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Meta's Reality Labs Has Now Lost over $60B Since 2020
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoWhat's the opposite of visionary?
- CyberMacGyver 1y agoDillusionary ?
- rchaud 1y agostatus quo stooge
- fidotron 1y agoI'm bearish on VR generally, but admire a lot of the hardcore tech R&D Meta have been doing, and that Zuckerberg embraced being a total nerd and went for it. But . . . their whole product direction in the last few years has been baffling, specifically "Meta Horizon" which is at best creepy, and at worst some nightmarish fusion of Microsoft Teams and the Wii Mii channel. They need to get this crap out of the way and focus on delivering experiences people might actually want.
- jack_riminton 1y agoWhat do people want?
- manbitesdog 1y agoAs a 400h+ VR gamer, more fun games. No AAA stuff, not crazy graphics, just more incentives for developers to build unique experiences that might not be possible if not for VR. I don't think I've met a single VR user that bought the headset for a different reason.
- foobarian 1y agoMore like Blades and Sorcery! :-) It's impressive that they still managed to brute-force a non-trivial size market for VR games. Having a headset used to be rare but nowadays at least in our neck of the woods everyone knows at least a few other people who "have a VR". Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration.
- fidotron 1y ago> Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration. The big question is why so many of these things are collecting dust. In my case a huge part of it is resistance to putting it on again to discover what new account/privacy requirements it has today, along with how they've rearranged the UI, when all I want to do is fishing and table tennis.
- zemvpferreira 1y agoThat’s easy to answer: there have been no great new games since Beat Saber and that was 6 years ago. People go through a lot of trouble and expense to have fun, but there’s no fun to be had in VR for most.
- foobarian 1y agoAs I mentioned above, Blades and Sorcery is my anecdotal counterexample. I will throw money at any new games like it.
- smoothgrammer 1y agoWait for Into the Radius 2. The first was a masterpiece as well.
- cableshaft 1y agoPuzzling Places and Walkabout Minigolf would like to have a word with you. They're the two games I keep coming back to the most, and both have a ton of varied and interesting content. Making 3D puzzles in 3D space where you can twist and turn everything in 3D to see where things might line up and leave the pieces floating wherever you drop them is very compelling. And the puzzles themselves are sometimes animated and/or have dynamic atmospheric audio for some puzzles depending on what pieces you're grabbing. It's great. That being said, they're both getting kind of old now themselves, at 4 and 5 years old.
- Beijinger 1y agoPorn?
- spacebanana7 1y agoThe best thing for VR adoption would be for Meta to send out a few thousand VR cameras to onlyfans creators, and pay onlyfans a $1B to add VR video support. This might sound expensive and wasteful, but it’s actually probably cheaper than the effort to improve gaming or hand tracking by a substantial amounts. Also more likely to drive unit sales.
- elcritch 1y agoPorn is already destructive enough to society. Making it more immersive would be even worse.
- spacebanana7 1y agoJust wait until Meta puts targeted adverts in there too.
- chasd00 1y agothere use to be a saying that went like "no internet technology can be considered a success until it's adopted by the porn industry".
- spicyusername 1y agoWalkabout Mini Golf is the only VR experience I regularly dust my headset off to return to with friends. Most everything else is either too gimmicky or is just not fun enough to make it worth the cumbersome headset. VR is still really in its infancy, but with Walkabout I really feel like I can see the vision, can feel what is coming. I don't know what it is about that game, but something about the graphics and the gameplay really come together to make you feel like you're inhabiting the space with other people.
- ashoeafoot 1y agoHaving meetings while walking? Not to be in office , but appear to be there.
- mrweasel 1y agoA very small VR setup, with a multi-directional treadmill, which can easily fold in under the sofa. Drop anything but first person gaming, just make that work. Oh and make it PS5 and Xbox compatible. Gamers want to walk Skyrim, or the Fallout wasteland, but if it's just a set of goggles on your face then what's the point? You could just get a bigger TV. I doubt that you can actually do it, with current tech, but $60B and we're no closer? It's still just a set of goggles.
- polotics 1y agothe only thing that would justify VR for me would indeed be the physical activity angle: a good omnidirectional treadmill to do my 20000 steps while gaming.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoThe only, actual objective way for VR to work is for it to be properly world-scale. We need spaces/buildings dedicated for this, and we need setups and headsets from manufacturers which acknowledge this situation. We specifically need users to understand that VR really means VR + giant GPU in your backpack (or I guess laptop in this case). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM Seriously, this video came out 5 years ago, and nothing has improved what-so-ever with VR.
- h2zizzle 1y ago>Go to open field/park (irl or virtually). >Look at your hand. >There is a virtual Pokéball/Yu-Gi-Oh card in it. Something like that. OR I put on my headset, look at my computer/call for my NAS. I ask to see my photos folder. They appear around me as I'd configured previously: as a mass of images that I can manipulate as if they were real, but also if I were psychic. I wave one over, pluck it out of the air, gaze at it. This is way better than scrolling on a tiny phone screen. OR People don't know what they want yet. All they know is that the offerings so far don't appeal to them, being some combination of geek-niche and corporate blandness. One or two or three megacorporations cannot build and control the successor to the PC and smarptphone ecosystems in the heavy-handed manner that they've tried to. Make the tech cheap enough for everyone to get their hands on and easy to develop for (even if you don't get a cut of every single red cent that passes over the platform). Watch the public weave miracles for you.
- markus_zhang 1y agoI'd like to have arguments reality. For example AR could be helpful for defensive driving. It could also be very useful for, say, reverse engineering a piece of hardware - so instead of taking a picture and get into a software, I can do it in AR glasses. I think it's going to be useful for many scenarios but it needs to be small and comfortable.
- Gigachad 1y agoThe only thing I ever hear people do in VR is VR chat. And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex.
- nolist_policy 1y ago> And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex. That's not true at all.
- bentt 1y agoHe has no vision other than “MINE”. He’s playing defense but nobody’s playing offense.
- lvl155 1y agoWhat did he actually create? Did you see any of his “protypes” he desperately showcased before Apple released the Vision Pro?
- sylens 1y agoMeta (and Zuckerberg) are nomads in the current tech space. They have no platform to call their own, so when a platform holder decides to turn the screws on them (like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency), they have little recourse. This is what the future would have looked like for Google if Android did not become a success. Zuckerberg knows this and saw VR as a potential platform that they could own moving forward. It's why they have invested so much in it, renamed the company, and played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store. The problem is that VR is a niche that will never crossover to the mainstream until major problems are solved with the form factor and battery life. Nobody wants a headset strapped to their face for a prolonged period of time. Even the most hardcore of gamers see their headsets collecting dust after a few months.
- fidotron 1y ago> played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store I know rooms full of games industry business people that would die laughing at this suggestion. It's in the same league as talking about third party support on the Wii U.
- sylens 1y agoIt's not great but when compared to the effort Sony put into the PS VR2, Meta's effort to support their Quest devices seems herculean.
- bentt 1y agoSony has never lied to itself that VR is a gateway to the metaverse. It tapped the TAM of VR gaming and saw it was small, not worth their attention. Rational actor compared to Zuck whose only goal is to dominate a future he is attempting to will into existence (which nobody wants).
- apwell23 1y ago> like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency I remember this was a big news a few years ago and stock was battered for a while. How come it didn't seem to effect their bottomlines and stock prices now ?
- feverzsj 1y agoHow much did their AI labs lose?
- LorenDB 1y agoI hope Meta can continue to develop and push VR, but they need to stop pushing Horizon Worlds so hard. They are ruining the overall experience by doing so.
- andrewstuart 1y agoOnce you’re lucky, twice you’re good. Zack has always wanted to make his own ideas happen but hasn’t had any success doing so.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago$60B is an expensive mid-life crisis.
- vincnetas 1y agoFor you. And for me. But everything is relative. And to rephrase "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted". Same goes for money i guess.
- cmrdporcupine 1y agoHey, if it kept some smart 3d graphics nerds employed doing neat stuff for a while... Good? I guess? Too bad it's Meta that owns their IP, though.
- Beijinger 1y agoWell, few people and companies did. Meta, Google. Ebay is the main example. They owned Skype, kinda social network, they owned Paypal. eBay could have been Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Zelle but always stayed...eBay. Amazon is different. Went from books to total ecommerce to IT provider, logistics provider. Yet I hear many complaints about their service quality. They screwed me out of 40 USD that they promised to reimburse in a chat (I have the chat!) and then called it a "misunderstanding". People also complain about Amazon Prime on Reddit and why they canceled.
- _joel 1y agoThe Winklevoss twins would probably take issue with even once.
- munchler 1y agoI'm fond of Slashdot, but I think it makes more sense to link directly to the source article: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/metas-reality-labs-posts-4point2-billion-loss-in-first-quarter.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/metas-reality-labs-posts-4po...
- BoredPositron 1y agoAt this point you can be sure if it’s an original idea of zuck it’s going to be a dud.
- YesBox 1y agoI work in the video game industry and recently saw a chart on the predicted growth of AR/VR (as calculated at the time) over the last decade (i.e. updated predictions over time by various groups). The curves all start curving straight up at the beginning of the chart, and each successive year, they become flatter and flatter. The amusing thing is that the actual sales are drawn below all the predictions and it's basically a flat line (averaged out) Source (Page 48): https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025 https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025 Im really curious what Meta/Apple/Microsoft are predicting for the future
- tokioyoyo 1y agoNobody solved the biggest barrier to VR — it’s incredibly inconvenient compared to other options. And of course, the fun games are lacking too.
- snowwrestler 1y agoThank you for sharing that chart, it is amazing. Gonna put that in my pocket to pull out next time someone is touting a consultant’s overly rosy market forecast.
- xnx 1y agoExcellent chart. The exact opposite of this solar one where actual keeps beating the predictions: https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/1dknl7x/predictions_vs_reality_for_solar_energy_growth/ https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/1dknl7x/predictions_...
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoThank you Meta for not just putting money in safe investments. HN you love risky bets, don’t you?? Isn’t the hacker ethos all about risk? Why deride this - it’s just risk at the big boys table.
- latexr 1y ago> HN you love risky bets, don’t you?? HN isn’t a single person or hive mind. Like everywhere else on the web and the world, there are many different opinions and views. > Isn’t the hacker ethos all about risk? No? I’ve never before seen anyone making that argument. Doing a quick search, I’m not still not finding sources which place “risk” as a mainstay of hacker culture.
- chasd00 1y ago> HN isn’t a single person or hive mind. i really beg to differ on the "hive mind" phrase. Try to run counter to the the thoughts/beliefs de jour in any conversation on economic/government policy and you'll find out how much of hive mind HN really is. Recall the discussions during Covid of Sweden's approach to lockdowns. The rejection was swift and harsh to the idea of even discussing the topic.
- latexr 1y ago> Recall the discussions during Covid of Sweden's approach to lockdowns. I don’t recall those. Do you have a link? Preferably more than one, since there’s bound to have been more than one discussion. Every time I’ve seen someone giving examples of HN agreeing on a stance of some contentious topic, I went back to the discussions and could find plenty of comments supporting either side. Nevertheless, one example doesn’t prove a rule, and agreement on one subject doesn’t demonstrate a hive mind. I’m feeling confident that if a Flat Earth topic were to be posted, most people here—like most people in the rest of the internet and the world—wouldn’t agree with it. Furthermore, there have been plenty of issues which have been flagged in which I disagree with the flagging, and they still contain plenty of conversation supporting either side. Sometimes it’s even reposted at a later point and it becomes a highly-voted front page article. It often depends on the day and time something is posted. There are simply too many humans on HN.
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoFunneling money to some entity for who knows why.
- Shadowmist 1y agoLove the hardware, will never buy another for reasons such as the latest news around their Ray Ban smart glasses AI privacy policy.
- evanjrowley 1y agoThey could probably make it all back if they partnered with From Software and LWMedia to bring Bloodborne PSX Demake[0] to the Oculus Quest. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQb6MEBNqd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQb6MEBNqd8
- this_user 1y agoI think this entire "metaverse" idea is a trap. It's an idea that is very popular in fiction, and that makes tech people believe that this is something that should exist in the future. But the reality is that, from a user perspective, it just doesn't work very well, because it's not a good interface for most use cases for digital devices. Why would I want to strap a clunky VR device to my head to enter a 3D VR to then awkwardly use a virtual keyboard to type an email? Why would I want to do a 3D VR call with low-polygon avatars when I can just do a regular video call? There are very few use cases where this adds anything. Even in gaming, it will probably remain a niche genre, because most genres just work better without VR, especially competitive ones where input precision and latency are crucial.
- cryptos 1y agoYou nailed it! The Metaverse reminds of the block chain in a tragical way. It is a solution waiting for a problem to solve.
- immibis 1y agoAlso we already have one - it's called video games
- makeitdouble 1y agoThe main issue could be that everyone's clamouring for a new smartphone moment, when no technology needs to be that. VR can live on alongside tablets and desktop computers and be a healthy nichey market. It doesn't need to take the world by storm and there is IMHO no need for it to replace Zoom calls (to be honest, Zoom calls are already the bane of our life, why would I want to pay to do them in even more constraining ways ?) Trying to find the "next big thing" in absolutely everything is a curse.
- mountainriver 1y agoI agree, but at some point it will be as simple as putting on a pair of glasses. We are just a ways from that yet
- hathym 1y agoThat would go down in history as the most expensive and award-winning sunk cost fallacy study case ever.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pveierland 1y agoThis is more than the total funding of all modern fusion startups by a factor of 8 [1]. The intellectual + cash efficiency of this seems horrid. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/04/every-fusion-startup-that-has-raised-over-100m/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/04/every-fusion-startup-that-...
- hokumguru 1y agoDecent number of materials scientists, etc that they’ve slurped up too
- h2zizzle 1y agoThis is the outcome of flaccid antitrust/corporate tax policy.
- rchaud 1y agoAnd also ZIRP, which put too much free money in the hands of too few people, who sank into anything that looked like it could pay off one day.
- owebmaster 1y ago> This is more than the total funding of all modern fusion startups by a factor of 8 [1]. That $60B is like US GDP, big but inefficient. Meta spent it on bad acquisitions and inflated comp while those fusion startups are lean and actually build things.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoWell meta at least has a product here and all the fusion companies dont
- andybak 1y agoWhatever if you think of the amount spent or the direction in general it's disingenuous to say "lost" when it's actually "spent". It was a deliberate investment in r&d and a pitch for a future platform. It's not a business that's desperately trying to break even every quarter. I'm not a big fan of meta and I'm not convinced they've made correct decisions all our even most of the time but Zuckerberg has been consistent in saying that this is a long-term plan. (Weather he sticks to it or not here's a different question. The rise of AI and the looming antitrust threat might well change his priorities)
- unsupp0rted 1y agoI was listening to Zuckerberg's podcast interview by Dwarkesh, and Zuckerberg is incisive, intelligent and well-reasoned about AI and Meta's place in the new world order. And then I remembered how hard he pushed all the VR/AR stuff just a couple years ago, just as incisively, going so far as to rename Facebook to Meta. On balance I think I have ever more respect for him because of this flub: most CEO's, especially ones whose entire adult identity is tied to their company, would not be willing to pivot this completely from a lost cause to a smarter one. And of those, only a subset would be able to accomplish it. Gotta give credit where it's due.
- bredren 1y agoThe name change and push were at least in part a way to change the narrative away from Facebook’s lack of data privacy, misinformation and platform harm. Facebook was to Phillip-Moris as Meta is to Altria Group. Part was a strategic realignment toward something zuck perceived as bigger, sure. And this kind of spend goes beyond what would have been needed to accomplish a rebrand.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoBut by all means let's privatize government services, to avoid inefficiency.
- jstummbillig 1y ago"Lost" is a somewhat silly word in this context. All comparisons fall flat but: How much money did the Manhattan Project "lose"? It's R&D. At the very least, the stuff that you learn guides other stuff that you do. It's of course necessary to do book keeping, but let's at least be honest about what can not be captured by that.
- ericyd 1y agoAm I the only one distressed by the amount of good that could have come from $60B over 5 years if applied to a social problem, but was instead squandered on nerd fantasies?
- makeitdouble 1y ago60B is half of what pharma companies allegedly sent back to their shareholders from insulin price hikes. There's better places to direct anger towards overspent money IMHO. At least some people are happy with their Quest 2/3. > Novo Nordisk and Sanofi have seen huge gains as the list price of insulin has grown. The companies have collectively distributed a total of $122 billion to shareholders in the form of share buybacks and cash dividends over the period 2009-2018. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/who-benefits-when-the-price-of-insulin-soars https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/who-benefits...
- rchaud 1y agoDon't be. That kind of money was never going to be earmarked for something in the public interest. Corporations get financing at 0% (or they did back then), so they can set it on fire in an effort to burnish their 'market making' credentials, while regular individuals and nonprofits pay 'market rates' for loans. The only way it could happen is if Zuckerberg had a Bill Gates moment and decided to use his enormous personal wealth to at least try to do some good.
- kyledrake 1y agoThere seems to be this emerging consensus from tech leaders that people want to escape reality and go into a VR world or some flavor of AI focused singularity and I suspect they've miscalculated how much most of their users prefer to, or at least aspire to live a high quality human experience in the actual world.
- margorczynski 1y agoThe thing about Meta and other "Big Tech" companies is that even after two decades of being on the market the expectation from them is still to deliver constant growth and revenue avenues. Meta had a stockpile of cash and Zuck took the bet with VR to be the "next big thing" and drive hype from investors. If it did pan out it would free him from Apple's and Google's grasp on iOS and Android.
- h2zizzle 1y agoIf they'd taken that $60 billion and doled it out in free headsets to high schools and colleges (stripped of cynical phone-home functions and opened up for tinkering), plus a substantial number of no-strings-attached $10k grants, they'd have 50 killer apps by now. I know that they did smaller scale versions of this, but most funding must have gone to dead-end in-house initiatives like their "metaverse" offerings; Zuckerberg's lust for control will be his undoing. Also, screw them for trying to co-opt the term "metaverse".
- cmrdporcupine 1y agoYeah, Meta doesn't want "killer apps" for a headset or whatever. They want a "place" they control and monopolize to box people into and then feed them cack and discourage them from ever leaving. Like their "social" media products, but even more immersive and totalizing.
- Changerons 1y agoA dream job working there, making the Zuck poorer every single day while creating the future !
- rchaud 1y agoThe CEO doesn't pay the price for losing billions, tens of thousands of workers do in the form of mass layoffs. The CEO meanwhile is praised for his "courage" in "pioneering a new market".
- laborcontract 1y agoFacebook is one of the few large companies that's in control of someone who is able to take large risks and does that by way of R&D. I find this admirable (do not conflate this with "I find mark zuckerberg admirable"). Just look at what Microsoft did with Hololens. They bought it, chafed at the thought of a couple billion dollars of additional capex to make it a viable product and dumped the entire project 20 meters from the finish line. If you're going to do something, do it with conviction. Whose money is this? The company's money and investors' money. Let them lose it. Should I be cheering for them to instead to spend that money on streaming rights? Buybacks? C'mon now.
- caseyy 1y agoAt least they tried something genuinely new and exciting. I would say that is an admirable gamble. A real alternative seems to be buying a social media site to radicalize and enshittify it.
- geor9e 1y agoThey must be sitting on some really cool products that will come out any day now.
- xnx 1y agoThat's such an inconceivable amount of money. They could've given away 120 million $500 headsets with built-in ads or whatever.
- xnx 1y agoJohn Carmack gives a pretty good breakdown of his frustrations about the inefficiency and waste at Meta: https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1603931899810004994 https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1603931899810004994 Meta and VR is a good case study to keep in mind when people think only the government can be wasteful.
- rchaud 1y agoAny large, bureaucratic organization will have enormous problems in maintaining an upward trajectory. This criticism is usually levied at government, but is outdated in the 21st century as there are now multiple companies whose revenues and workforce sizes rival those of many regional and national governments.
- cmrdporcupine 1y agoAt least when guvmint "wastes" money in R&D, the IP is often out there and available to people to do things with later. Big companies will hoover up very smart people and employ them paying big bucks basically moving protobufs around in more and exotic ways, and the IP they generate is kept inside (usually).
- disqard 1y agoThe world's smartest and dare I say, wisest (for the tech space) people attacked this problem in the 90s: Jaron Lanier, Randy Pausch, etc. No one was able to come up with a mass-appeal killer app back then, and no has managed to do that this time around, either. No, "Beat Saber" is not it. I imagine we'll see Apple throw in the towel first (like how they got out of the self-driving car space), and then Meta will be left holding the bag. I want to clarify that the tech has improved, plus lots of us geeks will continue to buy and enjoy such devices, but it is not a Visicalc, nor an iPhone. Thus, the Gartner hype cycle hump is gonna tank very soon, and big players hoping to sell millions of units every month will have to exit this space.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]