That's kind of by design, though. One of the mandates of modern corporates is "generate value for the shareholders at all costs". This frequently means betting

That's kind of by design, though. One of the mandates of modern corporates is "generate value for the shareholders at all costs". This frequently means betting on and pushing risky ventures to be the first or, even better, the second to set foot on a whole new market. Many gaming streaming projects fell before Microsoft and Nvidia cracked the code, and MS is using it to pull people to their ecosystem. Sony lost a lot of money over the years flailing around with GaiKai until they had a stable streaming offer. Even Google lost much of their investment in Stadia. Similar stories goes with AR games, live streaming, targeted ad services, etc. Some companies have to burn cash and take losses to map all the pitfalls and opportunities of the new market. The whole metaverse thing is poorly define and kinda useless, but executives firmly believe that when you get all the high income families hooked up with eyes and ears covered by technology, you'll be able to advertise and sell products and they won't be able to look away without turning off their entire platform, and most people don't make this sacrifice. They're more than willing to burn a lot of cash and kill many jobs for the small chance of breaking through and reaching that magical market with the excessive ammount of disposable income of the top Apple fans and engagement levels not even tiktok or the most predatory gacha games could reach.