting play.geforcenow.com in their browser.
The company also says that two major titles from Microsoft will be available on GeForce Now when they come out this year: Avowed, which launches February 18th, and DOOM: The Dark Ages, which is set to be available sometime this year.
Nvidia has spent the last two years showing off its digital “ACE” characters that can have in-game conversations with you using generative AI. But at CES 2025, the company is taking the ACE characters a step further by showing how they can be “autonomous game characters” — including, sometime this year, a teammate to help you get a chicken dinner in PUBG.
Nvidia says that ACE characters can use AI to “perceive, plan, and act like human players,” per a blog post. “Powered by generative AI, ACE will enable living, dynamic game worlds with companions that comprehend and support player goals, and enemies that adapt dynamically to player tactics.” The characters are powered by “small language models (SLMs)” that are “capable of planning at human-like frequencies required for realistic decision making” as well as “multi-modal SLMs for vision and audio that allow AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their environment.”
As for how that will work in PUBG, you’ll be able to team up with the “PUBG Ally,” which Nvidia and PUBG publisher Krafton are calling the “world’s first Co-Playable Character (CPC).” The Ally will be able to “communicate using game-specific lingo, provide real-time strategic recommendations, find and share loot, drive vehicles, and fight other human players using the game’s extensive arsenal of weapons,” Nvidia says.
Basically, it sounds like an AI teammate you can talk with natural language who’s supposed to be as capable as a human. And a video shows the Ally indeed helping a player find specific loot, bringing over a vehicle, and attempting to flank opposing players. But the video is heavily edited and isn’t live, so I’m skeptical that the Ally will work as well as is being shown here.
AI characters built with ACE are coming to other games, too. Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile PC Version will get a “a local inference AI Teammate feature” in March 2025, while Naraka: Bladepoint on PC will get the feature “later in 2025,” according to Nvidia’s blog post. “AI Teammates powered by NVIDIA ACE can join your party, battling alongside you, finding you specific items that you need, swapping gear, offering suggestions on skills to unlock, and making plays that’ll help you achieve victory.”
Krafton’s upcoming life simulation game called inZOI will also get CPCs called “Smart Zoi.” And Nvidia says that ACE characters can be bosses, too, and they’ll be used for boss encounters in Wemade Next’s MIR5.
Inworld AI, Streamlabs, and Nvidia are partnering on a new AI assistant for streamers that can provide technical support for streams in real time and even act as a quippy cohost.
As a cohost, the “Intelligent Streaming Assistant” can understand what’s happening in games like Fortnite and offer “contextually relevant commentary,” according to a press release. “This awareness enables the assistant to do things like highlight a well-timed build, provide commentary during a dramatic Victory Royale, or shoutout audience members for sending tips.”
Image: Inworld AI, Streamlabs, and Nvidia
As a producer, the assistant will be able to trigger “audio and visual effects to enhance high-impact gameplay” as well as capture clips. The assistant can also help set up Streamlabs Desktop and offer troubleshooting advice. And streamers will be able to pick from “assistant personalities” that can “complement the tone of their stream, whether they’re looking for subtle behind-the-scenes support or a lively co-host.”
The tool seems like it could be a useful and potentially entertaining way to improve your streams. But based solely on how it’s demonstrated in a video, the assistant might also look and sound like an awkward AI avatar, so I’m not sure how widely it might be used in practice.
The Intelligent Streaming Assistant is set to launch in Streamlabs’ app store later this year.
Dana White and Mark Zuckerberg attend the UFC 300 event at T-Mobile Arena on April 13, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
As shown above, the Meta CEO has attended several UFC fights over the last few years and shared a picture with White on Instagram in February, as noted by Bloomberg, and White was mediating the proposed Zuckerberg vs. Musk cage match at one point. White also has a personal relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, who Zuckerberg met with at his Mar-a-Lago resort after Trump threatened “if [Zuckerberg] does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison—as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election” in a book released last September.
In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg said of White, “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
White maintained control of that brand after a New Year’s Eve incident two years ago where he was captured on camera slapping his wife in a nightclub, as reported by The Athletic. Afterward, White said, “There’s no defense for this and people should not be defending me over this thing no matter what... I have to walk around for however long I live — 10.4 years or another 25 years — and this is how I’m labeled now.”
John Elkann, CEO of European investment company Exor (which has stakes in companies like Ferrari and Stellantis), and Charlie Songhurst, a technology investor and former Microsoft executive, will be joining Meta’s board as well.
Meta now has 13 people on its board. “We have massive opportunities ahead in AI, wearables, and the future of social media, and our board will help us achieve our vision,” Zuckerberg says.
Acer is revealing new all-in-one and mini PCs at CES 2025, and they’re among the first non-laptop computers to get Copilot Plus AI features.
The new Acer Aspire S AI all-in-ones, offered in a “minimalist white profile,” come in two sizes, according to a press release. The Aspire S24 AI has a 23.8-inch 1080p screen, and the Aspire S27 AI has a 27-inch panel in 1080p or 4K. You can get both with touchscreens, too. They’re equipped with “up to” Intel Core Ultra processors (Series 2), support Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7, and have an HDMI 2.0 port, two USB 3.2 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port.
The Aspire S24 AI will start at $1,199.99, while the Aspire S27 AI will start at $1,299.99. Both are set to launch in Q2 of this year.
Acer’s new Aspire C AI all-in-ones also come in 23.8-inch and 27-inch screen sizes, and both can be configured with up to QHD (1440p) screens. They’re powered by AMD Ryzen AI processors and AMD Radeon 800M-series GPUs, and you can get them with up to 64GB of DDR5 memory and 1TB of M2 PCIe SSD storage. However, unlike the Aspire S all-in-ones, the Aspire C all-in-ones only support Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.
The Acer Aspire C24 AI is set to start at $999.99, with the Acer Aspire C27 AI starting at $1,099.99, and both are also scheduled to launch in Q2.
Image: Acer
The Acer Revo Box AI.
The Acer Revo Box AI is a new version of its mini PC line, and the company says this one “measures just 0.75 liters and weighs a mere 0.5 kg.” It also has Intel Core Ultra processors (Series 2) and can be purchased with up to 32GB of LPDDR5X 8533 memory. It will start at $799.99 and is also set for Q2.
In addition to supporting Copilot Plus features, Acer says these computers all have “Acer Intelligence Space,” which is “a central hub that automatically detects hardware and provides the appropriate AI tools to optimize performance, generate images, and enhance gameplay.”
Acer is announcing two new Nitro Blaze gaming handhelds at CES 2025, and one of them, the Nitro Blaze 11, is truly giant with a massive 10.95-inch screen.
Seriously, it’s huge — just look at this photo of a person holding it! It’s absurd!
Image: Acer
In addition to that enormous screen — which is a 144 Hz WQXGA touch display that can top out at 500 nits of brightness — the Nitro Blaze 11 is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 8040HS processor, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 2TB of storage, according to a press release. The Nitro Blaze 11 also has detachable controllers, a built-in kickstand, Hall Effect joysticks, and two back buttons. (The original Blaze, announced last year with a 7-inch screen, lacked back buttons.)
Image: Acer
The Nitro Blaze 11 with its controllers removed.
Acer’s other new handheld PC, the Nitro Blaze 8, is mercifully smaller, with an 8.8-inch screen. It has many of the same specs as the Nitro Blaze 11, though it lacks the detachable controllers and built-in stand.
Both new Blazes will be available in Q2 2025, Acer says. The Nitro Blaze 11 will start at $1,099.99, while the Nitro Blaze 8 will start at $899.99.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to some LG TVs “later this year,” Microsoft and LG announced at CES 2025. When the feature is available, if you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you’ll be able to stream games from the Xbox Game Pass library and select titles that you already own from the LG Gaming Portal.
LG says you’ll be able to use Xbox Cloud Gaming on its “latest Smart TVs,” but doesn’t specify exactly which models. In a footnote, LG says that “service and country availability will be announced at a later date.” Microsoft promises that it will share more details on the feature in the “coming months.”
Microsoft and LG’s promotional art for the news features Microsoft’s “This is an Xbox” tagline that shows how you can play Xbox games across a lot of different devices. Xbox Cloud Gaming is already available on some Samsung TVs.
A new year means a new Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) speedrunning marathon for charity, and this year’s event is just about to kick off. AGDQ starts today, January 5th, at 12PM ET, and is scheduled to end very early in the morning on January 12th. You can watch the event live on Games Done Quick’s Twitch channel, and runs are typically uploaded to Games Done Quick’s YouTube channel soon after they air.
I’ve been perusing the schedule, and here’s a few runs that I’m excited about:
Apple CEO Tim Cook is the next tech exec to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, according to Axios. Cook’s donation follows similar commitments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and Meta as Big Tech companies and executives work to curry favor with the incoming administration.
Cook famously built a personal relationship with Trump during his first term that other tech CEOs are looking to replicate. He was one of many to congratulate Trump after his Election Day victory, and Axios reports that Cook has met with Trump at Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Unnamed sources tell Axios that “Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity.” Apple is “not expected” to donate to the inauguration. The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
It seems like Nvidia might be about to reveal its RTX 50 series GPUs, and now Nvidia itself is teasing that the new graphics cards are nearly here. As spotted by VideoCardz, a video for Nvidia’s upcoming LAN party includes brief look at a shadowy PC that will be given as a prize, and if you brighten up the image, the GPU in the computer appears to be one that’s a new design.
See for yourself — I’ve included an image of the shadowed version at the top of this post, but here’s our take at tweaking the image to reveal what’s hidden:
Image: Tom Warren / The Verge
I’ll admit I am not an expert in GPU designs, but VideoCardz says the design is “unfamiliar” and that an RTX 5080 or 5070 Ti could be “among possible candidates” of what’s being shown.
Leaks last month from Zotac and Acer indicated that Nvidia may reveal as many as five RTX 50 series GPUs very soon, including an RTX 5090, an RTX 5080, and an 5070 Ti. VideoCardz also reported today on a leak of an RTX 5080 from MSI featuring 16GB of GDDR7 memory.
And Nvidia isn’t being particularly secretive about the potentially imminent launch of the RTX 50-series GPUs. The LAN party, which runs from January 4th through 6th, is called the “GeForce LAN 50”, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to deliver a CES keynote on January 6th at 9:30PM ET.
Apple has added warning labels to AirTags and their boxes to comply with a law requiring the labels on products with button cell or coin batteries that could be ingested by children, according to a US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) press release.
AirTags imported to the US after March 19th, 2024, which was when the law, known as “Reese’s Law,” went into effect, did not “have the required on-product and on-box warnings concerning the severe risk of injury from battery ingestion if these small batteries are not kept out of reach of children,” the CPSC says.
Now, the AirTag battery compartment has a “warning symbol,” and Apple has updated AirTags boxes to “include required warning statements and symbols,” per the CPSC. In the Find My app, Apple has also updated the instructions you see when you’re prompted to change an AirTag battery so that they include “a warning about the hazards of button and coin cell batteries.”
Glasses may be more promising as the head-worn computers of the future — and there’s a chance Apple might be looking in that direction.
Apple’s Vision Pro headset is an incredible piece of technology, but even Apple’s design and marketing magic hasn’t been enough to convince many people to don a VR headset for an entire day. Instead, people seem more willing to use discreet wearables like Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches, and products like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses — so Apple’s headset isn’t making the waves the company would have wanted.
Of course, an instant transformation of the computing landscape wasn’t exactly the point of the Vision Pro. Apple was clearly launching its headset for Apple enthusiasts, first adopters, and people who love VR. At a starting price of $3,499, the barrier of entry was just too high to expect the device to be a hit from the jump. Even CEO Tim Cook called it an “early-adopter product.”
Would you really want to wear this all day?
Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn’t done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It’s taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what’s possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren’t many great games, either.
Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn’t an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company’s newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn’t know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don’t think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.
It seems Apple may have already acknowledged that the Vision Pro might not be the future, either. The company has reportedly scaled back production and focused efforts on a cheaper version of the headset (perhaps just called Apple Vision?).
If Apple still wants to make a splash in VR, the company might need to race to get its next product out the door. It can be argued that Meta has the best VR headsets and ecosystem on the market right now — and a very clear lineup for consumers to consider. Its most affordable offering is the $299 Quest 3S, which has the same chip as the $499 Quest 3, meaning you can access the same experiences across both headsets. The price difference between the two largely comes down to displays and storage, and I’d argue that the cheaper Quest 3S is an excellent VR headset for most people.
The Meta Quest Pro, which launched at $1,499, was a flop.
But like the Vision Pro, Meta hasn’t really found a way to make its headsets much more than a great way to play VR games. The Quest Pro, which Meta pitched in part as a headset for work, was such a flop that the company discontinued it only two years after it launched. Horizon Worlds, the company’s 3D social network, still feels amateur and barren, despite the company’s efforts to make it a better place to hang out.
When I put on a Meta headset, I find that I just want to play games, either serious titles like Batman: Arkham Shadow or lighter fare like Maestro, where you conduct a virtual orchestra. I don’t care about the mixed reality features except to glance at my phone or computer screen to make a note or check notifications. You can make a pretty solid living selling game consoles, as Sony and Nintendo know very well, but it’s a far cry from the full-fledged computing platform Mark Zuckerberg once promised.
I just don’t know if any tech company is going to crack the code on how to make VR headsets anything but solo technology. Yes, you can use VR headsets to interact with other people over the internet. But putting on a VR headset at home means I can’t look my wife in the eye; if I’m going to look at a screen, I’d prefer to look at one that we can share or that I can easily put off to the side. And even if you’re fine with VR being mostly a solo thing, VR headsets don’t fit neatly into everyday life unless you have a good amount of space in your home for them. (And hopefully your controllers haven’t run out of battery power!)
Maybe AR glasses are the way to go.
Perhaps that’s why glasses seem like a much more promising option for computers that you wear on your face. Augmented reality glasses have been an aspirational goal for a long time, and you can see why. It’s much easier to make eye contact with somebody while you’re wearing glasses. Meta may have already proved that the glasses form factor works: its relatively simple Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which have a camera, speakers, and look fashionable, are already a huge hit.
If glasses-equipped cameras do truly go mainstream, I have some concerns that I’ve already written about. But I also wrote about the immediate appeal of the tech: whenever I wear the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, I find myself snapping tons of photos because it’s so much fun to capture my point of view without holding up a phone. And because they look like regular glasses, I can walk around and most people will think that they’re glasses, unlike a VR headset, which just looks silly in public.
It seems that Apple might be eyeing computer glasses as well; the company reportedly launched an internal study about the market. I think even glasses with some basic tech would make way more sense for Apple than a VR headset, especially if they let you easily snap photos and listen to podcasts. These devices could be years off, though, meaning that, right now, Apple is stuck selling VR headsets that barely anyone wants.
