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Oof, another $4 billion in the hole for Reality Labs. I really want VR to succeed but seeing the biggest player by far still struggling to find any path to prof
by jsheard 3y ago
Oof, another $4 billion in the hole for Reality Labs. I really want VR to succeed but seeing the biggest player by far still struggling to find any path to profitability (or even breaking even) after iterating on it for a decade makes it hard to be optimistic.
- harles 3y agoI’m not sure it’s a good business strategy, but I am glad to see ad money fueling more interesting tech than more profitable ads.
- mostlysimilar 3y agoDon’t worry. The ads come once they establish themselves as the dominant player.
- harles 3y agoMaybe. It is nice to see cash transactions and subscription models in the space. There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads. Maybe I’m just an optimist.
- jrussino 3y ago> new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads My fear about LLMs emerging as a commonplace computing tool is that they seem like such an obvious target for a whole new type of advertising & propaganda. Whatever you think about the potential for something like "superhuman AGI", it seems clear to me that LLMs have the potential to become better and better at generating text that can convince and persuade. My nightmare dystopia is that we end up in a society where we're constantly interacting with LLM agents all the time, and they're so undeniably useful that we don't want to abandon them, but buried deep in each of their prompts is something along the lines of "prioritize being really good at your main task, cultivate trust and dependence in the user, but in the background always be looking for ways to subtly influence them to be more likely to support our sponsors; here's the current list of sponsors with weights based on how much they're paying us ..."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mostlysimilar 3y agoI wouldn't bet on it. Meta is leading the pack right now and they're an advertising company. I wouldn't expect an advertising company to choose a model without advertising.
- ianstormtaylor 3y agoSounds much closer to an apologist than an optimist if you ask me. Although more charitably, a future apologist—who maybe has good intentions, but hasn’t stepped back to gain context and realized that their projection is at odds with the systemic incentives in play.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads They are: - pay a monthly subscription - rent out your brain for computational power in a SAAS startup - ads
- wongarsu 3y agoBut they are the dominant player, and have been for many years. Their only real competitor in terms of market share right now are Sony's Playstation VR headsets, and Meta is easily outcompeting them. The HTC Vive is far behind in sales, and Apple hopes to sell as many headsets in an entire year as the Playstation VR2 sold in the first 6 weeks (which is still impressive considering the order of magnitude price difference). Everyone else seems to be in enterprise-sales mode, which drives profit but not market share. Well, except for ByteDance's Pico, but they don't seem to be doing great outside of China.
- renegade-otter 3y agoThe days of interesting tech have been gone for a couple of decades now. Every technology is now being quickly enshitified. It's ALL about selling you crap. The nerd Internet was the best, but it's never coming back. The bandwidth gave us streaming - okay, I'll give you that, but we had that before. It's more of an infrastructure thing than "interesting" tech.
- autokad 3y agoI been hearing this term 'enshitified' a lot lately. I am curious to its source and why it seems so much more prevalent recently. Do you have any insight into that?
- jsheard 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- renegade-otter 3y agoIt's when monetizing your users is more important than maintaining and growing your product. With AI, it's going to get even worse. I mention that in this new post I just wrote: https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence-skynet-is-not-coming-to-kill-you.html https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence...
- scottm01 3y agoThere's literally an ad on the front page right now for a YC startup hiring engineers to protect patient privacy. Follow the link? The company exists to better sell ads based on patient data (but in a "compliant" manner).
- whiplash451 3y agoLink?
- 3y ago
- melenaboija 3y agoI guess something interesting will come up from this but I see it more like investing in technology to create new type of ads.
- tinyhouse 3y agoWell, there's still no killer app. The productivity use case is a gimmick. Apple vision pro is also not selling well. The big promise is entertainment but it's not there yet.
- jsheard 3y agoIt would be an anti-climax for the history books if it turns out we invented a device right out of sci-fi, but it's actually kind of meh.
- jncfhnb 3y agoWe really didn’t though. We’re nowhere close to the dream of VR.
- jstummbillig 3y agoI wonder if there simply is no killer app using the current approach. Maybe we will have to hook into the brain.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoHalf Life Alyx was an amazing VR game. It was the only amazing VR game. Everything else has been OK.
- philjohn 3y agoI don't know - the Star Wars game on Quest was amazing from an immersion point of view. And beat saber is a surprisingly fun way to do some cardio.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI do like beat saber. And I liked Star Wars and Superhot. They’re good. They aren’t killer.
- nextworddev 3y agoMet some business dev people at Reality Labs and they themselves don’t exactly what they are selling. Which is very worrying.
- blackeyeblitzar 3y agoIt is possible that now is the right time to keep investing in it. They already have huge sunk costs, but a lot has changed since they began. LLMs became a thing. Display tech has continued to evolve quickly. There is more information on the market after seeing how products from Sony, Apple, and others have done. Meta also recently announced their new OS and their more-open platform strategy. Mobile processors are also evolving quickly. All of these things can open up possibilities - and even if it isn’t a sure thing, maybe it is worth placing a bet?
- rurp 3y agoPlacing a bet is one thing, but Facebook is spending enough money to fund a moderately sized country. I don't mind that they are doing it though, even though I think it's a terrible business decision. Facebook spends plenty of money on things that are worse for the world and maybe we'll eventually get some interesting tech out of it.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoThe fact that they spend more than everyone else does in the space combined just blows my mind. Their Horizon worlds is literally just a worst VR chat which was developed for <$100 million. Their os frontent for the quest is great, but how many devs can you even realistically have having an impact. And that $4 billion is just per quarter. I honestly would love to see a full breakdown. Nintendo's entire revenue is 12 billion, which is less than Meta VR spends alone, and that includes everything Nintendo does, including developing games. How has Meta spent so much and has so little to show for it?
- jsheard 3y agoI'm guessing a big chunk of those losses are from selling the hardware at a loss, which is a fine strategy if you're Sony or Microsoft and can easily make that money back from game licensing and subscriptions, but the Quest has (a) a reputation for people buying one and then barely using it, and (b) a subset of active users who only use it to play SteamVR games without ever giving Meta a cent after the initial purchase. I don't know exactly how much they're losing on each Quest they sell, but the fact that it's significantly cheaper than any "dumb" headset that requires a PC or PS5 to do all of the heavy lifting, despite having what's effectively an entire smartphone built-in says it all really.
- pie420 3y agoit's very obviously "creative" accounting. Facebook is throwing lots of other expenses into the VR bucket to make other departments look better.
- StressedDev 3y agoThat is a very serious charge. Do you have any proof or are you just making things up?
- threeseed 3y agoIn June 2022, several artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives that were previously a part of Meta AI were transitioned to Reality Labs. This also includes Meta's fundamental AI Research laboratory FAIR which is now part of the Reality Labs - Research (RLR) division. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs
- willmadden 3y ago"The hardware isn't ready yet."
- rvz 3y ago> "But seeing the biggest player by far still struggling to find any path to profitability" I would have agreed if Reality Labs was its own startup but they are supported by Meta. With that said, $12BN profit in one quarter for Meta is somehow "struggling"? Wait until you see the wave of unprofitable AI startups and companies raising capital forever without a path to profitability in sight. Meta can afford to spend billions into Reality Labs, until that unit itself becomes profitable. They are totally fine and it is still business as usual and they will be sitting comfortably for another decade. The rest of the so-called AI startups taking in VC capital on the other hand...
- blackoil 3y agoI think OPs concern is not for Meta, but ability of startups to raise funds. If Meta can't make profit or product even after spending 10s of billions, the chance of a startup is near 0.
- xyst 3y agoI don’t see VR becoming mainstream. At least today anyways. It’s very niche. Hardware is clunky. The software is locked to Apple or Meta APIs. It’s difficult to explore when the manufacturers put up so many walls within their walled up ecosystems.
- RicoElectrico 3y agoToday's VR is good, but not $100B market good. The SV managerial class has read too much into all the NYT bestsellers about "disruptive innovation" and now every goddamn product category must be "disruptive". Nothing can "just exist" anymore...
- 999900000999 3y agoWithin a decade, full VR will be available in a standard pair of glasses. Eventually we’ll probably move to a single OS that runs everything, your phone , computer , vr, will all be a single device( or course us old folks will probably still prefer monitor so).
- Quekid5 3y agoJust like fusion is juuuuust 20 years away... for the last 30 years. Not saying they're the same level of difficulty/tech, necessarily, but there's a reason we have the term Hype Cycle. We had one for VR about 25-30 years ago. Recently, we've had Second Hype Cycle... maybe next it'll be for realsies or it'll be Third Hype Cycle for VR? Apologies for the jadedness, but... you see enough of the meta at some point :) EDIT: What's the actual killer app for VR for the general population ? We're already over-saturated with a plethora of entertainment.
- 999900000999 3y agoImagine being able to put on glasses, and instantly have your computer. Your hands are tracked so you can type without a keyboard. This replaces the computer for most people. With Windows on ARM you could probably build something like this today, but it's still too billy. If I had a billion dollars I'd be working on a single device that replaces everything. Your phone, your TV( or at least sync to it so content is seamless). Then I'd sell it below cost with a subscription of some sort. With an open source model at a reasonable markup. That's the endgame for Meta. You'll never leave their new ecosystem.
- wkat4242 3y agoThey just do it wrong. If you see how poor Horizons is compared to something like VRChat that operates on a shoestring budget compare to meta's. Or something like viverse. Their hardware is OK, but not groundbreaking. Their metaverse platform is really poor compared to the competition, although what they do have over the others is the ability to create in-world instead of in Unity. But really that doesn't stop creators. The environments in VRChat are much more compelling. I think part of this is Meta's way too strict moderation and content policy. Because really for adults a rubber-tile child playground is really just no fun. We need a bit of gritty. So yeah really they're doing it wrong. I don't know how they do it exactly but clearly all that money goes to the wrong places. I don't think this means VR is a bad idea. It can work, just not the way Meta thinks it can.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoMaybe when they hit a $Trillion and VR still fails we can finally put a nail in this coffin.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]