The 2024 announcement cycle has reshuffled the cards across several segments that the usual overviews skim without delving deeper. Between the actual stagnation of consumer VR, the underground explosion of retro gaming through emulation, and the hardware repositioning towards mobile AR, the high-tech trends that matter are not always those highlighted at CES.
Decline of VR Headsets and Shift to Mobile AR in 2024
The narrative of “virtual reality booming” does not hold up against recent data. According to Counterpoint Research, VR headset shipments have declined for several consecutive years, and the base of actually active headsets is also decreasing. The Quest 3 remains a relative success, but it is not enough to reverse a structurally downward trend in the consumer segment.
We observe that investments are redirecting towards two axes. The first concerns AR glasses and mobile augmented reality, driven by concrete use cases: overlay navigation, product visualization in e-commerce, technical assistance in industrial settings. The second targets business verticals (training, healthcare, maintenance) where the return on investment can be measured, unlike home VR entertainment.
This shift has a direct consequence for geek culture: independent developers who were betting on immersive VR experiences are pivoting towards lighter AR applications compatible with smartphones. The potential installed base shifts from a few million headsets to several hundred million phones. To keep track of these hardware and software changes throughout the year, a useful resource is: https://geekob.com/, which aggregates tech monitoring and geek culture daily.
Portable Emulation Consoles and Retro Gaming: A Market in Legal Gray Area
Retro gaming through emulation has become a fully-fledged commercial phenomenon in 2024. Dozens of manufacturers, primarily Chinese, offer portable consoles dedicated to emulation of catalogs ranging from the NES to the PlayStation 2, often at prices lower than those of a next-generation controller.
The problem that consumer articles skirt around can be summed up in one word: legality. These devices are sold legally (emulation itself is not illegal in most jurisdictions), but their use almost systematically relies on downloaded ROMs without licenses. Nintendo actively pursues ROM distribution sites, and several major platforms have shut down in recent years under legal pressure.
For the informed player, the situation creates a paradox:
- The emulator is free software, often open source, whose development is rapidly progressing with new projects each year
- Portable hardware (Anbernic, Miyoo, Retroid) achieves a level of finish and performance that rivals that of historical manufacturers
- Access to the games themselves remains a black market for ROMs that the industry actively combats, without managing to stem it
We recommend clearly distinguishing the technical practice (emulation, modding, preservation) from pirate distribution. The former has been an integral part of geek culture since the 2000s. The latter exposes individuals to real legal risks, even if prosecutions currently target distributors rather than end users.
Generative AI Integrated into Software Development Tools
Generative artificial intelligence has moved beyond curiosity to become embedded in production workflows in 2024. The most transformed segment is not the generation of public images or text, but software development augmented by AI.
Code assistants (like Copilot and its competitors) have evolved from line completion to generating entire functions, automated refactoring, and writing unit tests. The productivity gains on repetitive tasks are tangible for development teams.
The question of the reliability of generated code remains open: human code reviews are still necessary, and bugs introduced by AI can sometimes be more subtle to detect than those written by a junior developer.
On the geek culture side, this trend fuels a deeper debate. Independent developers see it as a lever to produce games, mods, or tools with smaller teams. Others worry about a homogenization of code and, by extension, the digital experiences produced. AI accelerates production but does not replace creative direction.
Transparent Screens and Ambient Interfaces: Gadget or Sustainable Shift
CES 2024 showcased transparent screens, notably from LG and Samsung. Beyond the showcase effect, these technologies raise a question of real use. A transparent screen loses contrast and readability as ambient light increases, limiting its use to specific contexts: commercial display, architectural signage, automotive cockpits.
For the video game and home entertainment sector, the interest remains marginal. A gamer or cinephile seeks maximum contrast, not transparency. We see more potential in ambient interfaces integrated into furniture, where the screen disappears when not displaying anything, rather than in a transparent television placed in the middle of the living room.
- Commercial and museographic display: mature use case, already deployed at scale in Asia
- Automotive and transportation: integration into windshields for contextual information overlaid on the road
- Home automation and connected furniture: promising prototypes, but no established interoperability standard
- Gaming and home cinema: no functional advantage over traditional OLED panels
The maturity of these technologies will depend less on the performance of the panels than on the manufacturers’ ability to identify uses where transparency adds real value, not just a demonstration effect. Sustainable high-tech trends stand out from gadgets by a simple criterion: they solve a problem that existing solutions do not address.
