Meta CTO: 2025 Make or Break Year for Metaverse (msn.com) 59
Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices.
The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.
The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.
Facebook NPCs (Score:2)
Facebook full of NPCs.
I did that 20 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I started developing 3D content professionally in 2004 about a year after joining Second Life and we called ourselves "metaverse developers" back then. My company made $500k in 2007 at the peak of the hype cycle and petered out with the subprime crisis. I also founded the SL wiki, later hosted by wikia, now fandom.
https://www.secondlife.com/ [secondlife.com]
https://secondlife.fandom.com/... [fandom.com]
https://betatechnologies.info/ [betatechnologies.info]
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AR is more compelling because it can be more useful to tag, query, and interact with data that relates to things in the real world rather than remain a glorified video game.
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My generation is saying, “Why would anyone want to wear a bulky headset and be isolated from the world?” Meanwhile, my kids see other children bribing each other just for a turn, and there isn’t a playdate or
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My complaint about VR is that it's not, and never has been, interesting. I have yet to see anything that I find exciting, or more than mildly interesting, and definitely not anything that would convince me to buy expensive hardware.
Re: I did that 20 years ago (Score:1)
But VR is not cool. It was cool 30 years ago. Today it is like "huh? Boring...."
If you want us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Junk your current Metaverse. Sunk cost.
Make an open, open source, metaverse where people can REALLY be anonymous AND YOU DO NOT TRACK US, so people do not actively avoid your metaverse.
Make a cheap ( possibly subsidised ) VR device and get it out there, so people can come to that open metaverse.
Make it free and easy for developers and others to produce content for that metaverse, so people have something to keep them coming to that open metaverse.
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Re: If you want us... (Score:1)
But when he was bowing to the previous administration it was fine, right?
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Re: If you want us... (Score:2)
Re:If you want us... (Score:5, Funny)
Silly Slashdot poster, how would Meta make any money off of this plan? Cheap, open, and no user tracking? What do you think this is... Linux?
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... then don't track us, and be open.
Junk your current Metaverse. Sunk cost.
Make an open, open source, metaverse where people can REALLY be anonymous AND YOU DO NOT TRACK US, so people do not actively avoid your metaverse.
Make a cheap ( possibly subsidised ) VR device and get it out there, so people can come to that open metaverse.
Make it free and easy for developers and others to produce content for that metaverse, so people have something to keep them coming to that open metaverse.
It doesn't need to be cheap, people will drop $500-1000 on a decent VR headset. What it needs to do is work seamlessly with my computer, plug and play as it were, no need for special connectors, buggy software and definitely no requirement for an always online account. I should be able to plug it into the USB and HDMI connections and have Windows detect it as a VR device... maybe you'd need to install drivers but that's it... Just like plugging in a Logitech G29 racing wheel. Same for consoles too.
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Their existing devices work as close to what you describe as to satisfy a million users.
Increasing the price to make them slightly closer and to satisfy picky, rich users like you will not sell 100x more devices.
Meta need to open their metaverse and reduce the price to sell 100x more devices.
Otherwise they will not attract the developers who will make their metaverse a decent place to hang out.
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No.
Their existing devices work as close to what you describe as to satisfy a million users.
Increasing the price to make them slightly closer and to satisfy picky, rich users like you will not sell 100x more devices.
Meta need to open their metaverse and reduce the price to sell 100x more devices.
Otherwise they will not attract the developers who will make their metaverse a decent place to hang out.
Hahahahahahaha...
Mate, something is seriously wrong with your perceptions if you think I'm picky and rich... I'm as Sir Elton once uttered, "the juvenile product of the working class"... You can get the Logitech G29 I mentioned now for about ££270 with the shifter)... this is a great deal more than the El Cheapo brand generic steering wheel for £50 but worth it. People who value gaming are generally willing to pay a bit extra for quality and reliability... Something that'll work for 5+
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Make a cheap ( possibly subsidised ) VR device and get it out there, so people can come to that open metaverse.
That's already being done. It's a primary strategy for them and has been since they started down the path of standalone VR. Cost above all else. Unfortunately tech still costs money.
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Cheap?
Cheap for who? Zuckerberg?
That f'ing thing costs $350 at Costco. I can eat for two months on that.
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$350 for a decent VR headset certainly is cheap. Have you looked at the components?
That said, my prediction is that something like the Samsung GearVR[^1] will come back and take over the low end of the market. Meta has said they're looking at licensing their OS software. Assuming VR stays around at all, this seems incredibly likely to me... phones were already powerful enough to get by a decade ago; They should do quite well now.
Other advantages of the GearVR approach:
* you could upgrade it as you upgrade y
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Your evidence that that is not correct?
I do not have ANY ... (Score:2)
... interest in a metaverse by Meta. I'd rather shack up with Cowboy Neal if I had to.
Break (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we just skip to the conclusion already? It's not make. Nobody wants to use this. It's break.
The hardware is awesome but facebook horizon and metaverse just doesn't make any sense and even if they fix it into something that makes sense the reputation would take years to recover.
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This has had far too many delays. If you start designing hardware when an idea is hot, your hardware is obsolete by the time ready. I rekmember the 'big thinker' who tried to make a 'super pc' out of 2 '286s. It's super hard, and they're too slow, so the project tanked. So will this.
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Re: Break (Score:2)
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Shh! Don't say that! Instead, say "I might use it if it was a bit better" - let them sink another $100bn into it, when they're saying "this had better make it, or else it's the end of Meta", *then* tell them you don't want it.
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Can we just skip to the conclusion already? It's not make. Nobody wants to use this. It's break.
The hardware is awesome but facebook horizon and metaverse just doesn't make any sense and even if they fix it into something that makes sense the reputation would take years to recover.
I'll bet AI could save it! Give the AIs their playground in the metaverse and watch the activity grow by leaps and bounds! None of it would be monetizable, because it'd be systems playing with systems, but at least it would distract the AIs from fucking with our jobs for a little while longer.
Be left with the e-waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying this is a make-or-break year for something normally means it's a "last chance", doesn't it?
So if meta is planning to introduce several wearable AR devices this year, and if the the whole metaverse thing doesn't pan out, what happens in 2026? Do those consumers who ponied up for the new gear find themselves with paperweights a year later?
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Saying this is a make-or-break year for something normally means it's a "last chance", doesn't it?
Well said. Statements like "make-or-break" tell prospective customers that buying your product is a gamble. The statement will have a negative effect on their product.
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Saying this is a make-or-break year for something normally means it's a "last chance", doesn't it?
So if meta is planning to introduce several wearable AR devices this year, and if the the whole metaverse thing doesn't pan out, what happens in 2026? Do those consumers who ponied up for the new gear find themselves with paperweights a year later?
(The NewVintage Generation) ”Excuse me, that is not a paperweight. That’s a new old stock vintage re-issue no longer sold or manufactured that’s now RARE!!!!!!”
Thats four exclamation points minimum. Worth at least $300 in this not-a-recession monkey-fucking-football-drunk Supreme gigconomy that falls for that shit. Every time.
I vote 'Break'. Anyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)
VR may or may not have a future. AR may or may not have a future. This version of the 'Metaverse' though? I don't see it.
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This isn't about generalised VR. It's about Meta's bizarre focus on their horrendous attempt to create a Metaverse - think Ready Player One. Except they suck at software. SUUUUCK at it.
To put this in perspective, I'm an absolute VR fanboi. I will be the first to admit. I've gifted people my first few headsets to get more people into it. My current couple of headsets get almost daily use. But above all I have never used Meta's Horizon Metaverse, beyond playing with it for 5 minutes and leaving in disgust.
If
Re: I vote 'Break'. Anyone else? (Score:1)
Metaverse? (Score:3, Interesting)
They're still going on about this stupid shit?
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Bye (Score:3)
Meta CTO: 2025 Make or Break Year for Metaverse (msn.com)
Who would miss it, or Facebook for hat matter?
A make or break year for Meta? (Score:2)
Let me cheer them on...
Break! Break! Break!
Seems obvious (Score:2)
Is the metaverse "a legendary misadventure" or visionary? How many of us answered that question when Meta first announced their name change from Facebook? Raise your hands.
I thought so.
Smells like desperation (Score:2)
Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary.
Translation: "my ass, and yours, is on the line!"
2025 is the make-or-break year for Metaverse?!? (Score:2)
I thought 2024 was the make-or-break year for Metaverse [theglobeandmail.com], and it broke hard [em360tech.com]. I mean, come on, $1.3 billion dollars for a platform that sees "around 38 daily active users"? Just pull the trigger and put an end to this debacle.
You know what's really, really sad? Zuck's got his head so far up his ass, he can't even imagine what positive change he could have made in this world for $1.3 billion dollars. He could have created a business incubator with that money and funded some real business ideas that could h
AI powered wearables? (Score:2)
Meta could promote "remote work via Metaverse" (Score:2)
Meta has the weight to throw around, to incentivize other companies to walk back their recent return-to-work policies by promoting a "Metaverse office" paradigm.
I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that maybe Meta could push such a program to help save their Metaverse.
Re:Meta could promote "remote work via Metaverse" (Score:5, Insightful)
Meta has the weight to throw around, to incentivize other companies to walk back their recent return-to-work policies by promoting a "Metaverse office" paradigm.
I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that maybe Meta could push such a program to help save their Metaverse.
If Meta ate their own dogfood and allowed a large portion of their 70,000 staff to work fully remote from the Metaverse, it might actually be enough to convince me to give the platform a try.
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As an absolute VR fanboi, as someone who actually uses VR at work sometimes, please don't take this the wrong way but fuck aaaaaallllllll the way off. There is one application for VR that is just rubbish. I don't want to meet digital avatars of my colleagues in a fake digital world. It is not the future, it's something sick. I don't want to spend the day staring at a virtual screen. Not even Apple's headset can make this appealing.
I'll put on my VR headset for model reviews. I'll wear it to play golf, to sh
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But to put it on instead of having a teams meeting or to look at my monitor oooooh heeeeelllllll nooo.
As another VR fanboi, I totally second your summary. This is absolutely the worst use of VR I could imagine.
Break, then (Score:2)
Completely blowing it... (Score:2)
They have relatively healthy revenue, but they are just pissing money away chasing things no one asked for.
No one wants "Horizon". More people want VRChat than Horizon and that's still a tiny portion of the population.
The market would have sustained the more humble ambitions of Oculus, that just wanted to make solid VR as a passion project. Meta is just spending *way* too much money that would demand way more than this niche can deliver.
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They have relatively healthy revenue, but they are just pissing money away chasing things no one asked for.
That's literally how new markets are made. Remember Slashdot in 2006? Actively mocking the moron company who thought any person in the world would ever want a phone without buttons. There's no market for that. It'll be a failure.
Now will Meta succeed? Doubt it. But the point is literally all markets are created by pissing away money into R&D for something no one asked for. Heck no one asked for a car, the horse was perfectly functional and cars were actively mocked for years before they started becoming
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While true, the issue is scale and timeline.
From what I can find, it's said that Apple invested less than $200 million in bringing the iPhone to market. Upon release it was very quickly evident it was a winner, easily within the year of release. If it had flopped, Apple would have been out a fair amount, but a tolerable loss.
Contrast with this, where Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire, and according to this article, over $60 billion (ignoring 6 years of their expense) in trying to expand it and still havi
New company name? (Score:2)
Break, please! (Score:2)
2025 is the year of AI on your smarter watch!
It's dead (Score:2)
It's a zombie
It's a bad idea that won't go away
The ship is sinking, abandon ship
Run away
It was once a strong contender for gold in the olympics of stupid ideas, but now it's just a joke...a bad joke
metaverse trip report (Score:3)
I took a trip to the metaverse recently, this is what I found.
Upon entering the city, I was immediately treated to overhearing a heated argument about wether or not Naruto is racist. I listened for a while, and made my way across the plaza to what looked like some NBA themed experience. Inside the NBA experience there were some not-great VR minigames where you try to get a basketball in a hoop, while in the background there was a frozen video of an NBA game. You could play these minigames to earn tickets to buy hats for your avatar. Nobody was playing the games, so I left. Next, I went to The Office experience. Inside was a flat shaded 3d modeled recreation of the set from the TV show. It would have been interesting if it was a high quality photogrammetry capture of the actual set, but this was just a 3d model somebody created based on watching the show. In the break room there were 3 kids laughing, trying to figure out creative ways to smash the coffee cups. There was some type of minigame you could play to win a hat but nobody was playing it and it looked boring. I left and went to a red rocks DJ experience, which was probably the best thing there, There were maybe 10 or so people all at the front of the viewing area, where you can view a recording of a DJ show. Unlike the NBA experience, this video was actually playing, and it was in 3D. It was not entirely immersive, it was more like a traditional concert video, where the camera changes from the front to the back to the side, etc. This was the only thing IMO worth visiting, but the experience was more clunky than simply going to the Meta TV app and watching the concert video. Overall there isn't really anything interesting going on in there, and its overrun with kids. I was hoping to find educational content that would be interesting for adults, like scans of real places, or virtual museum installations, or even a VR ted talk or something. What I found was a bunch of extremely low effort interactive advertisements.
IMO they need to pivot away from content for kids. The metaverse for kids is ROBLOX, and they have a huge moat. Get rid of the sponsored experiences, and make something interesting for grown ups. Monetization is going to be a huge problem either way. Maybe make shopping experiences? There's no reason why the IKEA vr app can't be in the metaverse instead of where it is now. And honestly, walking around a virtual IKEA, where I could actually buy the stuff there, would have been more compelling than anything I saw on my trip.
If the devs are reading this, another great thing would be if meta acquired a photogrammetry company, and integrated it with the messenger app, so that people could upload 3d scans of their junk they are putting on FB marketplace. A VR garage sale where I can maybe buy the stuff would be more compelling than anything I saw on my trip. Probably would take longer to develop than the 1 year the CTO wants to give it, though.
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Did you pull the specs and then write that those are what's needed for VR to catch on???
It will need to have 4K+ resolution, weigh less than a hardhat, run wirelessly for hours and cost less than $500.
Meta Quest 3 specs:
* "4k+ resolution?
Quest3: 4128x2208
4k: 3840x2160
NOTE: quest3 spec is the total; It's 2064x2208 pixels per eye
* weigh less than a hardhat?
Quest3: 515g (18.16oz)
Hardhat: 14-19oz
* run wirelessly for hours?
Quest3 battery life:
Up to 2.2 hours of usage on average
Gaming: 2.4 hours of usage on average
Social: 2.2 hours of usage on average
Productivity: 1.5 hours of usage on average
Media: 2.9 hours of usage on av
Facebook is Doomed, Because of Recent Changes (Score:2)