The news: Snap debuted its Specs augmented reality (AR) glasses after nearly a decade and billions of dollars in development. CEO Evan Spiegel unveiled the wearables—which will retail for $2,195—at the Augmented World Expo (AWE). They’re expected to ship later this year.

Snap has spent over $3.5 billion on AR eyewear, per the Financial Times, and Spiegel called the glasses his “life’s work.” “This isn’t intelligence trapped in a chat box—it’s intelligence that can see what you see [and] understand what you’re trying to do … in the moment,” Spiegel said during his keynote at AWE.

Zooming in: Snap emphasized how easily Specs will enable developers to create new experiences through Lens Studio, its free design, development, and distribution tool. However, the focus for Specs remains on consumer adoption, said Ben Feuerstein, head of AR/AI Marketing, Partnerships, and GTM at Snap.

“We really look at this as developers and brands being some of the first, you know, experiences on the device. And that, once people see what you can do with the device, that really gets people excited. That attracts early adopters; the early adopters then attract the mainstream,” Feuerstein told EMARKETER.

When it comes to the glasses’ price, Specs staff product manager Russell Patton said it was a balancing act. The company wanted “to make something that was … extremely capable, was wearable, and also was more accessible than other spatial computers had been before.”

The bigger picture: Snapchat’s small share of social network ad revenues and plateauing user growth, coupled with the company’s high, long-term spending on Specs, adds a great deal of pressure for the wearables to take off. This is compounded by the crowded eyewear market and investor pushback.