{"id":39952,"date":"2018-08-13T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/324339"},"modified":"2018-08-13T21:19:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T21:19:00","slug":"blog-the-dream-is-the-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/08\/13\/blog-the-dream-is-the-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: The Dream IS the Product"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

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Now that the heavily invested and reviewed Magic Leap developers kit is getting released, I think it\u2019s an opportune time to talk about future computing and put some of the industry developments in perspective.<\/p>\n

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It was only a few short years ago that the world went nuts when Oculus got acquired by Facebook for $2 billion dollars ($3 billion all things considered).<\/p>\n

On one hand, the acquisition was a much-needed shot in the arm and woke everyone\u2019s collective imaginations.\u00a0 Facebook rang the dinner bell for pocket burning cash to chase a specialized and almost non-existent virtual reality industry.<\/p>\n

In the other hand was something the bean counters knew all along.\u00a0 Be it a limit in graphics processing power<\/a> or the challenge of not enough content or even the debilitating fear of messing one\u2019s hair, it seemed very improbable that Facebook could recoup their VR investment in a manner that reflected the urgency of the acquisition.<\/p>\n

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Now we\u2019ve got Magic Leap with their first developers kit.\u00a0 Hyping itself up with whales crashing in gymnasiums or elephants in the palm of our hands, it too raised a quarry of billions of dollars from such companies as Alphabet (Google) and AT&T.\u00a0 People are a bit more hesitant to believe in the pink elephants than they were with Facebook and Oculus, yet the investment money still flows.<\/p>\n

The question we are left with is why?\u00a0 Why spend these seemingly endless amounts of money for technologies and deliverables that simply don\u2019t yet exist?\u00a0 The reasons are these behemoth companies are the only ones who can, and they are burdened by the limits of the current economy.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, when an angel investor or a venture capitalist makes an investment, it\u2019s a hindrance.\u00a0 There is the pain of paying, the ventures have financial risks, and the investments are structured with an exit in mind \u2013 going public, for example.<\/p>\n

Everything is about getting the money back with a high rate of return because it doesn’t grow on trees and there is another hungry entrepreneur in the winds.\u00a0 In a scenario like this, the Oculus and Magic Leap deals would make no sense because there aren\u2019t any meaningful revenues to demonstrate growth, the hype diminishes with time, and there is no exit strategy for X billion dollars in something that has yet to be truly realized.<\/p>\n

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SOURCE: The Simpsons, Fox<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, what if money did grow on trees?\u00a0 Despite recently losing $120 billion dollars of stock value in a day (comedian John Oliver equated this to the whole concept of Cheese), Facebook\u2019s first 2018 quarter earned them nearly $5 billion in profit.\u00a0 Not revenue \u2013 PROFIT.\u00a0 Impressive?\u00a0 First quarter profit for Alphabet (Google) amounted to nearly $9.5 billion dollars. To put this in perspective the combined annual sales of Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia amounted to $12.2 billion \u2014 sales, not profit – for a whole year; and they are successful market-leading companies.<\/p>\n

So what do you do with all that money?\u00a0 There is only so much you can stockpile before the shareholders get restless (this was a problem for Nintendo a few years back), charities aren\u2019t the amazing write-offs they are cracked up to be, and there are only so many acquisitions that will really make a positive dent in your bottom line when speaking of behemoths like Facebook and Alphabet.<\/p>\n

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The remaining option is future computing; the practice of building what\u2019s next with computers and computer media.\u00a0 It\u2019s a careful balance of the three pillars which include compute performance and platforms (cloud, PC, mobile, console, AI, ML), immersive technology (AR, VR, MR, 3D, etc.), and innovative content and applications.\u00a0 Each pillar can stand on its own, though they are often interrelated.<\/p>\n

The future computing deliverable for Magic Leap is the ultimate mixed reality experience.\u00a0 For Facebook, it\u2019s Star Trek holodeck virtual reality.\u00a0 For Nvidia, it\u2019s the self-driving car.\u00a0 For Alphabet, it\u2019s all the above.\u00a0 These are just examples of big technological dreams that will not realize short term ROI beyond hype and maybe prospective stock prices.\u00a0 However, just imagine how these innovations can change the world and the endless revenue opportunities they can (will?) introduce!<\/p>\n

Of course, I\u2019m only talking about the super wealthy here; the most extreme dreams and examples.\u00a0 There are other, equally valuable ways of practicing future computing that may seem commonplace.<\/p>\n

Have a block buster movie?\u00a0 Can you produce the sequel with more advanced effects for half the price?\u00a0 Can you get the same level of quality on the small screen for a weekly series?\u00a0 Future computing.\u00a0 Creating a new method of play for a VR or MR game for devices that haven\u2019t arrived on store shelves yet?\u00a0 Future computing.\u00a0 Coming up with innovative ways to deliver processing power to drive our dreams?\u00a0 Future computing.\u00a0 This is all about building what\u2019s next, and there are many equally important interlocking parts at all ends of the spectrum to make that happen.<\/p>\n

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In the future computing world, a single product is not the end result.\u00a0 A realized dream is the end result.\u00a0 In VR, the vision that people connected with was the Star Trek holodeck.\u00a0 For others, it was the crashing whale, or maybe it was David Hasselhoff driving his talking Trans Am!\u00a0 Nobody thinks about a product that delivers this, they just want the dream to happen.\u00a0 It\u2019s when we associate the vision with a fixed early curve product that we run into stifling disappointments and the dream looks more like fantasy.\u00a0 Fantasy is a bad thing in the future computing world because it means the dream has become an impossibility, or worse – a lie.<\/p>\n

So the next time you see some wildly crazy investment that makes no sense, see past the product and look at the dream.\u00a0 Is it a worthwhile dream?\u00a0 If enough minds and money could be placed on the problem, is it feasible for the dream to be realized?\u00a0 Could the success positively impact our day to day and the way we live our lives?\u00a0 Is there an opportunity to grow the economy beyond what already exists?<\/p>\n

This is what future computing is about, and step by step and sometimes outlandish investments are needed to make such dreams possible.\u00a0 Of course, we need to find viability along the way in smaller palatable bites \u2013 and that is doable as long as we remain realistic.\u00a0 We have to avoid that point of fantasy, remember!<\/p>\n

So keep dreaming and doing!<\/p>\n

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The International Future Computing Association<\/a> will be holding its next voting membership meeting November 7, 2018 at the Ontario Science Centre ahead of Immersed 2018<\/a> in Toronto, Canada.\u00a0 See you there fellow dreamers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. [embedded content] Now that the heavily invested and reviewed Magic Leap developers kit is getting released, I think it\u2019s an opportune time to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}