VRChat is more popular, but it doesn’t mean that copying their approaches would be the move.

For all we know, VRChat as a concept of that kind is a local maximum, and imo it wont scale well to genpop. Not claiming this as an objective fact, but as a hypothesis that I personally believe to be very likely truthful. Think of it as a dead branch of evolution, where if you want to go further than that local maximum, you gotta break out of it using an entirely different approach.

I like VRChat, but thinking that a random person living in the mainstream who isnt into that type of geeky online stuff is gonna be convinced of VRChat being the ultimate metaverse experience is just foolish.

At that point, your choices are: (1) build a VRChat clone and hit that same local maximum but slightly higher at best or (2) develop something entirely different to get out of that local maximum, but risk failing (since it is a totally novel thing) and coming short of being at least as successful as VRChat. Zuck took the second option, and I respect that.

Just making a VRChat Meta Edition clone would imo give Meta much better numbers in the short-term (than their failed Meta Horizons did), but imo long-term that approach would lead them nowhere. And it seems like Meta is more interested in capturing the first-mover (into the mainstream) advantage heavy.

And honestly, I think it is better off this way. Just like if someone is making yet another group chat, i would prefer they went balls to the wall, tried to rethink things from scratch, and made a group chat app that is unlike any other ones out there. Could all of their novel approaches fail? Yes, much more likely than if they made another slack clone with a different color scheme. But the important part is, it also has a much higher chance to get the state of their niche oit of the local maximum.

Examples: Twitter could’ve been just another blog aggregator, Tesla could’ve been just another gas-powered Lotus Elise (with the original roadsters literally being just their custom internals slotted into a Lotus body), Microsoft would’ve been stuck with MS-DOS and not went into the “app as the main OS” thing (which is what they did with Windows).

Apple would’ve been relegated to a legacy of Apple II and iPod (with a dash of macbook relevancy), and rememebered as the company that made this ultra popular mp3 player before that whole niche died. Airpods (that everyone laughed at initially and lauded as an impractical pretentious purchase) are massive now, with every holdout that I personally know who finally got them recently going “i cannot believe how convenient it is, i should’ve gotten them earlier”, but it was also a similar “who needs this, they are solving a problem nobody has, everyone prefers wired with tons of better options” take[0].

If you want to get out of a perceived local maximum and break into the mainstream, you gotta try brand new approaches that would likely fail. Going “omg cannot even beat that existing competitor that’s been running for years” is kinda pointless in this case, because competing with them directly by making just a better and more successful clone of their product was never the goal. I don’t doubt even for a second that if Meta tried that, they would’ve likely accomplished it.

And for the naysayers who don’t see Meta ever breaking things out of a local maximum, just look at the Oculus Quest line. Everyone was laughing at them initially for going with the standalone device approach, but Quest has become a massive hit, with tons of people of all kinds buying it (not just people with massive gaming rigs).

0. And yes, removal of the audiojack somewhat speeded up the adoption, but I just used an adapter with zero discomfort for a year or two until i got airpods myself (and would’ve still continued using the adapter if I just didnt flatout preferred airpods in general).