Amazon’s head of hardware wants to ‘enjoy the real world’ rather than put people in the metaverse

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Amazon’s head of devices has said that the company is working on devices that help people to “enjoy the real world” rather than the metaverse.

Speaking at the ‘Future of Everything Festival’ hosted by The Wall Street Journal, David Limp said that while there might be “some form of place-shifting” with regards to the future of devices, Amazon’s focus is on devices that “enhance the here and now.”

Mr Limp said that he wants “to try to work on technologies that bring people’s heads up, get them to enjoy the real world [and] make the family a more communal experience”.

With regards to the metaverse, Mr Limp said the definition of the technology was nebulous. “If I asked these few hundred people what they thought the metaverse was, we’d get 205 different answers. We don’t have a common definition, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people”, he said.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and head of its parent company Meta, is betting on the metaverse as the next stage of an embodied internet. In a blog post written by Facebook’s VP of Reality Labs Andrew Bozworth, and its VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, last year the pair defined its vision of the metaverse as a virtual space where people can “hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create and more.”

Meta is developing both augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets in order to push for the next ‘iPhone moment’, ushing in the next stage of technological innovation.

Meta is reportedly planning to launch four new virtual reality (VR) headsets by 2024. The first is the Project Cambria headset, a more powerful device than its current Quest device, which will launch in September. A new version of it will then come in 2024. The two other headsets will come in 2023 and 2024, but details about these are not yet clear.

Mr Limp addressed AR glasses would be better that virtual reality products because users can engage with the real world, but added that he “wouldn’t like if it completely embeds everybody and distracts them from the here and now.”