Matthew Ball

Oct 8, 2024 | mondaq.com | Matthew Ball

"Baby, you can drive my car" purred the Beatles in their 1965 album Rubber Soul.

Aug 12, 2024 | matthewball.co | Matthew Ball

Direct allocation may overstate or understate this allocation, though the latter is more likely. XR R&D likely exceeds that on, say, MacBooks or iPads on a dollar-per-patent basis. Apple’s annual R&D spend grew from $8 billion in 2015 to $30 billion in 2023; it’s likely that “most” of the intensive R&D for the Vision Pro took place late during that stretch, in which case it might be more accurate to posit a sliding scale of per-year allocations (e.g., 10% of R&D in 2015, but 50% in 2021).

Jul 17, 2024 | matthewball.co | Matthew Ball

Ball: So when I was writing this book, I was reading a bunch of Richard Bartle's old published works, and he had reported on a statistic that I thought was remarkable, which was as late as 1993, a full 10% of all global internet traffic was just for MUDs.Sweeney: That was to the point where you realized that the graphics can help the experience, but they're not essential. Our brains are willing to fill in massive amounts of detail.

Jul 9, 2024 | matthewball.co | Matthew Ball

Matthew Ball: I want to start with Meta’s vision for Reality Labs. Oculus VR was acquired in 2014 at roughly twice the price paid for Instagram two years earlier. In 2018, there's this now famous internal memo to the Facebook board arguing that “the Metaverse is ours to lose.” By 2019, the division is spending $5 billion a year. In 2020, the first Quest debuts, Reality Labs is formalized, and by the fourth quarter, the division’s spend is exceeding $10 billion on an annualized basis.

Jun 26, 2024 | matthewball.co | Matthew Ball

Due to the success of films such as Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Sound of Freedom as well as the struggles of Marvel throughout 2023, some have argued that audiences were finally seeking out alternatives to the tired plotlines, superheroes, and franchises that dominated the last decade. According to these theories, post-pandemic attendance is primarily impaired by post-pandemic film slates, and once Hollywood adjusted to new audience preferences, attendance would soar again.