Tilt Five's tabletop AR glasses system is available for purchase for a limited time.
The two player bundle is price $389about 40 percent off the regular price, although you'll need a powerful Android phone or a PC to control the AR glasses.
A single headset is discounted to $249, including game board, glasses, wand, stand, cleaning cloth, USB cable, and USB Type-C to A adapter. Three pairs of glasses retail for $539, and with a decently powerful enough gaming PC, you could conceivably use all three pairs of glasses from one computer.
Tilt Five is based on Jeri Ellsworth's technology exfiltrated from Valve over a decade ago. It features an innovative approach to AR that works within current limitations to provide wide field of view images centered above and below a game board. The startup is leaning towards replacing or expanding on board games, while its predecessor, CastAR, lost traction by doing too many different things.
We're impressed with Tilt Five's efforts, though the startup likely still needs a massive funding injection to attract development partners, hit store shelves, build a second generation, and keep up with the current pace of investment from tech giants like Apple, Meta and Googling. For example, a partner like Nintendo could provide the missing content for Tilt Five's platform, while the hardware would give the giant exactly the kind of differentiated, low-cost gaming experience it sells by the millions.
At this point we can't recommend Tilt Five as a gaming or development platform, partly because we miss a lot of time with the system, but like meta-cutting Prices After Quest 2, this is still a big discount for a unique technology that could interest curious hobbyists or experimental developers interested in exploring a new way to express or enjoy their content with AR.
In fact, the way AR content is centered around Tilt Five's board is similar to the way Apple Vision Pro sometimes centers content in SharePlay. Looked at that way, an enterprising developer using multiple Tilt Five glasses from a single PC in the same room could affordably test a multiplayer gaming idea that could translate to other headsets.
We're curious to see what happens with Tilt Five as the year progresses and hope that an investor or buyer like Nintendo can help the startup execute its vision of shared multiplayer AR gaming around the table.