Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg
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Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg sees potential for Peloton-like fitness subscriptions in the future of virtual reality.
Zuckerberg spoke to Publicis Groupe Chairman Maurice Levy about virtual and augmented reality efforts at the VivaTech French technology conference on Thursday. He said gaming is the main use case for VR today, but there is growing potential in areas like social experiences or fitness.
“Like Peloton, think about where you have a subscription, but instead the device is VR and you put your headset on and you are in this amazing setting doing a boxing class with a trainer or a dance class,” he said. “It’s rapidly spreading beyond games to a number of other use cases, and we think this will be a big part of the next big computing platform at some point after phones and after PCs.”
Zuckerberg said he doesn’t think phones or computers will go away, but that VR will one day catch up with that meaning.
Meetings could also look different in the VR world, where people have virtual offices, for example, in which they can hold staff meetings, for example.
“Compared to videoconferencing, I actually think that despite the state of virtual reality today, there are many reasons why it actually feels better to hold meetings in virtual reality,” he said. He added that new software will make meetings “pretty good” in VR in the near future.
This week the company announced that it will begin testing advertisements that will appear in its Oculus virtual reality headsets. Facebook’s Oculus Quest proved popular during the pandemic as people looked for more entertainment options at home.
