But how long can such investments continue given the current conditions? For all its expenses and its employees, the first version of the product like Earth has met with ridicule; for example when Zuckerberg showed an incredible screenshot of his own avatar, or when Meta was forced to admit that he didn’t know how to follow people.
Uploading
The first impressions of the Meta Quest Pro, an expensive device that tries to revive the Quest 2 for work, have not yet caught fire.
Meta is making progress towards his goals, but slowly and often at a huge cost. It may be 10 years before we find out if there is an audience for the kind of system it is developing, as Reality Labs loses about $14 billion a year and drags Meta’s stock, which fell by about a percent 70 in 2022.
Investing in big long-term bets when your stock is failing is not good for investor relations. In a public hearing Brad Gerstner, CEO of long-time Meta investor Altimeter, called on the company to cut the budget to less than $US5 billion per year.
“A projected $US100B+ investment in an uncertain future is huge and scary, even by Silicon Valley standards,” he wrote in an open letter in October.
There have been various reports of turmoil within the Meta product development team, suggesting that Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse is not shared across the organization.
Insiders said The New York Times and some users refer to the metaverse project as the “MMH” project, which means “Make Mark Happy”, and when Zuckerberg ordered all meetings to take place within Horizon, many users had to try to get and setting up their own headsets. Also sent the source Verge Internal memos of Meta executives wondering why so many users don’t accept the metaverse.
“If we don’t love him, how can we expect our employees to love him,” Vice President Vishal Shah asked in a note.
Recent Event News John Carmack – creator of the hit video game destruction in the 90s and joined Oculus as chief technology officer in 2013 – leaving the company with an internal memo complaining that Meta was “not working very well”.
Uploading
It’s worth noting that, despite the name change and investment, Reality Labs and the metaverse don’t cover all of Meta’s focus. It is still a valuable company that has acquired or developed advanced capabilities in AI, 3D development, advanced and virtual reality. He could put off the development of the metaverse publicly for several years and look elsewhere for nearby investors, although that would push his timeline back further.
In the meantime, other companies can step in and start laying the groundwork for what could one day be, even if it’s not what Meta planned. For example, Apple expects to launch a headset model in 2023 that can take advantage of its years of augmented reality development.
Microsoft has started using Meta tech in its company to make work experience more immersive from home. The likes of Roblox and Epic continue to build a world in video games that integrates other forms of media into a permanent online space, a process that can easily be adapted for purposes and -not a game in the metaverse.
Get news and reviews about technology, gadgets and games in our tech newsletter every Friday. Register here.
