It's strange that you disagree, because I agree with you LOL. We are saying essentially the same thing. Sansar was looking bad where it was heading since the closed development. They ignored some important feedback. When they released it to the public, it was even less than half-baked: there weren't even the ingredients in place. Like the example I made, it was missing even that loading bar. Result: there were first time users believing the client froze, because after 15-30 minutes downloading the experience, there was nothing on the screen indicating a progress. And it's plenty of stuff like that.
This shows how they worked on it.
Then they kept going on aimlessly without a clear vision.
You can never give anything for granted, but whatever they believed, then it was apparent since the public release that it was not working as they where hoping: users came in the first days, then they didn't come back and it remained flat dead since then.
Later LL tried out anything, like the partnerships I said, except going back to the drawing board.
Result: it remains flat dead so far.
And now, after seeing all this over and over, I don't know what they are expecting from Steam with this same product.
1. Sure, gamers may have a better hardware there, but not necessarily 1 Gbps network.
2. Sansar doesn't really target gamers... whatever it targets.
3. partnering with e-sport stuff didn't bring any noticeable increase of usage to Sansar.
On the first announcements, in fact, it was like Sansar was going to be a different thing than SL, targeting different users. They repeated that many times. Showcasing or recreating ancient buildings or rooms for museums was an example. If you think out of the box, that may have many other uses: e-commerce showcasing products, tourism showcasing rooms, and so on. Maybe that could have a market, but I doubt it would work in the Sansar way. I'd rather use an embed VR viewer - in similar fashion as an embed Youtube video player - in your product web page. There are other possibilities too, if you want a different target than SLers.
They didn't that though.
In Ebbe's words, Linden Lab was looking for a mass market product with multi million monthly active users.
SL isn't an example of that, it's a niche product. It's just the most successful within its niche. No plain social virtual word from the 1995 Active Worlds to the most recent ones ever became so massively adopted, although SL became somewhat popular a decade ago. The virtual words that got so many monthly active users are gaming virtual worlds, in a broader sense, like World of Warcraft (even with paid subscriptions!) or Minecraft. Roblox too, remaining in the creative side.
What got the social scepter were the social networks instead. SL remained a social niche. Outside SL, either people don't know what SL is, or they believe it was that thing that died out years ago. "Uh, it's still around, really?" Even in SL, people move outside it, using third party products like Flickr rather than the SL web feeds to share their pictures. SLers are using Discord more and more too.
Back in 2014 or earlier it was hard to say how long SL was going to remain so profitable for Linden Lab, so the rationale was there: find a larger market now that you can.
However, at one point they were considering some compatibility too, then maybe sharing at least the L$. They said that they learned their lessons form SL. So they could have made a modern creative social virtual world that at least worked.
They didn't that either.
If it was a SL2, even 10 times better than SL, don't expect SLers would move there though. Your friends are in SL, not in SL2: you still go to meet your friends in SL. If Facebook or Whasapp alternatives encounter resistance, that's one of the main reasons: to most people, everyone or most of your friends are there, not in that alternative product. To change that you have to take the opportunity when a new niche or a new kind of market opens: mobile was one, so instagram came up. Before the mobile, it was hard to use anything else than MSN/Skipe, now Whatsapp is popular.
Indeed VRChat got users from outside SL.
VR may have seemed the next market a few years ago, but so far it looks like it was overhyped once again.
The niche so far has been filled mostly by VRChat and it looks like a pretty small niche.
The thing is, and what frustrates me, with all the money and resources Linden Lab has, Sansar is something that could have been good, better than VRChat for sure. Sansar now could be a less expensive and with larger spaces virtual world, not just better looking, but also more user friendly and more accessible, even creative-wise, interactive with the virtual environment and the with other users, sporting better and more modern in-world tools to communicate and to keep in touch with each one, enjoyable to share the experience and to explore, without pesky region crossings.
Or something totally different, but with a clear usage.
Nope. In Sansar even the most basic things leave to be desired, you can't even change what you have in your hand, without being restarted to the beginning of the experience. Edit to be clearer: when you interact in SL, changing accessories is something you easily do, because maybe you want to show something to a friend or doing so is part of a roleplay or para-RP or whatever.
It could have been good, instead they came out with this, screwing it up badly, with a bunch of stuff that makes you wonder where their mind was, plus ignoring the signs that it wasn't going to work how they made it, plus made in a way that it doesn't look to have a clear vision.
I'm not optimistic that just going on ahead and putting this stuff on Steam will lead to much better results.