Meta's Investment in Virtual Reality on Track To Top $100 Billion 34
Meta's investment in virtual and augmented reality is set to exceed $100 billion this year as CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares 2025 a "defining year" for its smart glasses ambitions. The company invested $19.9 billion in its Reality Labs division last year, according to its annual report, bringing total spending on VR and AR development to over $80 billion since 2014. The unit, which develops Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest VR headsets, sold 1 million pairs of glasses in 2024 but continues to post losses, according to Financial Times.
Come on Zuck! (Score:2, Insightful)
Come on Zuck! Now you've fired all your moderators, move their budget over to VR - it's the next big thing, it's gonna be bigger than AI! You're gonna have to go both feet in on this!
We can but hope he spends all their money on it...
Simpler, cheaper solution (Score:3, Insightful)
So a simpler, cheaper solution to making Meta's version of VR popular would have been to give everyone in the US a pair of Meta VR glasses.
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of course, the $100 billion is total spend over many years, which included (for example) developing many generations of hardware and software. Giving people products that wouldn't have existed without spending to make them isn't much of a 'solution'.
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The difference between the actual cost to make 350 million of them and $100 billion would, obviously, be enough to fund their development and basic software and - given the 350 million customer base - developers would be highly incentivised to produce more advanced software, making the product make money for Meta - and useful
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What for? Outside of scratching the porn itch, what is the use of these ridiculous glasses in everyday life that a set of Google cardboard glasses doesn't work for? Even for porn, how is the cardboard thingy not enough?
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Video games, for one.
Cardio workouts (using video game elements to make them fun and keep people engaged).
Guided meditation
Watching movies/shows on a large virtual screen in a private virtual theater (or other outlandish environment)
You don't NEED VR headsets for any of these things. But they DO provide an interesting way of doing them all.
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I really can't see how you can do proper exercise with this shit attached to your muzzle [youtube.com]. For the rest of the things you list, I either don't know what they are, or don't care about.
So, yep, not only unnecessary and useless, but probably harmful.
That stupidity is still going on? (Score:2)
Talk about delulu...
Don't bother clicking (Score:2)
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I'm betting (Score:3)
Meta will suddenly get a military contract for a bunch of this stuff.
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How about making the VR product suck less? (Score:5, Informative)
I got a Meta Quest 3S for Christmas, and found that the list of available VR software is pretty slim and they do their damnest to block 3rd party downloads on the device. Either you need to use the Meta store, or you're going to need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get your application installed.
This certainly isn't a "hardware hacker friendly" device at all.
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Very true - their model is to the 'console model' of subsidizing the headsets and use revenue from the store to pay that off and eventually grow to make a profit. And to do that, they don't want people side-loading apps outside the store. Though they did open up the 'lab', making it very easy for people to install those apps, which are easy to publish.
That being said, since you can easily stream games to the Quest from a PC, e.g. run Steam VR games, it's pretty easy to run any VR games you like, assuming yo
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their model is to the 'console model'
If that were true they they wouldn't provide both first party ways of connecting to other devices along with OpenXR compatible APIs to allow playing games on other stores written for other VR APIs and other headsets, nor would they allow 3rd party apps that do the same thing.
It's silly comparing this to a console. They are orders of magnitude different in the manner in which they are locked down.
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What list of software were you expecting? And what are you hoping to hack? Precisely everything gamewise designed for this device is available on that store. This is the state of HMD only VR. It's a limited market. If you want something different you need to switch to PCVR and they make it damn easy providing multiple ways both wired and wireless to access 3rd party systems on PCVR, including providing official APIs to do so or even providing other companies like Valve to host their own software to connect
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The unfortunate problem of big numbers (Score:2)
People don't seem to understand them. $100bn over the past 5+ years sounds a lot for a major investment, but it's really not for a company that makes far more than that in revenue every single year.
They literally have the money to burn. They are spending like this while still posting regularly quarterly profits in the double digit billions. Maybe they'll get lucky and corner a new industry like the iPhone did. Maybe they won't. But in general that amount of spending as a percentage of profit is actually a t
Re:The unfortunate problem of big numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't seem to understand them. $100bn over the past 5+ years sounds a lot for a major investment, but it's really not for a company that makes far more than that in revenue every single year.
I'm sorry but $100billion with a big B should be a fuckton of money in anyone's book. Yeah they might have several fucktons more but a fuckton it remains.
Coulda done a whole lot of actual good with that money except they have pissed it all away for nothing more than a hope and a dream with no suggestion it'll even catch on let alone pay off. Not any time soon at least.
The question should be how a company with no actual product makes so much cash. Obviously they do have a product that is worth a lot more than the people who are it are aware of.
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Sure, $100B is a lot, but that also created products that are selling well (Quest is the top VR headset by a huge margin) and selling a lot of software for the Quest. So they didn't just burn $100B they spent $100B and generated about $50B in revenue so far. That's a big investment, but rather obviously they produced real products and a lot of revenue, they didn't just "piss it all away", they're investing big in trying to make a big new market that they dominate.
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Yeah and? My point is so what? Is the news that its a big number or the news that you should be angry about it?
Coulda done a whole lot of actual good with that money except they have pissed it all away for nothing more than a hope and a dream with no suggestion it'll even catch on let alone pay off. Not any time soon at least.
They have done a lot with the money. Those $100bn have released multiple generations of headsets, funded game projects, produced actual R&D results that have taken the industry forward, and have sold well enough to outsell many games consoles on the market (e.g. Meta's VR products alone are more popular than the Nintendo Gamecube).
We get it, you don't like VR, that doesn't mean it was a waste o
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Coulda done a whole lot of actual good with that money
Like what? More ads and data collection? More engaging short videos? Yet another LLM?
I am actually glad that Meta spends so much in AR/VR instead of what everyone else does. This is tech with potential, and Meta is the only big company taking it seriously even now that we have passed the hype cycle. How they do it is debatable, but at least, they do it. AI has potential too, but everyone else is doing it. As for social media, most of the progress being done, we would rather do without...
Meta is a tech compa
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The question should be how a company with no actual product makes so much cash.
Senator... they sell ads.
And what is there to show for it?? (Score:1)
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SL has nothing to do with Meta. Meta's VR software products are even less compelling. At least SL has something going for it, they can sell their product to weirdos and pervs.
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Well... you have Beat Saber and Half Life: Alyx, and... OK, that's about it right now. Those are the only two "blockbuster" VR games at the moment. Kinda pathetic considering the money that's been invested in the platform.
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What is there to show for it? Nothing. Except for 3 generations of standalone headsets covering multiple models, selling better than the Nintendo Gamecube, multiple pieces of research which have been publicly published advancing our understanding of motion sickness, sight, advancements in foveated rendering, improvements in optics, and visual tracking, and the purchase of multiple studios known for releasing some fun games (despite you not enjoying them).
I looked at Second Life once. I wouldn't caught dead on it.
Absolutely agree, but that has nothing to do with VR
How long and how much (Score:2)
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For you, never. VR isn't for everyone. There are plenty of people out there who get more than simply novelty enjoyment out of it. But there are countless more who don't understand it in the slightest, and probably never will.
Do you like fishing? IMO the dumbest and mind numbing activity I've ever seen other than playing golf. Yet people like it, and that's okay too. If you're not already enjoying VR, then don't expect it to change in the future with any amount of money spent on it. If on the other hand you
Props to Zuck for his conviction (Score:2)
Props to Zuck for his conviction. Many's the tech leader that has foreseen the future, and yet failed to successfully navigate their company into that future, like Microsoft missing out on the smartphone. But Zuck is convinced that AR is the future, and he's determined that Meta isn't going to miss out on it, because Meta are going to be the ones that make it happen. Only time will tell if it's a good call, but it's going to be interesting watching it play out.
Some numbers for comparison (Score:2)
Revenue in the AR & VR market market worldwide is projected to reach US$46.6bn in 2025. Revenue is expected to exhibit an annual growth rate (CAGR 2025-2029) of 7.42%, leading to a projected market volume of US$62.0bn by 2029.
I don't get it (Score:2)
I don't see a lot of uses for the tech.
The demos that show floating computer screens that you manipulate with hand gestures look silly and fake. When I want to use a computer, I use a proper computer.
The virtual worlds are a total failure. I don't want to be a cartoon, interacting with other cartoons.
I can imagine use cases where architects walk around a virtual building before it's constructed, and there may be other uses that make sense.
I don't claim that the tech will always be useless. Really compelling
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Yeah, I tried the Remote Desktop experiences on the Meta Quest 3S headset, and found them highly lacking. The screen resolution just isn't good enough yet. I'd imagine that the $3,500 Apple VR headset is much better... or at least it should be at that price point.