Why Disney and Apple's Expensive Plan to Turn Your Living Room into a Multiplex Will Fail

Apple Vision Pro will use 'spatial computing' stream Disney movies in 3D

The Walt Disney Corporation has a lot of problems right now, from underperforming films and activist shareholder Nelson Peltz's attempts to oust CEO Bob Iger to the expiring copyright on Mickey Mouse's debut film Steamboat Willie, prompting this year There will be at least two slasher horror films in which Mickey kills schoolchildren.

But what Iger is actually very excited about is a content deal with Apple's outrageously expensive Vision Pro virtual reality headset, which begins pre-orders on January 19th. and goes on sale February 2. In a statement, Iger said the addition will combine «exceptional creativity with revolutionary technology to create truly remarkable experiences.»

Disney will provide 3D movies and four «screening windows» — essentially meaning you can pretend you're watching the movies from the cockpit of a landspeeder sitting in the desert on Tatooine or Avengers Tower.

There are several nuances here. Firstly, 3D. Secondly, virtual reality. Thirdly, Apple Vision Pro. Overall, it's remarkable that people are still trying to promote this idea, let alone present it as innovative.

Hollywood has been trying to implement 3D for years. His last outing — a short run of 3D films in cinemas between 2009's Avatar and 2011's Tintin, and an even shorter attempt to film live football with large, stationary 3D cameras — proved that audiences either found it disgusting. or meaningless.

So why mix it up with virtual reality, another product that answered a question that literally no consumer asked? Global shipments of AR/VR devices fell 46% year over year in the second quarter of 2023, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly decline.

VR performed exceptionally poorly for Facebook when the company changed its name to Meta in 2021. to demonstrate his sincere immersion in the Metaverse. After losing almost $30 billion, in March 2023 the company pretended that it had always been more interested in artificial intelligence

Meanwhile, Apple is in bad shape. Weak iPhone 15 sales have forced the company to cut the price, which may not bode well for Apple's $3,499 (approximately £2,762) Vision Pro. Apple's position is that the price will go down as demand increases, which assumes there is demand at all. And the company refuses to call it virtual reality, preferring the term «spatial computing,» which has misled… Well, at least Bob Iger.

Apple CEO Tim Cook with Vision Pro. Photo: AFP

Full disclosure here. When the format war raged between VHS and Betamax, your correspondent's family confidently shelled out for the short-lived and extremely unsuccessful Philips Video 2000 system. So I have a tendency to overinvest in unpopular technologies.

But let's take a quick look at all the opportunities we've had to «reinvent» the way we watch The Little Mermaid lately, and see how many of them are good news for Disney:

• Augmented realityIn theory, instead of putting on a headset, augmented reality would change everything, overlaying interactive 3D images on the physical world seen through, say, your phone. In particular, Magic Leap, a little-known startup in which Google has invested half a billion dollars, promised to «exceed what can be contained in a physical product.» In fact, the physical product released in 2018 was a headset remarkably similar to the Microsoft Holodeck and sold so well that it will no longer be supported at the end of this year.

• 360 degree filmsWhat's the point of virtual reality if you're just watching TV wearing a massive hat? 360-degree films were intended to bring an immersive, interactive gaming experience to the movie viewing experience. You too can star in the film. Except that filmmakers struggled to write stories without a plot line, audiences felt bad when they turned their heads too quickly, which eliminated the possibility of making action films, and VR cinema companies such as Jaunt either left the market or closed.
• Google GlassGlasses with cameras that connect to the Internet, which confuses almost everyone involved. Coined the term «glass hole». Released in 2012, it stopped shipping in 2015.
• 3DTVNobody wants to wear stupid 3D glasses while sitting on the couch. TV screens are too small for the huge 3D effects that work on a movie theater screen. Despite a decent selection of 3D Blu-rays, 3D TVs are no longer available for sale. Perhaps the fact that most people reported headaches 10 minutes into the film was a bug rather than a feature.

For some reason, 3DTV could not be caught. Credit: Alamy

• Oculus RiftThe first true software VR headset was released in 2013 and fully released in 2016. Despite its heroic ambitions (Ridley Scott once talked to the company about a VR film), it's now just a video game device.

< li>Nexus QA $300 bowling ball designed for media streaming, released in 2012. It could only interact with Google services and had buffering speeds comparable to a dial-up connection. It was canceled in 2013.

To be fair to all of the above Silicon Valley failures, it's up to the non-tech nerds to come up with exciting content and the perfect entertainment that will make these fancy devices worthwhile. This is Hollywood's job. So is Disney coming to Apple the only chance we have to live the dream of sitting alone in our room with a huge piece of plastic in front of our eyes and finally trying not to move our heads too fast?

Well, one Disney director has dedicated his recent career to expanding the capabilities of motion capture cameras, 3D scanning and facial capture technology that allows for true 3D images to be created — James Cameron. In other words, Apple Vision Pro is ideal for a very specific audience: incredibly wealthy Avatar fans.