Hahahahaha oh man… This is really IMPOSSIBLE to understand.
Also I just watched part of the MRTV interview about the lens issues. Kevin says ‘yeah that’s why we do roadshows to find out what our customers like and don’t like so we can act on that’. Like WTF you need a roadshow to find out that your lenses were at the wrong distance from the panels ??? It’s like … I don’t even have words for it!
Honestly they need to attract a business manager who actually studied, MBA or something, and understands business. This is really their biggest problem right now, they obviously lack good management. The guy who sent the wrong lenses to CES should be fired indeed.
I don’t think these days that Heaney is an Oculus fanboy, he even recommends the Pico 4 as the his favourite PCVR headset on the market right now and tends to be fairly critical of a lot of Meta’s recent actions. Personally I like his coverage and insight a lot, the upload VR weekly podcast is great. He does seem to have a dislike for Pimax, although it’s hardly an unusal stance. Take a look at the virtualreality subreddit, anything positive about pimax gets downvoted and vice versa with people saying (completely falsely) that Pimax are scammers and such.
There’s a discussion to be had about how much of the reputation is their own fault etc but as it stands, Pimax’s reputation isn’t great but it was definitely improving over 2020/2021. The 12k announcement brought back major skepticism in the wider community etc but if Pimax can deliver then I think that reputation will be turned around. They still have a lot of interested customers regardless.
One point I will say on this, that annoys me to no end, is the hype and love that “Somunium 1” is getting. People keep saying they are so happy about an open source headset, which it absolutely is not (putting a few cad files online and having some anchor points for 3D printed parts is NOT open source, it’s a step towards it but only so far as they can claim open source as a marketing term). I find it a great example of the reputation and double standard that Pimax receive. The Somnium 1 gets nothing but love yet they claim to be releasing soon yet have shown essentially nothing expect one mock headset setup that was quite odd. They are an NFT company and everything that comes along with that etc. Also Pimax seem to be the only company that get flak for using 8k, 12k etc as marketing terms when nearly all other companies do the same. It’s bizarre.
Anyway, not sure where this rant is going haha. Just seeing that Somnium headset get so much hype really annoys me. Maybe it will be great, I hope it is, I just don’t see how it has warranted such hype and I hate them abusing the term “open source” for a marketing exercise.
Very very interesting insight. I think you might be right. Qualcom didn’t want to do business with VRgineers, but they do with Pimax. So you might be very right. However who made the right choice, Pimax thinking 'ok then we’ll just create a handheld device!!!" or VRgineers who didn’t do that? You can’t just make a product that doesn’t fit into your portfolio because you need Qualcom that desperately.
I guess that‘s the difference between being a newbie and a well-established player: the former has no history of not meeting their announcements and people cut them a bit of slack as they are new to the scene & business.
Not that I would recommend to invest into such new company‘s products on a pre-order or crowd-funding basis: I wisely steered clear of DecaGear & Co… There are exceptions of course, but as a general rule I have become cautious.
Oh, I wouldn’t personally have made that comitment in Pimax’s place (if required volume IS actually the reason for the Portal’s existence) but I find that explanation a lot more convincing than Robin waking up one day and having the inspiration to fulfill his long-cherished childhood dream of a do-it-all multi-verse device for $450 (then again, maybe I just have become too jaded).
In terms of the alternative to comitting to large volumes of XR1s, this entirely depends on when those negotiations with Qualcom took place. If it was BEFORE announcing the 12K and/or Crystal, it was unwise with regards to margin risks.
If it was AFTER the announcements, Pimax would have literally no negotiating position if they didn’t want to lose face regrading their Reality HMDs’ feature set.
Weren’t there rumours of Qualcomm making a handheld gaming device and then they pivoted to another company doing it? I recall something about that. Pimax might be that company tbh, could have been mutually beneficial. I’ll try to find some sources later.
XR2 btw, just incase someone unfamiliar is reading this.
I did read somewhere that VRgineers didnt acquire Qualcomm support because they wouldn’t buy enough chips. So yeah it just sounds so plausible. Qualcomm demanded a minimum order amount then someone at Pimax said “Then we’ll just make a cheap device like a handheld and sell the volumes we need”. “But we’re a VR company!!” “Did you forget about GearVR? We just make it so you can stick it to your face and it will become VR”
Haha not sure if it happened like that but it indeed would be a good explanation why this thing even exists.
I would be pretty surprised if they couldn’t get the numbers needed between just Crystal and 12k alone. Meganex has an xr1 and I really doubt it would be selling more. VRgineers would be selling a fraction of any of those, so kinda makes sense that their numbers wouldn’t make up the requirement.
I think Somnium vr1 has an xr2.
Side note, worth mentioning, both of those headsets intended on having standalone functionality but it was dropped however they are still keeping the SoC to get the functionality needed for the PCVR headset they want, so goes in favour of my thinking that all headsets going forward will have SoC. Although not sure why the meganex needs it tbh.
Only place I have seen that notion being floated, is by a user here.
Seems more likely to me that Qualcom, as is common practice, makes a reference platform and invites any and all potential customers to base their own products off of that, with or without adding any “special sauce” of their own… and there is no lack of “noname” android Switch-alikes floating around aliexpress.
Well, with Shiftall being a subsidiary of Panasonic, they can no doubt piggyback off daddy’s supply… :7
…which of course brings the question of whether Pimax could have relied on a possible Qualcom contract held by whatever partner they may or may not have, that builds their circuit boards… :7
What supply is that though? I don’t know of any other panasonic product that uses XR1. I guess it could be that it’s included in another order with Qualcomm?
We’re not getting into the territory of making the assumption that the order number of chip being the reason for the portal existing is true. I really doubt it is tbh, I’m sure the pricing of units made the idea more appealing etc but I really do struggle to believe they couldn’t get enough XR2.
Sure Arpara have XR2 for their AIO and they appear to have made like 12 lol. I really really don’t think this idea has any merit.
Edit: Add Lynx R1 to the list btw. I really can’t imagine Lynx R1 has ordered such numbers in excess of Pimax for the Crystal and 12K that it results in Pimax needing to create an entirely new product to justify making an order.
For reference, Lynx had 1200 backers on KS. I recall Cystal pre-orders being over 2000 on the first day.
“They have been very picky to picking smaller vendors to partner with unless you have huge volumes in advance”
That’s very different than what people are saying here. If I was to wager, it’s that Qualcomm don’t want to work with a crypto company with a bit of a shady background. He never said they said no to VRgineers, they said no to Somnium. What he said also implies that the order limit just gets you a pass regardless, it doesn’t imply that smaller venders can’t get partnered with Qualcomm just that it’s more difficult.
Sure, it might mean that the Portal was made up just to get a contract with Qualcomm but I seriously doubt it. There’s not really any reason whatsoever to believe that. Again, if a setup like Lynx can get partnered then I don’t see why Pimax couldn’t.
Ah yeah, 100%. It’s definitely a possibility, I just think it’s quite unlikely is all but didn’t mean to imply you were stating it as a certainty or anything.
I don’t understand the point in constantly posting criticism of the company. As far as I’m concerned pimax is the only company that actually is listening to customers advice and actually improving their product, regardless of how fast or slow they’re going.
What’s the point of posting anything at all on a forum? Pretty much about 0. Yet we all do it for various reasons I guess. One hopes that Pimax listens. But they very very rarely do.
In the end we all want the same thing. For them to improve.
