An eye-popping Elite leak and the year's first Apple update

Happy 2023!

Expecting the Elite

New year, new leaks. Over the weekend, not long after alleged HTC trademark filings for "Vive XR" and "Vive XR Elite" were spotted online, it appears that a Korean store page for Vive products accidentally listed the XR Elite ahead of its CES reveal set for tomorrow. Oops.

With less than 24 hours to go before we see how HTC's formal announcement lines up with Brad Lynch's recent "Flowcus" leaks about the headset, this leak may have filled in the last major piece of info we've been waiting on all this time: the price. Listed on the site at a whopping ₩1,790,000, it seems like the XR Elite will cost around $1,400. The official US price may differ, of course, but if we assume that wasn't a placeholder and that past HTC trends hold, then any hopes of this being significantly cheaper than similar headsets like the Vive Focus 3 or Quest Pro are just about dashed.

HTC is doing its best to meme its way through to tomorrow's official CES event, teasing that viewers "might find reality to be much more interesting than rumor." While it seems safe to assume that HTC will have more to show off than the headset itself–it wouldn't make much sense to talk up consumer ambitions ahead of the event without some kind of enticing experiences to tease–at this point it'll take a lot to emerge from CES with an edge.

Again, as I said a couple weeks back, I think HTC really needs to be competitive with the likes of Meta and Sony on price if it has any hope of building up its consumer base beyond the Vive ride-or-dies. Even if we see a shift in messaging to pump the XR Elite up as an alternative to the Quest Pro, if it's anywhere around $1,400 HTC needs it to be a seriously impressive headset out of the box. Otherwise, considering Meta's advantages like the Quest software library and independently tracked controllers, good luck swaying anyone who'd also consider the Pro.

As for games-focused consumer competition, HTC's announcement is going to come after Sony takes the stage to give us another look at the $550 PS VR2 (and, hopefully, some more titles in its lineup). Setting aside the Pro comparison, framing this headset as something exciting for consumers is going to be an absurdly tough pill to swallow if it ends up costing around $500 more than the cost of Sony's headset and the necessary console combined.

No matter what, though, the reality of what HTC has in store for CES really is likely to be more interesting than rumors preceding it. For all we've learned about the device and heard from the company so far, this is still going to be HTC's big chance to pitch a path forward for consumer products that gets away from the Flow, pricey headsets we already know, and last year's wine tasting weirdness. It may lead with a product priced beyond reach for most, but either way we'll see if it can make the most of the opportunity.

Apple's battery backpedal

By my measure, the most intriguing bit of reporting on Apple's new headset since last summer's New York Times feature just dropped. The Information's Wayne Ma opened his latest scoop on the headset by saying it might be Apple's riskiest new product of 2023, and judging by the report's new details, it's hard to imagine what would represent a bigger swing. A car, maybe?

Ma's piece includes several previously unreported details on the Apple headset, including many that would be enough to heat up speculation and anticipation on their own: a 120-degree field of view, a dial for controlling passthrough, an H2 chip for AirPod-only audio, magnetic prescription inserts (MacRumors lined everything up if you're interested). The feature that sticks out from the rest, though, is a swappable waist-worn pack said to provide two hours of battery life.

MagSafe convenience or no, I think anyone who has been watching this space for a while knows what this could mean we're in for. An Apple headset reliant on any sort of cabled connection would be dinged for that design decision even if it overachieves on every other front.

If this is indeed the direction Apple's heading in, it seems the choice wasn't made lightly. The company reportedly tried to integrate the battery into the headset's strap, as many other device makers have, before returning to a waist mounted solution similar to what it had used in earlier prototypes.

I am not a wireless-or-bust person. Most of my personal time in VR has been logged with a headset tethered to a PC, and I don't turn my nose up at the idea that AR goggles or glasses for practical purposes can be used just fine with a cable to a phone or battery pack. The problem Apple could face here is that there are many, many people who consider themselves completely over anything that needs a cable. That's an attitude that Apple itself has helped create by introducing more wireless accessories and generally scaling back the number of ports on its computers.

A couple years ago, many thought the Quest and Quest 2 brought us permanently into the wireless era for VR, and while that hasn't quite panned out it has informed the design decisions around many of the mixed reality headsets beating Apple to the market. In that light it's wild to think that Apple, of all companies, might end up shipping a headset that not only costs thousands of dollars but which settles for this approach to battery design.

This is the first time I can remember seeing any report inviting comparisons between Apple's device and Magic Leap headsets from people in the industry. Even Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz chimed in about the potential design parallel. Since the chances of Apple positioning this as a device intended to compete with Magic Leap seem vanishingly small, it's hard to see how any kind of messaging around this could end up working out in Apple's favor.

The more Apple's hardware invites comparisons with existing devices–doesn't matter if we're talking Magic Leap, Quest Pro, HoloLens, whatever–the higher the quality bar Apple's software will need to reach. As ever, that remains the nagging issue here. If Apple doesn't deliver on some great experiences at a level of polish we haven't seen before, then any of the headset's weaknesses will stick out all the more and its strengths won't save the company from questions of "why now" and "who is this for?"

More news:

• Starting off with some other pre-CES news, HTC is at least unlikely to make the most expensive announcement of the show: the consumer model MeganeX PC VR headset from Shiftall is now set at $1,699 for an early 2023 launch. [Scott Hayden / Road to VR]
• TCL is at the show with prototypes for AR glasses and a VR headset that both utilize the Snapdragon XR2. Representatives confirmed plans to use Qualcomm's recently announced AR chipset in a future glasses design. [Scott Stein / CNET]
• Ahead of a showing at CES, Vrgineers announced a Q3 2023 launch window for the XTAL 3 headset and shared details on optional wireless support the company is working on with IMRNext. [Henry Stockdale / UploadVR]
• Nvidia opened up early-access applications for the "Avatar Cloud Engine" coming to the Omniverse service, naming Epic Games and Ready Player Me as partners already working with the AI tooling. [Official blog post]
• Canon announced a slate of demonstrations for VR, mixed reality, and volumetric capture tech that I hope to see impressions of from the show floor. [Press release]
• IO Interactive's Hitman 3 won the community-voted Steam VR game of the year award, which naturally led to a fair amount of grumbling across social media. [Official site]
• Another hardware acquisition move after last week's Luxexcel story: Karl Guttag received a tip that Spanish optics designer Limbak had been bought by a "large US company" that Brad Lynch later identified as Apple. No official confirmation has been made yet.
• On Monday, Lynx announced that the first batch of its R-1 mixed reality headsets are now being shipped out. [Tweet from Stan Larroque]
• A couple salient bits on privacy-related fines today: first, Meta is being fined approximately $414 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission for GDPR breaches on Facebook and Instagram. Meta plans to appeal… [Ryan Browne / CNBC]
• … and Apple plans to appeal an approximately $8.5 million fine from France's CNIL for how the company serves search ads on the iPhone App Store. [Thomas Germain / Gizmodo]
• Finally, here's a surprise: Wave is partnering with TikTok on a virtual Calvin Harris concert that'll be available in VR through Pico headsets in select regions. [Press release]