8 ms·

Meta plans to devote ~20% of overall costs to Reality Labs in 2023, up from 18%

63 points by donsupreme 4y ago

c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Zuckerberg doubling down like this seems quite crazy. I know he was bullish on VR/AR/MR but he's now gambling the future of his company on it. With the bleak view Carmack had on their R&D and his departure, I doubt a breakthrough product is coming any time soon.
- jerrygenser 4y ago
  Meta just took on debt for the first time ever in the last few months. Meta could cancel all Reality labs work and keep slowly taking on debt while keeping their central properties alive. It would make for a very boring company but would likely result in decent returns for shareholders. This is what Oracle has done -- their company is boring but their shareholders are happy. In order to have any sort of future growth story, Meta pretty much needs to create or somehow capture major economics from a new platform like they did for web2.0 and mobile web. Due to antitrust concerns IMO, they can't just acquire their way into more value by acquiring a company like Pinterest so their remaining options are moonshots like AR/VR to invest heavily for the next platform to become ubiquitous and then extract economics from it.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    Meta has no shareholders only suckers that own non voting stocks
- mv4 4y ago
  He has no choice. The old model (ad revenue) is declining, and the new model (monetizing AR/VR and the Metaverse) hasn't been proven yet.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  What's the alternative? Slowly face into obsolescence as kids abandon Facebook and Google/apple use their monopolies to totally invalidate your ability to serve ads?
MisterPea 4y ago
Disclaimer, I'm in the minority of people that's long Meta's vision into VR and own a good amount of Meta stock. I truly believe that there's like a 95% chance that Meta builds a great product but it hemorrhages money and will ultimately need to be gimped - but I'm really in it for the 5% chance that it is a home run on the financials. What Zuck is doing represents everything I admire about Silicon Valley (and honestly it's a short list of things) and sure he's a strange personality and questionable past but his vision and persistence into this is something I would hope to see succeed and valued.
- _8j50 4y ago
  The quality of the product is irrelevant to me as well as millions of others who distrust Meta at the most fundamental level. Right out the gate it has that going against it. Outside the US just about every country is gunning to regulate or fine it somehow. Highly recommend selling what you can now before Q2
  - johnwheeler 4y ago
    The argument goes like this: I hate meta Why Because they track me Why do they do that To show me things I might want Why is that bad Insert slippery slope — At some point you need to be objective and ask if a little of that hate is just herd mentality.
    - ljw1001 4y ago
      >To show me things that I want That’s an extraordinarily generous interpretation of Facebook’s motivation.
    - _8j50 4y ago
      No, they keep shadow profiles on people that never used them as well as record private phone conversations. If they were an individual they would be in prison for stalking so much. Even google is nowhere as bad as Meta, the only company objectively worse is linkedin.
    - 4y ago
fxtentacle 4y ago
I believe Zuckerberg's play with buying Oculus was brilliant. I had basically stopped using anything Facebook but I couldn't resist the temptation to play Robo Recall with a Quest. So now he got a set of updated personal data from me and I even paid him for the privilege. I believe what Zuckerberg is doing here is to publicly announce that he has funding ready to purchase whoever could be the next Oculus. Based on Carmack's complaint, I don't have high hopes of Meta building the metaverse in-house. But if I was considering working on metaverse technology, this might be a nudge for entrepreneurs and their investors to get started, because Zuckerberg just painted the map leading to a unicorn exit. I like electronics and have AI + PCB experience. Anyone wanna start the next Oculus ;) ?
nyrulez 4y ago
I want to admire their tenacity and faith. Lot of great things can come out of that. But then there's the financial side and responsibility. So it's a tough call. But as a non-stock owner for Meta, I'd favor tenacity of innovation than an ever increasing stock price. I've been an avid Quest 2 user. There is nothing else like it. I use it for portable workouts and it does the job pretty well. Meta is years ahead of anyone else in this field. But will this ever reach mainstream adoption? I think Zuck and others need to understand that the ask of putting a headset on is a pretty big one and is one of the biggest impediments, even if the stuff inside that headset can be pretty cool! I just don't see a path to that ever becoming normalized in our society or workplace. I feel Zuck is letting his personal bias inform his decisions because he is an avid early adopter and is perhaps super comfy with VR headsets. I mean he bought Oculus in the first place ! I personally think stuff like VR/AR doesn't become truly mainstream until we hit a contact lenses level form factor. I know that sounds way out there but I don't see any other way. Getting to a sunglasses form factor will be a big win but still won't be enough to go mainstream, perhaps 25% of the way. And even that is easily 10 years away if not more. If I was part of their innovation team, I'd buy another smaller company like Nreal Air that's innovating in he sunglasses display/AR space quite well and then try to marry VR/AR with that. If they can achieve that, they will get a big jump in adoption. It will require an external computation box, perhaps a smartphone sized one, but that's still an easier ask than putting a whole headset on.
- prng2021 4y ago
  Sunglasses type form factor makes sense. I think a contact lens form factor would hurt adoption though. Some people wear contacts full time and you wouldn’t want another similar sized device stuck on top of it. A lot of people do not wear contacts and it can be a major struggle to force yourself to stick something onto your eyeballs.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    Presumably they could just manufacture them ("them" being magical computers the size of a contact lens, so I know I'm going out on a bit of a ledge here) to also include your prescription along with the magic computer bits.
joshstrange 4y ago
I'm bullish on VR/AR but FB seems to have totally lost the plot. The metaverse is a joke, the Meta Quest 2 software is utter garbage (super buggy, unintuitive, extremely frustrating), and the Quest Pro was incredibly lackluster. I enjoy my Quest 2 overall once you get into a game but the OS is trash and FB's layer on top of Android is not well done. My friends and I spend way more time than we should just trying to get into a "Home" all together and launching a game from the OS is a crapshoot. The OS is completely full of papercuts from unresponsive UI to things like switching to passthrough kills party audio for a second or two. Staying in passthrough for more than a minute (sometimes less) will kick you from the game you are playing which is infuriating. Do they think that people don't need to step away to deal with kids/pets/drinks/bathroom/etc? I can't tell you how many gaming sessions have been ruined or screwed up because someone had to take a short break and the OS/Game just shit the bed. I was excited for the Quest Pro and was ready to buy one if it was compelling... it was not. The specs are a minor bump over the Q2, the color passthrough camera feels very "beta", and from videos I've watched of it in action I'm glad I didn't get one. The (literal) bending of "reality" when using passthrough looks terrible and feels like it would really break immersion. The controllers did look interesting and I haven't heard anything really bad about them, they do seem like a big step up from the Q2 controllers. You can pair the QPro controllers with the Q2 so that might be something I look into though I'd prefer to never get Meta another dollar if I can help it. I'm looking forward to whatever Apple is working on. Sidenote: Maybe it's an industry term that I just don't know/understand but "of overall costs" doesn't make sense to me. The Subtitle has "Company says 20% of spending to go toward Reality Labs" which makes a lot more sense.
- trafficante 4y ago
  >> The controllers did look interesting and I haven't heard anything really bad about them, they do seem like a big step up from the Q2 controllers. You can pair the QPro controllers with the Q2 Yes, the Touch Pro controllers are absolutely wonderful on both the Pro and the 2. Extremely cool that Meta added support on the 2 and, if not for the issue below, I’d happily recommend them to Quest 2 owners who have the $300 to blow. Unfortunately, the Quest 2’s controllers are probably the worst in the industry for developing thumbstick drift. Worse than even the Switch. Given that sort of unfortunate pedigree and the premium price of the Touch Pros, it’s baffling to see that they skimped on Hall effect sensors for the thumbsticks. It’s extremely hard to recommend spending hundreds of dollars on controllers that may very well need to be RMA’ed in a few months.
Beaver117 4y ago
Why didn't Meta just buy VRChat and improve that? Why did they have to build their lame metaverse from scratch? Serious question
ssgodderidge 4y ago
Isn’t it possible that since they cut costs (inhumane way to describe layoffs), as long as they keep the investment dollars the same, the percentage would go up?
Pwntastic 4y ago
https://archive.vn/FMGOH https://archive.vn/FMGOH
trafficante 4y ago
As much as I’m unhappy about the death of PCVR thanks to the Quest 2, I have to agree with Carmack that it was very close to being the Right Device for bringing VR to the masses - and the sales numbers mostly reflect this. But I can’t help but feel something dysfunctional happened internally since the Quest 2 launch. The Quest Pro should not have been launched at $1500 with its current feature set/SoC and no depth sensor. And I find it difficult to accept the “enterprise market” claim as anything more than a cope when I go into BestBuy and see it being demoed to consumers and displayed prominently in an endcap. Then you look at the software side. Horizon is a horrible pile of ugly jank that no one uses. I gave it another shot for the first time in ages last week after seeing an advertising campaign for a deep faked Notorious BIG concert in Horizon. Long story short, the “live metaverse concert” had fewer attendees than an average Wendy’s and the performance was low res 2d video on a screen. Embarrassing stuff. As far as gaming is concerned: Meta spent hundreds of millions acquiring some of the largest third party VR devs over the past couple years - and still not a single game has been announced. It sure smells like rotten bureaucratic infighting combined with Zuck doggedly chasing where he thinks the puck is going and Carmack’s resignation letter certainly doesn’t disabuse me of the notion.
- f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  I think in the Quest you can see Zuckerberg trying to create Meta's iPhone. Most of Apple's profit comes from selling hardware for more than it costs to make it. Sure there are other phones but most people would prefer an iphone, for various reasons. Branding is not the least of which. I see the quest pro as a similar product to the iphone pro. Technically better, but almost as much of a status symbol to ramp up profits long term as much as anything. I suspect we'll see those two lanes continue to be developed with fairly fast releases on a similar schedule to iphones - with Mark's dream being that one day Meta will be the new Apple complete with the walled garden app store.
- bni 4y ago
  I agree with everything in your comment. I think Zuck is impatient. He wants to skip the gaming stages of the VR evolution. Yet VR must be a huge gaming success before something like a social network in VR can happen. Quest 2 and Rift before it is almost that, but still a large part of gaming fans remain unconvinced. But that is surely possible to solve. We are at the Doom/Quake stage and he wants to skip WoW, Fortnite and get directly to what comes after that by building the equivalent of VRML or Second Life. Its too early. Also AR is a distraction, not possible to do well with tech existing today, if ever.
ilaksh 4y ago
My gut feeling is that it's hard to build these devices in ways that are affordable, profitable, untethered, and realistic. I think that hating Facebook and disrespecting Zuck is driven just as much by the popularity of the pastime (hating) as by anything real. Credit to Zuckerberg for staying the course. I think that other products will soon come out from other companies over the next year or two that because extremely popular, and AR/VR WILL go mainstream, and practically no one will ever admit that he was right about it being a good overall direction to go in. And if they don't end up making a lot of money from these things it won't prove that it wasn't the right direction. It's hard to pull off and there is going to be a lot of competition.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Reminds of 3D TV which fizzled out because folks don't want to wear glasses.
- cypress66 4y ago
  Definitely not the same. The upside of 3d TV was very minimal. Most of the times you would get an inferior experience in fact. With VR, the upside of VR for immersive experience such as flight simulators, is massive. Having said that, your point maybe has some merit if we refer to people wanting to wear headsets for zoom meetings, which is a bit of what meta is aiming at.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    Granted for immersive gaming experiences (I were a PC gamer who bought a VGA card and Roland LAPC-1 soundcard back then just to enjoy the full experience of Origin's Wing Commander) but definitely not for Zoom or spending time with friends. AR glasses perhaps will work - less cumbersome and intrusive than a headset.
nharada 4y ago
At this point doesn't feel like there's many other options long term for Facebook. If they weren't doing this, how long would they have before all that money is gone anyway? Anyone have suggestions on something besides VR to replace their current business?
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  Why not get into IaaS infrastructure? Like Facebook Cloud or something
  - darkwizard42 4y ago
    Google and Microsoft are burning so much $$$ right now competing and buying share, I don't think Facebook wants to get into that business.
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      MS actually might get it to be profitable, they can always sell/bundle Azure to their current customers Google's case is harder to make.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
As someone in the VR industry, I think VR will succeed in spite of Facebook. Meta horizons is a solution in search of a problem, and they refuse to recognize that. Meanwhile the rest of us are making money solving actual problems that actually exist today. I do industrial and cockpit simulations, things that are unsafe or expensive to train on IRL, which is basically an ideal use for VR. Capitalism simulator VR 22 is not something that anyone wants. It doesn't fill a need or solve a problem other than "how do we extract more money from consumers?". People are starting to become resentful of their entire life being monetized, who wants to have their recreation monetized?
- rchaud 4y ago
  You are speaking to the core of the issue. In Facebook's hands, they won't want to compete in the businesses where there are actual use cases today. Because of their size, they have the resources to try to invent a whole new market (walled garden), and only then find consumers for it.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    Yes, it's exactly this. $13bn of pure unadulterated hubris
sytelus 4y ago
Zuck immediately needs to hope on the AGI train before it leaves the station. He needs to pivote from Metaverse craziness. He needs to come out for making a mistake and course correct ASAP. He has massive walled garden of data that no one else has. He had MetaAI folks who knows how to build LLMs. He has AppliedML team who knows how to productize AI. He now even has better reputation for saner policies and privacy, thanks to Twitter. He should be able to spin up AI based search engine in 6-12 months. He can produce AI based Office in similar time frame. All the stars are aligned for him if he has courage to course correct.
andsoitis 4y ago
This is great for advancing the technology. Probably not great for shareholders. I’m for it.

63 points by donsupreme 4y ago

Zuckerberg doubling down like this seems quite crazy. I know he was bullish on VR/AR/MR but he's now gambling the future of his company on it. With the bleak view Carmack had on their R&D and his departure, I doubt a breakthrough product is coming any time soon.

jerrygenser 4y ago
Meta just took on debt for the first time ever in the last few months. Meta could cancel all Reality labs work and keep slowly taking on debt while keeping their central properties alive. It would make for a very boring company but would likely result in decent returns for shareholders. This is what Oracle has done -- their company is boring but their shareholders are happy. In order to have any sort of future growth story, Meta pretty much needs to create or somehow capture major economics from a new platform like they did for web2.0 and mobile web. Due to antitrust concerns IMO, they can't just acquire their way into more value by acquiring a company like Pinterest so their remaining options are moonshots like AR/VR to invest heavily for the next platform to become ubiquitous and then extract economics from it.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Meta has no shareholders only suckers that own non voting stocks
mv4 4y ago
He has no choice. The old model (ad revenue) is declining, and the new model (monetizing AR/VR and the Metaverse) hasn't been proven yet.
bioemerl 4y ago
What's the alternative? Slowly face into obsolescence as kids abandon Facebook and Google/apple use their monopolies to totally invalidate your ability to serve ads?

MisterPea 4y ago

Disclaimer, I'm in the minority of people that's long Meta's vision into VR and own a good amount of Meta stock. I truly believe that there's like a 95% chance that Meta builds a great product but it hemorrhages money and will ultimately need to be gimped - but I'm really in it for the 5% chance that it is a home run on the financials. What Zuck is doing represents everything I admire about Silicon Valley (and honestly it's a short list of things) and sure he's a strange personality and questionable past but his vision and persistence into this is something I would hope to see succeed and valued.

_8j50 4y ago
The quality of the product is irrelevant to me as well as millions of others who distrust Meta at the most fundamental level. Right out the gate it has that going against it. Outside the US just about every country is gunning to regulate or fine it somehow. Highly recommend selling what you can now before Q2
- johnwheeler 4y ago
  The argument goes like this: I hate meta Why Because they track me Why do they do that To show me things I might want Why is that bad Insert slippery slope — At some point you need to be objective and ask if a little of that hate is just herd mentality.
  - ljw1001 4y ago
    >To show me things that I want That’s an extraordinarily generous interpretation of Facebook’s motivation.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    No, they keep shadow profiles on people that never used them as well as record private phone conversations. If they were an individual they would be in prison for stalking so much. Even google is nowhere as bad as Meta, the only company objectively worse is linkedin.
  - 4y ago

fxtentacle 4y ago

I believe Zuckerberg's play with buying Oculus was brilliant. I had basically stopped using anything Facebook but I couldn't resist the temptation to play Robo Recall with a Quest. So now he got a set of updated personal data from me and I even paid him for the privilege. I believe what Zuckerberg is doing here is to publicly announce that he has funding ready to purchase whoever could be the next Oculus. Based on Carmack's complaint, I don't have high hopes of Meta building the metaverse in-house. But if I was considering working on metaverse technology, this might be a nudge for entrepreneurs and their investors to get started, because Zuckerberg just painted the map leading to a unicorn exit. I like electronics and have AI + PCB experience. Anyone wanna start the next Oculus ;) ?

nyrulez 4y ago

I want to admire their tenacity and faith. Lot of great things can come out of that. But then there's the financial side and responsibility. So it's a tough call. But as a non-stock owner for Meta, I'd favor tenacity of innovation than an ever increasing stock price. I've been an avid Quest 2 user. There is nothing else like it. I use it for portable workouts and it does the job pretty well. Meta is years ahead of anyone else in this field. But will this ever reach mainstream adoption? I think Zuck and others need to understand that the ask of putting a headset on is a pretty big one and is one of the biggest impediments, even if the stuff inside that headset can be pretty cool! I just don't see a path to that ever becoming normalized in our society or workplace. I feel Zuck is letting his personal bias inform his decisions because he is an avid early adopter and is perhaps super comfy with VR headsets. I mean he bought Oculus in the first place ! I personally think stuff like VR/AR doesn't become truly mainstream until we hit a contact lenses level form factor. I know that sounds way out there but I don't see any other way. Getting to a sunglasses form factor will be a big win but still won't be enough to go mainstream, perhaps 25% of the way. And even that is easily 10 years away if not more. If I was part of their innovation team, I'd buy another smaller company like Nreal Air that's innovating in he sunglasses display/AR space quite well and then try to marry VR/AR with that. If they can achieve that, they will get a big jump in adoption. It will require an external computation box, perhaps a smartphone sized one, but that's still an easier ask than putting a whole headset on.

prng2021 4y ago
Sunglasses type form factor makes sense. I think a contact lens form factor would hurt adoption though. Some people wear contacts full time and you wouldn’t want another similar sized device stuck on top of it. A lot of people do not wear contacts and it can be a major struggle to force yourself to stick something onto your eyeballs.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Presumably they could just manufacture them ("them" being magical computers the size of a contact lens, so I know I'm going out on a bit of a ledge here) to also include your prescription along with the magic computer bits.

joshstrange 4y ago

I'm bullish on VR/AR but FB seems to have totally lost the plot. The metaverse is a joke, the Meta Quest 2 software is utter garbage (super buggy, unintuitive, extremely frustrating), and the Quest Pro was incredibly lackluster. I enjoy my Quest 2 overall once you get into a game but the OS is trash and FB's layer on top of Android is not well done. My friends and I spend way more time than we should just trying to get into a "Home" all together and launching a game from the OS is a crapshoot. The OS is completely full of papercuts from unresponsive UI to things like switching to passthrough kills party audio for a second or two. Staying in passthrough for more than a minute (sometimes less) will kick you from the game you are playing which is infuriating. Do they think that people don't need to step away to deal with kids/pets/drinks/bathroom/etc? I can't tell you how many gaming sessions have been ruined or screwed up because someone had to take a short break and the OS/Game just shit the bed. I was excited for the Quest Pro and was ready to buy one if it was compelling... it was not. The specs are a minor bump over the Q2, the color passthrough camera feels very "beta", and from videos I've watched of it in action I'm glad I didn't get one. The (literal) bending of "reality" when using passthrough looks terrible and feels like it would really break immersion. The controllers did look interesting and I haven't heard anything really bad about them, they do seem like a big step up from the Q2 controllers. You can pair the QPro controllers with the Q2 so that might be something I look into though I'd prefer to never get Meta another dollar if I can help it. I'm looking forward to whatever Apple is working on. Sidenote: Maybe it's an industry term that I just don't know/understand but "of overall costs" doesn't make sense to me. The Subtitle has "Company says 20% of spending to go toward Reality Labs" which makes a lot more sense.

trafficante 4y ago
>> The controllers did look interesting and I haven't heard anything really bad about them, they do seem like a big step up from the Q2 controllers. You can pair the QPro controllers with the Q2 Yes, the Touch Pro controllers are absolutely wonderful on both the Pro and the 2. Extremely cool that Meta added support on the 2 and, if not for the issue below, I’d happily recommend them to Quest 2 owners who have the $300 to blow. Unfortunately, the Quest 2’s controllers are probably the worst in the industry for developing thumbstick drift. Worse than even the Switch. Given that sort of unfortunate pedigree and the premium price of the Touch Pros, it’s baffling to see that they skimped on Hall effect sensors for the thumbsticks. It’s extremely hard to recommend spending hundreds of dollars on controllers that may very well need to be RMA’ed in a few months.

Beaver117 4y ago

Why didn't Meta just buy VRChat and improve that? Why did they have to build their lame metaverse from scratch? Serious question

ssgodderidge 4y ago

Isn’t it possible that since they cut costs (inhumane way to describe layoffs), as long as they keep the investment dollars the same, the percentage would go up?

Pwntastic 4y ago

https://archive.vn/FMGOH https://archive.vn/FMGOH

trafficante 4y ago

As much as I’m unhappy about the death of PCVR thanks to the Quest 2, I have to agree with Carmack that it was very close to being the Right Device for bringing VR to the masses - and the sales numbers mostly reflect this. But I can’t help but feel something dysfunctional happened internally since the Quest 2 launch. The Quest Pro should not have been launched at $1500 with its current feature set/SoC and no depth sensor. And I find it difficult to accept the “enterprise market” claim as anything more than a cope when I go into BestBuy and see it being demoed to consumers and displayed prominently in an endcap. Then you look at the software side. Horizon is a horrible pile of ugly jank that no one uses. I gave it another shot for the first time in ages last week after seeing an advertising campaign for a deep faked Notorious BIG concert in Horizon. Long story short, the “live metaverse concert” had fewer attendees than an average Wendy’s and the performance was low res 2d video on a screen. Embarrassing stuff. As far as gaming is concerned: Meta spent hundreds of millions acquiring some of the largest third party VR devs over the past couple years - and still not a single game has been announced. It sure smells like rotten bureaucratic infighting combined with Zuck doggedly chasing where he thinks the puck is going and Carmack’s resignation letter certainly doesn’t disabuse me of the notion.

f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I think in the Quest you can see Zuckerberg trying to create Meta's iPhone. Most of Apple's profit comes from selling hardware for more than it costs to make it. Sure there are other phones but most people would prefer an iphone, for various reasons. Branding is not the least of which. I see the quest pro as a similar product to the iphone pro. Technically better, but almost as much of a status symbol to ramp up profits long term as much as anything. I suspect we'll see those two lanes continue to be developed with fairly fast releases on a similar schedule to iphones - with Mark's dream being that one day Meta will be the new Apple complete with the walled garden app store.
bni 4y ago
I agree with everything in your comment. I think Zuck is impatient. He wants to skip the gaming stages of the VR evolution. Yet VR must be a huge gaming success before something like a social network in VR can happen. Quest 2 and Rift before it is almost that, but still a large part of gaming fans remain unconvinced. But that is surely possible to solve. We are at the Doom/Quake stage and he wants to skip WoW, Fortnite and get directly to what comes after that by building the equivalent of VRML or Second Life. Its too early. Also AR is a distraction, not possible to do well with tech existing today, if ever.

ilaksh 4y ago

My gut feeling is that it's hard to build these devices in ways that are affordable, profitable, untethered, and realistic. I think that hating Facebook and disrespecting Zuck is driven just as much by the popularity of the pastime (hating) as by anything real. Credit to Zuckerberg for staying the course. I think that other products will soon come out from other companies over the next year or two that because extremely popular, and AR/VR WILL go mainstream, and practically no one will ever admit that he was right about it being a good overall direction to go in. And if they don't end up making a lot of money from these things it won't prove that it wasn't the right direction. It's hard to pull off and there is going to be a lot of competition.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Reminds of 3D TV which fizzled out because folks don't want to wear glasses.

cypress66 4y ago
Definitely not the same. The upside of 3d TV was very minimal. Most of the times you would get an inferior experience in fact. With VR, the upside of VR for immersive experience such as flight simulators, is massive. Having said that, your point maybe has some merit if we refer to people wanting to wear headsets for zoom meetings, which is a bit of what meta is aiming at.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  Granted for immersive gaming experiences (I were a PC gamer who bought a VGA card and Roland LAPC-1 soundcard back then just to enjoy the full experience of Origin's Wing Commander) but definitely not for Zoom or spending time with friends. AR glasses perhaps will work - less cumbersome and intrusive than a headset.

nharada 4y ago

At this point doesn't feel like there's many other options long term for Facebook. If they weren't doing this, how long would they have before all that money is gone anyway? Anyone have suggestions on something besides VR to replace their current business?

arthurcolle 4y ago
Why not get into IaaS infrastructure? Like Facebook Cloud or something
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  Google and Microsoft are burning so much $$$ right now competing and buying share, I don't think Facebook wants to get into that business.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    MS actually might get it to be profitable, they can always sell/bundle Azure to their current customers Google's case is harder to make.

rolenthedeep 4y ago

As someone in the VR industry, I think VR will succeed in spite of Facebook. Meta horizons is a solution in search of a problem, and they refuse to recognize that. Meanwhile the rest of us are making money solving actual problems that actually exist today. I do industrial and cockpit simulations, things that are unsafe or expensive to train on IRL, which is basically an ideal use for VR. Capitalism simulator VR 22 is not something that anyone wants. It doesn't fill a need or solve a problem other than "how do we extract more money from consumers?". People are starting to become resentful of their entire life being monetized, who wants to have their recreation monetized?

rchaud 4y ago
You are speaking to the core of the issue. In Facebook's hands, they won't want to compete in the businesses where there are actual use cases today. Because of their size, they have the resources to try to invent a whole new market (walled garden), and only then find consumers for it.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Yes, it's exactly this. $13bn of pure unadulterated hubris

sytelus 4y ago

Zuck immediately needs to hope on the AGI train before it leaves the station. He needs to pivote from Metaverse craziness. He needs to come out for making a mistake and course correct ASAP. He has massive walled garden of data that no one else has. He had MetaAI folks who knows how to build LLMs. He has AppliedML team who knows how to productize AI. He now even has better reputation for saner policies and privacy, thanks to Twitter. He should be able to spin up AI based search engine in 6-12 months. He can produce AI based Office in similar time frame. All the stars are aligned for him if he has courage to course correct.

andsoitis 4y ago

This is great for advancing the technology. Probably not great for shareholders. I’m for it.