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Wow so with the 10 billion total loss on VR last earnings, are they now up to 14 billion spent on VR and metaverse? That's unbelievable for how little there is

Wow so with the 10 billion total loss on VR last earnings, are they now up to 14 billion spent on VR and metaverse? That's unbelievable for how little there is to show of it.

zmmmmm 4y ago
> That's unbelievable for how little there is to show of it They multiplied the size of the market by an order of magnitude and they dominate the entire VR industry now?
- Miraste 4y ago
  Is it really a market when you created it by burning $6 for every dollar you make?
  - zmmmmm 4y ago
    Unless you have a way to separate out what is attributable to forward investment vs current operating expense / revenue I don't think you can tell. Zuckerberg himself has painted a 10 year timeline on the investments they are making now. To take it to a silly extreme, Apple has probably burned $14bn and hasn't released anything yet. So they have burned $infinity for every dollar they made. Does it make it a failure?
  - pgwhalen 4y ago
    This is a good point, but I don’t think it’s as strong an indicator as, say, Uber selling rides below cost. I have a Quest headset which I now play a single game on, and I don’t generally game. I’ve shown an interest in the overall market. It’s not as though it’s an obvious deal for me to use, like ride sharing or food deliver.
Miraste 4y ago
I would love to know where this money is going. $700M isn't bad revenue at all, that's probably more than all VR competitors combined and certainly enough to run the division off of. They canceled all the really promising/expensive R&D efforts like their own SoC and their own OS, so they're once more dependent on Android (eh) and Qualcomm (nooo). They haven't launched any major software and the hardware has stayed the same except for the massively underwhelming Quest Pro, which they're having to sell for $400 off right now. Either the Quest 3 reveal is going to be stunning or bureaucratic bloat has grown to the point it's sinking the division.
- jayd16 4y ago
  When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to.
  - Miraste 4y ago
    They haven't launched much of anything - incremental updates are well and good, but the Quest Pro software page is unchanged from when it launched. The top selling software page is the same stuff it's been for years, largely the same as the Steam VR page since the launch of the Vive. Their biggest software release in 2022 was "Among Us VR." Richie's Plank Experience, an app from 2017 where you walk on a board, is still in the top sellers. To me these are not signs of a healthy ecosystem.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      VR experiences continue to have accessibility issues that make them seem more like the next 3D TVs than the next iPhone. But who knows.
      - Miraste 4y ago
        What do you mean by accessibility? Content aside, I'd say the number 1 problem is friction. The headsets are still too heavy, too buggy, too isolating, too ugly for mass adoption, even though all those things have improved a lot since the beginning. The potential is so high I can't see them entirely vanishing like 3d TVs-I maintain that AR glasses the size and shape of Ray-Bans would be a 100 billion dollar industry. But it might take another VR winter to get there.
        qbasic_forever 4y ago
        A nontrivial amount of people get violently ill when using VR. That's a heck of a lot of friction to overcome.

Wow so with the 10 billion total loss on VR last earnings, are they now up to 14 billion spent on VR and metaverse? That's unbelievable for how little there is to show of it.

zmmmmm 4y ago

> That's unbelievable for how little there is to show of it They multiplied the size of the market by an order of magnitude and they dominate the entire VR industry now?

Miraste 4y ago
Is it really a market when you created it by burning $6 for every dollar you make?
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  Unless you have a way to separate out what is attributable to forward investment vs current operating expense / revenue I don't think you can tell. Zuckerberg himself has painted a 10 year timeline on the investments they are making now. To take it to a silly extreme, Apple has probably burned $14bn and hasn't released anything yet. So they have burned $infinity for every dollar they made. Does it make it a failure?
- pgwhalen 4y ago
  This is a good point, but I don’t think it’s as strong an indicator as, say, Uber selling rides below cost. I have a Quest headset which I now play a single game on, and I don’t generally game. I’ve shown an interest in the overall market. It’s not as though it’s an obvious deal for me to use, like ride sharing or food deliver.

Miraste 4y ago

I would love to know where this money is going. $700M isn't bad revenue at all, that's probably more than all VR competitors combined and certainly enough to run the division off of. They canceled all the really promising/expensive R&D efforts like their own SoC and their own OS, so they're once more dependent on Android (eh) and Qualcomm (nooo). They haven't launched any major software and the hardware has stayed the same except for the massively underwhelming Quest Pro, which they're having to sell for $400 off right now. Either the Quest 3 reveal is going to be stunning or bureaucratic bloat has grown to the point it's sinking the division.

jayd16 4y ago
When you say they haven't launched any major software do you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues to.
- Miraste 4y ago
  They haven't launched much of anything - incremental updates are well and good, but the Quest Pro software page is unchanged from when it launched. The top selling software page is the same stuff it's been for years, largely the same as the Steam VR page since the launch of the Vive. Their biggest software release in 2022 was "Among Us VR." Richie's Plank Experience, an app from 2017 where you walk on a board, is still in the top sellers. To me these are not signs of a healthy ecosystem.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    VR experiences continue to have accessibility issues that make them seem more like the next 3D TVs than the next iPhone. But who knows.
    - Miraste 4y ago
      What do you mean by accessibility? Content aside, I'd say the number 1 problem is friction. The headsets are still too heavy, too buggy, too isolating, too ugly for mass adoption, even though all those things have improved a lot since the beginning. The potential is so high I can't see them entirely vanishing like 3d TVs-I maintain that AR glasses the size and shape of Ray-Bans would be a 100 billion dollar industry. But it might take another VR winter to get there.
      - qbasic_forever 4y ago
        A nontrivial amount of people get violently ill when using VR. That's a heck of a lot of friction to overcome.