Pico 4 Ultra: Doomed to fail?
Pico 4 Ultra is a good headset that is being launched in the wrong place at the wrong time. The company's strategy is simply a mystery to me.
Pico is launching the Pico 4 Ultra on September 20th, and like the Pico 4, it will only be available in Europe and a few Asian countries. The biggest and most important VR market, the USA, is once again left out.
We do not know the reasons for this. Presumably it has to do with the regulatory difficulties that TikTok's parent company ByteDance is facing in the US.
The fact is that Pico's VR ecosystem needs to grow significantly to justify further investment, and such growth is unlikely without an entry into Meta's home market.
Pico 4 was not the success ByteDance had hoped for. The workforce was halved and prestigious projects were abandoned. Nevertheless, Pico was given another chance in the form of Pico 4 Ultra. But what does ByteDance and Pico want to achieve with this device?
Always trailing behind Meta
Pico 4 was released at the end of 2022, when Quest 2 had already passed its prime. With the release of Quest 3 a year later, Pico 4 became a last-generation device. Now, a year after Quest 3, Pico launches a Quest 3 competitor that is more expensive than Quest 3 and just before Metas releases a much cheaper Quest 3S with similar capabilities. One gets the impression that Pico is blindly following Meta and is always one step behind.
In any case, I can't make sense of Pico's strategy, unless Pico is simply trying to keep up with Meta's technology until VR and MR become mainstream.
Is the Western market not so important for Pico because the units sell well in China? I doubt it. We would hear from Western studios if China was a good source of revenue. Is Pico more interested in B2B? I doubt that too. ByteDance bought Pico and invested in the company because it believed in the Metaverse hype.
Wasted potential
Pico's lack of planning is a tragedy because the company employs a lot of talented people and the Pico 4 and Pico 4 Ultra are good headsets in their own right.
But good is sometimes not good enough, especially when your competitor is called Meta and has been investing billions in R&D for ten years. And you don't have a good strategy or long-term plan to counter Meta.
I am pessimistic about the success of the Pico 4 Ultra and therefore about the future of Pico. The new headset cannot become a hit in the current competitive environment.
If Pico stays true to its pattern, we will see a cheaper product and a competitor to Meta Quest 3S in a year's time. However, I doubt that ByteDance will be willing to subsidize another device unless there are positive signals from the Pico 4 Ultra.
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