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Unbelievable. They re-architected the whole operating system around this stupid app. They discontinued their previous homescreen environments in favor of trying
by xd1936 7mo ago
Unbelievable. They re-architected the whole operating system around this stupid app. They discontinued their previous homescreen environments in favor of trying to promote Horizon Worlds, only to discontinue the blasted thing anyway? After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen?
- kemotep 7mo agoBillions. Facebook has spent billions and billions over the past decade in VR. Starting with the Oculus merger and then in 2021 with the rebrand. 10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.
- EGreg 7mo agoThey could have just waited until AI came out, now they can spend $1 million on tokens and slop :)
- xd1936 7mo agoI meant hundreds of millions on Horizon Worlds specifically. Virtual concerts and the like. Big "Hello Fellow Kids" energy.
- tantalor 7mo agoCan you blame them? They saw the huge success Fortnite was having in that space. Facebook's core competency is copying other successful products. Sometimes it works.
- Raed667 7mo agoI kept saying to myself, they must be seeing something I'm not... I guess not
- ceejayoz 7mo ago"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand." - All The President's Men
- bee_rider 7mo agoVR games are actually kind of neat and fun. But it’s too much of a hassle to set the thing up every time and, I dunno, the association with Facebook is too icky. It would have been really interesting to see what Oculus could have become without getting bought. I do think they were a little neat idea, not at all ready for Facebook sized projects.
- m4rtink 7mo agoWith modern inside out tracking headsets (basically camera based SLAM) the setup us none to minimal (clear up some space on the ground so you don't trip over things if not playing seated).
- jrm4 7mo agoAs I've heard and said elsewhere -- VR Games are absolutely like a day at the fair. But no one wants to go to the fair EVERY DAY.
- spijdar 7mo agoThis is a fantastic way of putting it. When I was 20, I preordered a pixel 2 after watching the launch presentation from my university library. One of the "bonuses" for doing so was Google's new headset you put your phone in for a VR experience, along with a new controller. This "Daydream" only lasted a few years (in software support), but it was a pretty good physical implementation of the "strap your phone to your face for budget VR" concept. I used it more than I'd care to admit for watching movies on a virtual big screen. It'd always give me a big headache between the eyes after an hour and a half, but it was fun every now and again. A day at the fair. It even convinced me to buy an Oculus CV1 when those were being heavily discounted! I never ended up using the CV1 as much as my Daydream, which is saying something. The appeal of VR just isn't that great to me. It's something I find myself wanting to do maybe once or twice a year. Now, never, since the CV1 only ever worked well with Windows, and I can't be bothered to keep a Windows install exclusively for VR (I've tried and failed multiple times with the Linux runtimes). Not nearly enough drive to deal with base stations, wires, or controllers. And even with the newest headsets that do away with all those, not worth the cash or effort to put on, or the space the headset takes up. Not for "once a month" trips to the fair. It's insane to me that Meta dumped so much cash into VR. Their fever dream of working in VR gives me a sense of dread and migraine just thinking about it...
- reaperducer 7mo ago[flagged]
- JCharante 7mo ago50 billion can't solve world hunger. It's not even a money issue.
- reaperducer 7mo agoSince you're an expert, perhaps you'd like to share the magic number with the rest of us.
- michelb 7mo agoSo, a fraction of the AI investments? It’s pretty clear where the focus is bow and who/what no longer has a future at Meta.
- TacticalCoder 7mo ago> So, a fraction of the AI investments? It’s pretty clear where the focus is bow and who/what no longer has a future at Meta. And the tens of billions spent on AI at Meta... As a result, we're all using "Meta Code CLI" and "ChatBook" and "Geminizuck" right? Seriously: while we're all on Claude Code using the Anthropic models and many are happy with Gemini and ChatGPT for other stuff, where is Meta's AI offering? I love their Segment Anything Models (SAM) but what the heck has Meta to answer to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI?
- ehnto 7mo agoDo they need one do you think? They are trying to make one for sure but it's interesting to think about whether they actually need their own models to survive the shift. Maybe they just deliver other people's models via Meta products?
- marcus_holmes 7mo agoIt's about growth. Meta stock is priced as a growth stock - not on its current financial returns but on what the market believes it will do in the future. It has been priced like this from the start because it has been growing since the start. As soon as it stops being able to convince the market it is still growing, then the stock price drops to what the business's current financials dictate, which will be a huge drop. That huge drop has severe negative consequences for everyone involved in that decision. Spending tens of billions on the Metaverse project was better, even though it failed, because it created a growth story they could sell to the market. So now that's gone they need another growth story. Given the current state of the tech world, that's probably AI-related. And they probably need their own models as part of it. They can't just "survive the shift" because it's not really about survival. They need to be part of the shift, so that they can convince the market that they're still growing.
- alexpotato 7mo agoWhat's the quote: "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about some real money."
- jemmyw 7mo agoIs that a bad thing? That's 10b that engineers and other employees now have and Facebook doesn't have. And while VR might never make them money, is it bad from our pov that they did the research and development?
- reverius42 7mo agoIt's probably a bad thing for anyone who doesn't already own a house near Menlo Park and wants to buy one.
- lm28469 7mo agoI still remember the VR hype of 2015, they predicted a market size for 2017 that we won't even reach by 2027, and probably 2037
- TiredOfLife 7mo agoNot on Horizon Worlds
- eclipxe 7mo agoReality Labs is more than VR
- mosura 7mo agoThe usage numbers probably reflect what happened in this house: since the pestering to confirm age and the horizon worlds update the Meta VR devices have literally not been recharged. They had the foundation of something half reasonable at one point, but their product management clearly got in the way.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 7mo agobut their product management clearly got in the way I'm pretty sure the buck stops with Mark Zuckerberg.
- mosura 7mo agoZuckerberg wants a cyberpunk future, not some 3D immersive HR department on your face.
- CobrastanJorji 7mo agoThey also renamed the entire corporation from "Facebook" to "Meta" to prove how serious they were about it.
- tavavex 7mo agoWhile simultaneously renaming the VR headsets to also use Meta branding instead of Oculus, even though Oculus was a great brand and the most recognizable name in the VR industry. What made it worse is that by that point they'd produced lots of headsets with Oculus branding, including an Oculus button on one of the controllers. So, they had to change that button to also have a different logo and name, and have the software presumably recognize which revision you had to draw the correct controller model in the VR view. It's insane how far they went in pursuit of what they saw as the next NFTs.
- actualwitch 7mo agoIIRC the reason they abandoned Oculus brand was that Palmer Luckey sold the company with condition the Oculus headsets would not need a facebook account to use it. Later they renamed the company and headset, and would you look at that — it requires meta account now.
- tavavex 7mo agoI think the Oculus Quest 2 was the first one to release with a Facebook requirement, but it was still Oculus-branded. It was this headset that they swapped out the branding on when they renamed themselves to Meta. Earlier models still have the Oculus logo on them and the controllers, despite being as locked-down as all the others. The rebrand came much later than the account requirement.
- eclipxe 7mo agoThis isn't correct
- vrganj 7mo agoFunnily enough, it did end up as the next NFTs, just not in the way they hoped
- anthonybsd 7mo ago> After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen? Billions. $70 billion since 2021 to be exact.
- johnwheeler 7mo agoNot millions. Many many billions. (not on virtual events, but on the platform itself--that's the crazy part)
- m4rtink 7mo agoAnd at the same time VRChat is reaching record popularity and user counts with tiny fraction of the budget Facebook wasted. And it is so simple - just listen to your users and give them what they want - which seems to be VR cat girls.
- ehnto 7mo agoI think that's the issue Meta had, they were trying to introduce VR to the greater public. VRs actual community is a niche of individuals who love the technology, they didn't want what Horizon was offering. VRChat is too weird for the average person, but Horizon was not interesting enough for the average person either. I do believe that the recent Meta headsets pulled in a lot of users who will stay, thanks to their price point and performance.
- chaostheory 7mo agoThere was a solution for meta though but they failed to pivot. Almost every generation as a whole disliked VR, except for children. Gen Alpha is into VR, but meta failed to market it as their NES or much better Roblox. Instead, meta marketing stayed focused on disinterested adults. Maybe it was because the children were using their parent’s accounts since it’s apparent that meta’s marketing department didn’t touch their VR devices? Otherwise, they’d realize the horizon and every online VR game was filled with kids.
- fermentation 7mo agoThey rebuilt half of their company around this thing and countless people saw promotions all around.
- ta9000 7mo agoMark isn’t in charge because he’s smart, he’s in charge because of voting rights.
- urbandw311er 7mo agoOr, to put it another way that actually gives him some credit, because he founded the company.
- salad-tycoon 7mo agoPersonally, I find it refreshing that he’s one of the only ultra large CEOs that’s willing to go big or go broke. Otherwise, you end up with fossilized X trillion dollar company that amounts to a combination of safe haven/growth stock for retirement accounts and whose innovations amount to little more than finding pretty ways to machine different types of metal cases and who seemingly has entire research teams dedicated to discovering various new shades of grey every year. (This take isn’t fair to Apple, tbh, but they have gotten booooring under Tim Cook.)
- ta9000 7mo agoWhat innovation has Meta made since Facebook itself done that’s been incremental to revenue? Instagram and WhatsApp are acquisitions. Facebook itself is fundamentally broken from an actual user perspective. Not to mention the real harm Facebook and Instagram do to kids.
- droptablemain 7mo agoNo, not millions. Billions. Like $70+ billion.
- dana321 7mo agoThats a lot of money to (attempt to) remake Ready Player One, and then abandon it??