Reach and convenience. Why do you think podcasts exist on YouTube when they could’ve as well been audio-only?
Besides, some people like to see the speaker, because it gives visual clues about what’s being said. Not everybody absorbs info efficiently through reading texts or just listening. Sometimes you need more than one way of recieving information.
I think what you’re forgetting is scale.
Lemmy is niche. VR is niche. Gaming is mainstream.
You can’t call a niche dead just because there aren’t that many people into it. It’s a niche for a reason.
Linux is booming, even though it’s “dead.” Lemmy has never been this active in its entire existence. Why do investments from large companies matter?
What truly matters is growth. Negative growth is what kills a platform/industry/company/whatever else. VR is growing, Linux is growing, Lemmy is growing. It may not be fast, but they all have active userbases that support their development.
You cannot call a child “failure” just because it never achieved anything in life, can you? They are growing. They can get sick, they can recover. They can also regress due to that illness and die. Only then they’re truly dead.
For how big PS5 is and how small VR is, VR sure has a lot of people playing.
Lemmy has userbase (not even monthly activity) of 0.46mil (acc. to fedidb). Is lemmy dead?
What constitutes for a dead platform to you?
That’s not even accurate.
If VR gaming is dead, then what does it say about Linux with about 5 times less users? Like, a low poly game about monkeys has a daily playerbase of a million people there. Mind you, Mincraft has 1 to 1.5 million. Not bad for a “dead” platform. Also, Valve isn’t even the last one to enter the market.
I think what you’re actually trying to say is that it’s too niche, which it absolutely is.
A little background info:
Russia’s been sponsoring one of its oligarchs’ business by eliminating their competition.
First, they restricted YouTube’s speed to an unusable state to force people to switch to RuTube (they didn’t)
Now they’re trying to force people to switch from WhatsApp (and potentially Telegram) to MAX, which they want to be Russia’s version of WeChat.
Add the fact that our politicians are obsessed with controlling all of the media and you’ll get the gist of it.