Four years in, Meta has burned through $45 billion chasing its metaverse dream

[Vanderlinde]

45 billion....

The things the company could have done with that. No, instead of pushing for more VR.

 

[Axeia]

Zuck saw the success of Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite and thought they could do it better. Problem seems to be that Meta hired the wrong people for it as it.
1 Looks bad
2 Doesn't add anything of value
3 isn't fun

Must have been expensive people though with those costs. Yet what was delivered looks like it was made by a small group fresh out of college.
They should have just collaborated with Epic Games.

 

[Watzupken]

It's a growing trend to lose money. This is Concord x112.5.
In comparison Roblocks annual revenue is about 3.5 billion dollars, Minecraft 300 million dollars and Fortnite 1.8 billion dollars annually.

You can't even buy a meta gift card in most national chain pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens currently vs. The other competition.

The problem is that it’s not Mark’s money that’s being burned, it’s the shareholder’s. And if the shareholders for whatever reasons choose to throw in more money and not hold Mark accountable, he will just continue doing it. After all, he is already a billionaire and unlikely to expend his wealth for a few generations. So taking dumb risks is of no concern to him. If he makes it, he just becomes richer, with little downsides for him if the investment don’t take off.

 

[toooooot]

There needs to be an easy way to convert non VR games into VR.
There are terabytes of games that would be improved by playing them in VR.
Even better, many of them are much easier on GPU which means much more comfortable
framerate. And lastly, all VR makers need to use the same standards. All games should be playable
on all VRs. Meta is so big that it could afford to build its own library and store.
But I do not think they are satisfy with the amount of money they make.
Look at PC industry. Hundreds of companies supplying parts for products that more or less are built using the same standards. Enough time passed to see that it is not going very well for VR.

 

[pnntmp]

I think Metaverse is fundamentally a good idea, but ahead of its time.
With the ridiculous headsets and bad graphics it was never going to work.

We are just now starting to have the necessary building blocks.
AI can generate the avatars and virtual environments on a whole new level, and in a couple of years they'll be indistinguishable from reality. Replace the headsets with glasses and there you have it.

So ... don't write it off just yet. It's certain to appear.
The risk for Meta is that it may not be their Metaverse. When it all started, Meta was the only one having the resources, user base, expertise and all to pull it off. Now with the help of AI, an orders of magnitude smaller company can do the same. Indeed Meta can just buy them, but the risk is there.

 

[Puiu]

I'm more surprised by the $2 Billion in revenue? Selling what? Is the Quest headset part of that? Must be cause I can't imaging what else they could be selling.

VR isn't as small as you may think. It's just not big enough to be considered mainstream.

 

[user556]

It's a growing trend to lose money. This is Concord x112.5.

Concorde made BA lots of money while it flew. More than 50% of total corporate profits came from that one route.

 

[mbk34]

"Internal chaos, unqualified leadership, and lack of a clear plan has allegedly contributed to losses"

This text could be applied to so much these days.

 

[godrilla]

There needs to be an easy way to convert non VR games into VR.
There are terabytes of games that would be improved by playing them in VR.
Even better, many of them are much easier on GPU which means much more comfortable
framerate. And lastly, all VR makers need to use the same standards. All games should be playable
on all VRs. Meta is so big that it could afford to build its own library and store.
But I do not think they are satisfy with the amount of money they make.
Look at PC industry. Hundreds of companies supplying parts for products that more or less are built using the same standards. Enough time passed to see that it is not going very well for VR.

There is definitely a niche market that can be carved out with minimal investment to maximum returns. At this point Handhelds/game market are improving significantly every year at a faster pace than VR from the looks of it. Retrofitting your library for a minimum fee would probably spark masse interest imo.

 

[Hexic]

One day in the future, someone is going to take the technology Meta has thrown billions at and make something great with it. But it won't be for a little while, and it probably won't be Meta doing so.

Zuck is just putting in some of the hard R&D for someone else to hijack later.

 

[techstrike]

I will repeat my self but yeah...

The only chance that Metaverse and any platform that invests to VR can get profits is to support the adult industry.

This is how internet became famous and that's the only way to VR to be successful.

 

[hwertz]

I have no idea how they've pissed away THIS MUCH money on this stuff.... I see that (effective end of 2024) Linden Labs spent a total of $1.3 billion on Second Life (and paid $1.1 billion to creators). The 1.3 billion is to both build and operate it, and it was founded in 2003, so that's covering software development, buying servers (at first, it's all in AWS now so more recently cloud fees instead), and operational staff and expenses for 21-22 years!

The goals of Metaverse? 3D environment (SL does that). Multi user (SL does that). Buy and sell goods ans services (SL does that). Own land (SL does that and also has a full-blown rental system, including sublets). Own property (SL does that). No 'blockchain' (if Metaverse is still on about that) but their conventional database successfully keeps track of peoples balances, items bought and sold, inventory, etc.... why (as a user) would I care *how* they keep track of them as long as it's reliable? It's even got an 'open server' setup, so one could splice together a 'metaverse' where the servers aren't even owned and operated by the same company, and (besides 'teleporting' from one to the other) they can even be placed adjacent so one could just walk from one location to the other.

One thing SL is missing is VR support -- they actually built it for VR, realized (in 2003) that VR hardware was too expensive, and switched it to screen display and keyboard + mouse control. Then when VR much later caught on, found out the code was a bit too antiquated to tack VR support back onto. Ahh well.

Linden Labs *then* (much more recently) developed Sansar, which was basically intended as a VR-supporting replacement for Second Life. They were making enough cash off Second Life they decided to sell off Sansar. Estimate is they spent $50-60 million. As far as I know Second Life is quite a bit more popular; but Sansar is up and running, and also has all this stuff Meta vaguely wants as and end goal for their Metaverse, in this case including the VR support. For about 0.1% the cost.

I'm just saying, $45 billion for a system with bad looking avatars, no legs, I mean it still looks like a bad tech demo compared to systems that have been running in some cases for decades, created for a tiny tiny fraction of the cost.

 

[hwertz]

I will repeat my self but yeah...

The only chance that Metaverse and any platform that invests to VR can get profits is to support the adult industry.

This is how internet became famous and that's the only way to VR to be successful.

Yup. I read a few years back that 90% of Second Life's revenue was from porn and gambling. There's a lot to do in there besides going to a virtual strip club and making change, or throwing cash into a one armed bandit (and there's a lot of users in there doing things besides porn and gambling). But those two are highly profitable for them.

 

[McKocoa]

Maybe I've said it before but the original wii sports did it better, me and friends would play it together in the reality world

 

[Q Wales]

It's hard to drive new tech without a "Killer App". VR has a lot of interesting fun things, but has yet to show it in the "must have" way it needs to catch on. I'm still on the fence with AI for this reason as well. While artwork, search summation, and doing kids homework is entertaining as well, I'm not seeing the killer app that will justify what their spending either. At least one that will justify all the expense. Even if it does succeed, what good is it if it costs 4-5 times more for the hardware and energy than the employees they let go of in the first place?

Totally agree and I can't believe no one has created a leveling up type game that involves a bloody good workout yet. To me it seems such an obvious place to start

 

[ZanardiZZ]

Totally agree and I can't believe no one has created a leveling up type game that involves a bloody good workout yet. To me it seems such an obvious place to start

Using current tech HMD is already a workout. And sweating on them is an awful experience.