Metaverse: What happened to Mark Zuckerberg's next big thing?
Two years ago, the metaverse was billed as the next big thing - but many in the tech world have already moved on.
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But almost two years on, Zuckerberg has been forced to deny that he is now jettisoning the idea.
"A narrative has developed that we're somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse," he told investors in April. "So I just want to say upfront that that's not accurate."
On Wednesday the company holds its annual VR event called Meta Connect.
It's a chance, perhaps, for Zuckerberg to again explain his reasoning for taking an extremely profitable social media company and diverting its focus to an extremely unprofitable VR venture.
How unprofitable? Well, the most recent figures from Meta are eye-watering.
Reality Labs - which as the name suggests is Meta's virtual and augmented reality branch - has lost a staggering $21 billion since last year.
Part of the losses reflect long-term investment. Meta wasn't expecting short-term returns. But the worrying fact for the company is that, so far, there is very little evidence that this enormous punt will work.
Horizon Worlds, a game published by Meta, is about as close as the company has got to creating a metaverse.
Users can hop into different settings - cafes, comedy clubs, night clubs, basketball courts - to hang out and play games.
Meta claims it has 300,000 monthly users: tiny when compared to the billions of people on Facebook and Instagram.
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Nobody cares is what happened
I don't get why they don't get it. Huge numbers of people simply can't afford to invest $400 - $1000 on VR hardware. Those that can have not been adequately convinced of the value and a glorified chat room is never gonna cut it.
And then there are people like me who might have considered an Occulus before Facebook bought them, but I will never use another Facebook product as they are one of the easiest morally-bankrupt mega-corporations to boycott. None of the other vendors have a compelling product for me.
So even me, a tech leader who always hops on the cool new tech toys (I mean, I am posting on Lemmy right now after all) isn't all that interested. Which means I'm not talking it up to people I know. Now ask my friends about my opinion of the Steam Deck and whether it influenced them to buy one. This is Business 101 stuff that the multi-billion dollar company can't seem to figure out.
Don't forget the significant number of people who are interested in the concept itself but not in Zuck's implementation.
Zuck probably was relying on the sheer number of Instagram's users. Little that he knows these people have very little overlap with his actual target audience for it.
AR/VR is a hard line for me that i won't cross. doesn't matter if its facebook or apple or whoever. i don't want it, i don't ask for it, i don't see any benefit coming from it. i can accept it as a gaming gimmick, but aside of that, it's a literal dystopia.
VR/AR is a solution without a problem. It's cool, games are great... but there's no real killer app.
Anyway, AI took the spotlight and the focus.
My favourite VR app is Bigscreen - your own private big-ass cinema. Ever though the resolution isn't as high as a 4k TV, it really is so much more immersive.
However my most used apps are workout games. It's much more fun than going to the gym. The pricetag is pretty steep though.
I think Apple has the right idea going after the professional market. Assuming it works well, I could see it being useful for design, architecture, town planning, and anything where having immersive 3D would be advantageous.
But until there's the VR equivalent of spreadsheets and word processors, things people use at work and then want at home, it's going to be relegated to gaming and porn.
Metaverse died because it sucked, that's all. There's better VR games elsewhere.
the metaverse is not a game.
Sorry, "Meta Horizon Worlds" e.g. the complete failure zucc keeps dumping Meta's money into.
Snow crash was a dystopia, guys.
Also like everyone else said
Reasons for average people to use metaverse:
Doesn't look good I guess
It's just an elaborate scheme for Facebook/Meta not to pay any taxes.
Who likes to wank on a VR? Call me old school but still prefers screens
The fact that everyone thinks the metaverse is just VR proves that nobody got the gist. Happy it failed though
It's so funny to me, because i never even had the thought in my mind that it might become something. I never even knew anyone who would talk about it ever. Then like 1 1/2 years ago i was eating breakfast with a friend and a group of 30 ish year old guys were next to us. One of them told everyone how crazy and dangerous it will be. Like people getting lost in cyberspace and can't tell reality from the metaverse anymore. What are you smoking?