Why Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse is in trouble

There was a time before ChatGPT when the tech world was talking about something completely different.

Do you remember the metaverse?

For a while, it dominated tech news. A virtual reality world that would be so immersive and so attractive that we would want to spend part of our lives in it.

Mark Zuckerberg led to this story.

The tech billionaire was so involved that he changed the name in October 2021 Facebook to Meta.

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“The defining quality of the metaverse will be a sense of presence,” the Meta boss said when announcing the change.

“The feeling of being truly present with someone else is the ultimate dream of social technology. That’s why we’re focused on building this,” Zuckerberg said at the time.

“In the metaverse, you can do almost anything you can imagine,” he added.

No one could accuse him of a lack of ambition.

But almost two years later, Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse is in trouble.

In April he had to deny that he is now scrapping the idea.

“A narrative has developed that we are somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse,” he told investors. “So I just want to say clearly that that does not fit reality.”

A virtual reality that is not profitable

This Wednesday, the company will hold its annual virtual reality event called MetaConnect.

Perhaps it’s an opportunity for Zuckerberg to once again explain his reasoning for taking an extremely profitable social media company and shifting his focus to an extremely unprofitable virtual reality company.

How unprofitable? Well, Meta’s latest numbers are tear-jerking.

Reality Labswhich as the name suggests is the virtual and augmented reality arm of Meta, has lost a whopping $21 billion since last year.

Some of the losses reflect long-term investments.

Meta didn’t expect returns in the short term, but what worries the company is that it has so far There is very little evidence that this huge move works..

Horizon worldsa game published by Meta, is the closest the company has come to creating a metaverse.

Users can access different environments (cafes, comedy clubs, nightclubs, basketball courts) to hang out and play games.

Meta claims it has 300,000 monthly users, a small number compared to the billions of people on Facebook and Instagram.

And at certain times, far fewer people actually play the game.

Users complain about empty worlds, saying there simply aren’t enough people to make it fun. Or, if there are people, they’re usually children.

But the biggest criticism is that it looks a bit shabby, akin to the graphics of the 2006 Nintendo Wii rather than the luxurious virtual reality experience Zuckerberg promised.

Quest Helmets

As for Meta’s virtual reality headsets, it’s hard to see how current technology comes close to the vision expressed by the company’s boss.

According to an article in Meta has Edge from the beginning of this year. That’s not bad, and quest 2 helmets They received positive reviews.

But by the numbers, there are many video game consoles that have done better.

Sony claims this is so PlayStation 5 For example, it sold 40 million copies.

And remember, Zuckerberg isn’t comparing success to a video game console: he wants to revolutionize the way we all live, work and, as he would say, “connect.”

Put bluntly, Virtual reality is still marginal. It’s not the way most people play and it’s certainly not the way most people spend their time. Real life is stubbornly attractive.

In July, during a call with investors, someone asked Zuckerberg why he had spent all that money. “Help us understand,” they asked.

Zuckerberg said he understood the frustration and admitted: “I can’t guarantee you that I’m right on this bet. I think this is the direction the world is going.”

And so this Wednesday we will hear from Zuckerberg how he tries to breathe life into a concept that urgently needs oxygen.

We’ll probably hear a lot more about Meta’s new helmets, the quest 3and how Horizon Worlds is moving to mobile and desktop devices (so you don’t have to wear headphones to play).

We will also hear some new announcements about artificial intelligence.

We will undoubtedly also hear again that the metaverse is a long-term project, that we have not yet seen the real metaverse.

Sure, Zuckerberg still believes in it, as he expresses through Meta’s checkbook. In July, he said Reality Labs is expected to suffer even bigger losses next year.

So the metaverse is still alive and well in Meta, but most of the rest of the tech world seems to have turned the page. (JO)