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The 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

The 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 2y ago
I'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 2y ago
it's very obviously "creative" accounting. Facebook is throwing lots of other expenses into the VR bucket to make other departments look better.
- StressedDev 2y ago
  That is a very serious charge. Do you have any proof or are you just making things up?
  - threeseed 2y ago
    In 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
    - joshspankit 2y ago
      This is wild. Their accounting could massively hurt the VR industry (to the point, the comment above about how it’s too bad VR can’t be profitable). IMO it’s not AI or VR that will take over, but a combination of the two.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    All the ai research is under reality labs through FAIR. Theyre spending billions on GPU buy alone. You can claim gen ai is a necessity for the metaverse but I do think its a bit misleading to say VR lost 4 billion this quarter when a huge amount of that went to an open source LLM
ionwake 2y ago
Why don’t they just hire devs who have clearly spent years building their own 3d projects alone, bootstrapping themselves? Tbf they tried to interview me during my peak where I had already made my own networking engine and a custom 3d env but I was too scared to interview after hearing they prefer fresh code monkeys out of college . Just offering some advice I think they reap what they sow with their unfortunately overfitting in their main? choice of applicant.maybe I’m wrong To be fair to Facebook - they actually did offer me an interview TLDR; im a self made millionaire now I’m just saying the people you want are the ones that don’t apply, too busy coding instead of applying to FAANGS
curiousllama 2y ago
Reality Labs includes a bunch of AI stuff. I assume a bunch of this is training compute for Llama 3/4
threeseed 2y ago
> The fact that they spend more than everyone else does in the space We don't know how much Apple spent on Vision Pro. The project has been going on for at least a decade.
goles 2y ago
Surprised to see so many people negative on meta in this thread. I've used VR at conventions and buddies houses but I've been holding off on picking up a headset for a couple of revisions until they are in their sweet spot of development. Where most of the kinks are worked out, there's a good library of Apps and games, and doesn't require enthusist level commitment which I don't have the time or patience for anymore. Recently picked up a Quest 3 and it's honestly astonishing. I (half) joking had the thought when they get to the Quest 5 or 6 and can get the cost down humanity is gonna be in serious trouble. I brought it to a family gathering and one person went out and bought one the next day. Another is going to pick one up as soon as they can find a good deal used. Horizon worlds is admittedly a little goofy but this is one of the first revision of it. And it works well as drop in for some Apps like escape rooms which probably saves some dev work. I only breezed through the report but it looks like their numbers are up massively YOY. Only complaints is passthrough is still a little distorted but an enormous improvement. Battery life could still be better but a battery pack helps balance the heatset anyway. Also you can't directly connect to steamVR without going through Quest link which I can't see any reason for other than being anti-competitive and user hostile. The matrix is coming and I got a feeling metas gonna own it.
- chaostheory 2y ago
  Im not surprised about the negative comments. I’d be more surprised if the negative commenters have even tried VR. VR and AR are just such a huge paradigm shift that according to the data, only tweens and children “just get it” as a demographic group without a lot of coaxing and explaining. I would say that it’s their generation’s NES. Being an adult VR enthusiast feels like being part of something like the homebrew computer club, well until Quest came along.
  - nkingsy 2y ago
    Tweens and children are the only ones with supple inner ear linings. As a 40-yo VR enthusiast, I can't play anything that requires elective X/Y movement (first person shooter) without getting sick. The "teleport" mechanic is really clunky. My kids can play anything and never get sick. My parents can't even do a driving sim without getting dizzy in a couple of minutes.
Zetaphor 2y ago
I think it's reasonable to assume that a pretty large portion of this is going into R&D. They've shown multiple prototypes that are addressing different technologies/techniques for improving the clarity and quality of VR experiences. I could be mistaken, but I believe they were the ones to pioneer varifocal displays, a technology which has still yet to ship in an HMD. The earliest prototypes relied on physically moving the lens, where the latest prototypes are using some form of electrically charged lens that changes its focal distance based on voltage. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of projects they've either announced or have been leaked it's easy to see how you could spend that kind of money, and that's only the stuff we know about.
- uejfiweun 2y ago
  I admit that I didn't like Zuck before. But I have to say, I am becoming a big fan of him, primarily due to his strategy in ML/AI for Meta, and his willingness to burn cash to solve the problems of VR. Zuck is many things good and bad, but certainly one of those things is that he's a nerd who loves technology and wants to move it forward, and I can't help but respect that massively especially given his results.
  - intrasight 2y ago
    I respect the same about Musk. It's the only thing that I respect about either of them. But, boy, it's hard for me not to respect individual who are inventing the future.
    - uejfiweun 2y ago
      Yes, Musk is in the same category. You can hate his opinions, sure, but to not respect him in some form or fashion just betrays an ignorant worldview IMO.
uejfiweun 2y ago
It's the hardware, man. The software practically doesn't matter until they figure out the hardware. If they went all in on adding all the necessary features to Worlds right now, they'd end up having to change things later on to accommodate whatever form the hardware ends up taking. There are some crucial avenues of research Meta is working on. Varifocal, form factor, face / body tracking, resolution - once these things are nailed, and I'm pretty sure it'll be in the next 10 years, then suddenly we're gonna WANT to be in Horizon Worlds. But it can't happen without massive R&D on the hardware side.
wkat4242 2y ago
Yeah horizon worlds is really bad. In their push to make it child friendly the whole thing has become a bland playground for kids with nothing to offer adults. After all, when I go to the movies I don't go for a Disney cartoon but an action movie. The user-generated content in VRChat is so much more compelling. It also looks better. And it's actually harder to do it.

jsheard 2y ago

I'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 2y ago

it's very obviously "creative" accounting. Facebook is throwing lots of other expenses into the VR bucket to make other departments look better.

StressedDev 2y ago
That is a very serious charge. Do you have any proof or are you just making things up?
- threeseed 2y ago
  In 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
  - joshspankit 2y ago
    This is wild. Their accounting could massively hurt the VR industry (to the point, the comment above about how it’s too bad VR can’t be profitable). IMO it’s not AI or VR that will take over, but a combination of the two.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  All the ai research is under reality labs through FAIR. Theyre spending billions on GPU buy alone. You can claim gen ai is a necessity for the metaverse but I do think its a bit misleading to say VR lost 4 billion this quarter when a huge amount of that went to an open source LLM

ionwake 2y ago

Why don’t they just hire devs who have clearly spent years building their own 3d projects alone, bootstrapping themselves? Tbf they tried to interview me during my peak where I had already made my own networking engine and a custom 3d env but I was too scared to interview after hearing they prefer fresh code monkeys out of college . Just offering some advice I think they reap what they sow with their unfortunately overfitting in their main? choice of applicant.maybe I’m wrong To be fair to Facebook - they actually did offer me an interview TLDR; im a self made millionaire now I’m just saying the people you want are the ones that don’t apply, too busy coding instead of applying to FAANGS

curiousllama 2y ago

Reality Labs includes a bunch of AI stuff. I assume a bunch of this is training compute for Llama 3/4

threeseed 2y ago

> The fact that they spend more than everyone else does in the space We don't know how much Apple spent on Vision Pro. The project has been going on for at least a decade.

goles 2y ago

Surprised to see so many people negative on meta in this thread. I've used VR at conventions and buddies houses but I've been holding off on picking up a headset for a couple of revisions until they are in their sweet spot of development. Where most of the kinks are worked out, there's a good library of Apps and games, and doesn't require enthusist level commitment which I don't have the time or patience for anymore. Recently picked up a Quest 3 and it's honestly astonishing. I (half) joking had the thought when they get to the Quest 5 or 6 and can get the cost down humanity is gonna be in serious trouble. I brought it to a family gathering and one person went out and bought one the next day. Another is going to pick one up as soon as they can find a good deal used. Horizon worlds is admittedly a little goofy but this is one of the first revision of it. And it works well as drop in for some Apps like escape rooms which probably saves some dev work. I only breezed through the report but it looks like their numbers are up massively YOY. Only complaints is passthrough is still a little distorted but an enormous improvement. Battery life could still be better but a battery pack helps balance the heatset anyway. Also you can't directly connect to steamVR without going through Quest link which I can't see any reason for other than being anti-competitive and user hostile. The matrix is coming and I got a feeling metas gonna own it.

chaostheory 2y ago
Im not surprised about the negative comments. I’d be more surprised if the negative commenters have even tried VR. VR and AR are just such a huge paradigm shift that according to the data, only tweens and children “just get it” as a demographic group without a lot of coaxing and explaining. I would say that it’s their generation’s NES. Being an adult VR enthusiast feels like being part of something like the homebrew computer club, well until Quest came along.
- nkingsy 2y ago
  Tweens and children are the only ones with supple inner ear linings. As a 40-yo VR enthusiast, I can't play anything that requires elective X/Y movement (first person shooter) without getting sick. The "teleport" mechanic is really clunky. My kids can play anything and never get sick. My parents can't even do a driving sim without getting dizzy in a couple of minutes.

Zetaphor 2y ago

I think it's reasonable to assume that a pretty large portion of this is going into R&D. They've shown multiple prototypes that are addressing different technologies/techniques for improving the clarity and quality of VR experiences. I could be mistaken, but I believe they were the ones to pioneer varifocal displays, a technology which has still yet to ship in an HMD. The earliest prototypes relied on physically moving the lens, where the latest prototypes are using some form of electrically charged lens that changes its focal distance based on voltage. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of projects they've either announced or have been leaked it's easy to see how you could spend that kind of money, and that's only the stuff we know about.

uejfiweun 2y ago
I admit that I didn't like Zuck before. But I have to say, I am becoming a big fan of him, primarily due to his strategy in ML/AI for Meta, and his willingness to burn cash to solve the problems of VR. Zuck is many things good and bad, but certainly one of those things is that he's a nerd who loves technology and wants to move it forward, and I can't help but respect that massively especially given his results.
- intrasight 2y ago
  I respect the same about Musk. It's the only thing that I respect about either of them. But, boy, it's hard for me not to respect individual who are inventing the future.
  - uejfiweun 2y ago
    Yes, Musk is in the same category. You can hate his opinions, sure, but to not respect him in some form or fashion just betrays an ignorant worldview IMO.

uejfiweun 2y ago

It's the hardware, man. The software practically doesn't matter until they figure out the hardware. If they went all in on adding all the necessary features to Worlds right now, they'd end up having to change things later on to accommodate whatever form the hardware ends up taking. There are some crucial avenues of research Meta is working on. Varifocal, form factor, face / body tracking, resolution - once these things are nailed, and I'm pretty sure it'll be in the next 10 years, then suddenly we're gonna WANT to be in Horizon Worlds. But it can't happen without massive R&D on the hardware side.

wkat4242 2y ago

Yeah horizon worlds is really bad. In their push to make it child friendly the whole thing has become a bland playground for kids with nothing to offer adults. After all, when I go to the movies I don't go for a Disney cartoon but an action movie. The user-generated content in VRChat is so much more compelling. It also looks better. And it's actually harder to do it.