Meta bought Oculus VR technology in 2014. The attempt to make Meta Quest a mainstream hit cost $8.3 billion this year alone. Despite the lack of enthusiasm from gamers, Mark Zuckerberg does not plan to give up. Since the end of 2020, Oculus VR rebranded as Reality Labs, has accumulated losses of around $50 billion. These are not final amounts; the latest results are even worse than in the first quarter 2024.
Despite the obvious lack of success, Meta is neither giving up nor even slowing down. Efforts in this technology unrelated to gaming have become the subject of jokes, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous VR selfie. The entire Metaverse concept is currently rarely mentioned, although there is no indication that Meta plans to abandon it.
This article is kind of shitty. It looks like the content was mostly taken from the general media coverage that was going around pre-pandemic, edited to incorporate the latest Meta financials. This happens every time new numbers are published. R&D is not cheap and a vast amount of Meta’s research has not been converted to revenue.
Reality Labs is also where Meta’s AI development is happening, so their costs are not just VR-related research. It’s also LLM and other machine learning domains. There is some crossover, such as computer vision, but a lot of their research does not directly apply to what we currently consider VR/MR/AR.
Quest 2 sold over 20 million units, and nearly as many Quest 2/3 have been sold as X-Box Series X/S consoles. Quest products are frequently in a sold-out state on Amazon. That is not an “obvious lack of success”. The only thing obvious is the clueless premise of the entire article (what is “MAGR” anyway?). Framing VR as a gaming platform is another sign that the article was copy-pasted from something written many years ago.
Quest 3 is awesome. VR is still growing in many ways thanks to faithful innovators and dreamers, and without Meta we would be nowhere close to where we are today. There would be no Apple Vision Pro. Finally, after a decade, we are beginning to see real competition in the industry which is already accelerating progress and further investment from Meta, Apple, Google, etc. “Microsoft has not engaged with this technology at all” – what is Microsoft Mesh, then?
It seems the only way to justify the expenses from Meta’s perspective is the long game that results in them being a dominant platform for VR apps. I think it’s generally accepted that nobody wants this outcome, but meanwhile I am thankful for their investment. At this time, the Quest 3 is a relatively open platform as far as Android-based devices go. You can ADB into it and side load software, and when connected to a PC there are numerous debugging capabilities.
As an avid VR gamer I just wanted to say that’s a great summary.
Well said
Stop trying to be the Apple of VR. No one likes Facebook, it will never work.
If they invested in a open standard and ecosystem, more like Android, with easy side-loading they might convince people, but not like this.
Meta Horizon OS is Android. Full of bloat and telemetry, but Android nonetheless. Unlocking ADB and sideloading isn’t trivial, but officially supported.
Technically yes, but in the worst kind of way.
A meta account with attached phone number is needed to use ADB.
In addition to what Emotet said, I‘d add that no matter how closed or open the platform is (and it isn’t even as closed up) no one outside of Lemmy will care as long as it’s a compelling package.
Many people do care about choice and only buy something that isn’t controlled by a single vendor.
But sure, if you can build a positive brand image, some people will overlook this despite the obvious shortcomings, but Facebook is so widely hated that this is a bad strategy for them.
What fer0n probably was hinting at (and I agree with): Yeah, there are some people, especially concentrated in bubbles like Lemmy, who care a lot about privacy, security, ownership (soft and hard) and all that good stuff.
But if, for example, Meta releases a product for price x and a privacy-conscious company releases functionally the same product, but with a truly open system, for 200 bucks more, most people outside our bubble (and even a lot inside) will buy the Meta product.
Why?
Because they don’t care about anything but short-term functionality. And, in a lof of minds, if they’ll get the same functionality for cheaper elsewhere, they’d be pretty stupid to not buy that one.
Folks in general couldn’t give less of a fuck about their privacy and ethics in products and services they buy and use. Usability, Features and Service reign supreme.
That’s an counterfactual argument, because there is a third option: not buy at all, which is what people are doing.
And it’s largely because Facebook, even outside of Lemmy circles. Heck, the sale of the original Quest was even forbidden for quite some time in large parts of Europe because of shady business practiceses of Facebook. This is not a privacy bubble fringe problem, at least not in Europe.
I am very interested in VR. I am utterly uninterested in the “Metaverse”. When I had to make the economical choice between Meta Quest or HP Reverb G2, I chose the Reverb G2.
Any company that tries to co-opt a concept and then make like they invented the damned thing in their quest to corner the market is one of which I will steer well clear.
The quest is both awesome and terrible for an entry level headset. Its way way more affordable than anything else but its fairly locked down both in ecosystem and in being unable to tether to your own PC. If the quest was 25% cheaper and was tethering based rather than using underpowered onboard hardware it would be amazing.
