As a VR enthusiast who discovered Supernatural early on (way before Meta acquired them), I must say this is a huge bummer. The Supernatural workouts never felt like a workout; it's more like a surreal extra-body experience, equal parts immersive and fun.
It's a similar feeling to when I'm "in the zone" writing code. Time stops, your mind latches into the thing you're doing, and nothing else matters. Except it's hard for me to achieve it with coding (mostly because I don't code as much these days), while with Supernatural I can strap the headset on and I'm there in 2 minutes.
Commercially, I understand Meta's rationale, and I feared this day would arrive since they acquired Within [1]. This has always been an expensive distraction for Meta, who's neither in the 1P gaming business, nor health and fitness. And with VR more broadly never gaining traction, you simply don't have enough active users to sell subscriptions. Without subscription you can't justify new sessions, coaches, music rights, etc.
That's unfortunate. They will leave behind a niche but passionate community; just see the depth of the comments [2][3][4]. You don't see such an outpouring of love, support and compassion for Big Tech companies and their employees (or former, in this case) very often [5].
Also, this clearly marks the beginning of VR Winter. VR is not dead, but over the next several years we'll see a cooling-off period, and expectations will reset.
guiambros•1h ago
It's a similar feeling to when I'm "in the zone" writing code. Time stops, your mind latches into the thing you're doing, and nothing else matters. Except it's hard for me to achieve it with coding (mostly because I don't code as much these days), while with Supernatural I can strap the headset on and I'm there in 2 minutes.
Commercially, I understand Meta's rationale, and I feared this day would arrive since they acquired Within [1]. This has always been an expensive distraction for Meta, who's neither in the 1P gaming business, nor health and fitness. And with VR more broadly never gaining traction, you simply don't have enough active users to sell subscriptions. Without subscription you can't justify new sessions, coaches, music rights, etc.
That's unfortunate. They will leave behind a niche but passionate community; just see the depth of the comments [2][3][4]. You don't see such an outpouring of love, support and compassion for Big Tech companies and their employees (or former, in this case) very often [5].
Also, this clearly marks the beginning of VR Winter. VR is not dead, but over the next several years we'll see a cooling-off period, and expectations will reset.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Within_(company)
[2] https://www.uploadvr.com/vr-fitness-gym-saving-lives-superna...
[3] https://www.facebook.com/groups/2680672221985841/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/1qcz2ez/dam...
[5] https://www.uploadvr.com/fitness-supernatural-leanne-pedante...