Facebook and PlayStations have sold millions/10s of millions.
It’s a flop.
More than 5 billion copies of the Bible have sold. Clearly "Facebook" and "PlayStations" are flops. I know that comparison is spurious and a bit flippant, but so was your comment.
Now for the real comparison.
The Oculus Rift (what became the Meta Quest) was released in 2016, as was the PlayStation VR. Both (including iterations over the years) were/are considerably less expensive. Both have had 7+ years to sell "millions".
It's interesting you can call something a flop before it's even released by comparing it to products that have been out for years and are much less expensive.
To use the old car analogy, is a Bentley Continental GT a flop because it doesn't sell as much as a Honda Civic, or do those cars have different audiences? We don'y need to keep this analogy going but let's look at something related.
The all-time best selling single computer model in the world is probably the Commodore 64. That was 40+ years ago. Where's Commodore International now? [Hint: out of business 30 years ago]. Units sold doesn't mean everything. The C64 was hugely influential as a computer, but it was other companies that defined the market in the coming years. Commodore International fizzled out in a large part because Apple and IBM PCs defined the computer market. Again, Commodore did not.
Although Apple was highly successful with the Mac (and Apple II), the original Mac took almost 2 years to sell 500,000. That's actually quite impressive, considering the cost at the time. It took time, however, for Apple to ultimately be successful with Macs and other products.
200,000 AVP sold before release is quite impressive, considering the cost and the limited group of people who find it appealing to consider buying one.
It will take time before we see what happens with the AVP. Maybe this will be a flop. We don't know. Calling it one before it's even released is rather premature.
It's okay to not be interested in the AVP. You don't need to buy one. I won't buy one. I am interested to see where it goes though. It has the potential to be a product that will be influential over time. As it is, the AVP is a really nice tech demo version of Spatial Computing's (to use Apple's term) potential. Versions for the masses will be forthcoming, unless this fizzles out and Apple executives decide to cut their losses. It's very well a possibility that the AVP will flop, but it's not possible to accurately call it a flop at this point. Apple is playing a long game with this headset. This is not the product Apple wants most people to buy. That product is 5 - 10 years away from release. Smart businesses are run with 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, and longer plans. Apple easily has a 10+ year plan with Spatial Computing (augmented reality, etc.). To paraphrase something that Steve Jobs might not have said (but is attributed to him): Apple's job is to figure out what customers are going to want before they do. People don't know what they want until it's shown to them.
The AVP probably isn't what customers want. What customers want will be the next version of this or the next one after that. This is just laying the foundation for the future.
