It’s sort of like how YouTube ran at a loss for a long time. The idea is to get ingrained in the market and make up the money later.
Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible. If some new idea or technology catapults VR into a more popular position, then Meta is in a prime position to take advantage.
Will that happen? I don’t know, but Meta seems to think so.
Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible.
Too bad the company is absolute garbage. I’m not even willing to look at their ‘products’ anymore.
Particularly with articles like this around:
https://observer.com/2024/03/meta-facebook-compete-snapchat-class-action-document/
Yep. I will never use any VR product by Meta. Mark can go zuck himself.
Meta is the only reason I’m staying away from their AR/VR headsets. If it was any other company, I would have jumped in by now.
There are a lot of problems keeping VR from going big and I think Meta’s strategy of cornering the market is one of them. They think if they get all the exclusives they’ll be the next iPhone but I think instead they’re fragmenting an already tiny market which really needs a bunch of impressive experiences (and there still aren’t a ton right now, even after years of VR development). I feel like the reverse would win them more users - they should win on hardware AND software but make their software available for any VR headset to use. Because right now they need to help create a market for VR because there really isn’t one worth cornering yet.
I don’t think the technology is there yet. As long as people need to wear big bulky goggles and headsets it’s not going to take off. Make something that’s about as cumbersome as sunglasses and less than $1000 and there might be mass adoption.
March 2023 they sold 20M Quests. Half as many as PS5. That counts as “taken off” in my book.
Wow, I’m shocked it’s that high. I’ve never heard of someone using one.
Everyone in my family has one. We play ping pong. It’s cool, you feel like you’re in the room with someone even when they are many miles away.
Having said that, I believe most of the users are minors. Whenever I log into a multilayer game, there are children taking.
Besides ping pong, there’s Best Saber and 3d jigsaw puzzles. Outside of that, I haven’t really had much fun outside of occasional shooting / archery.
It sucks that it’s owned by Facebook of course. I deleted my Facebook over 10 years ago now. I had to set it up with my girlfriend’s Facebook account.
Everyone in my family has one. We play ping pong.
This reads like a joke. 50 years of technological development and people are just playing hi-tech pong.
With people* they aren’t physically near to
I think that’s the important part
I bought vr for simracing…I use vr for Beat Saber
I play putt-putt with my sister and we’re both in our fifties.
Daily active users are a much better indicator of success.
Halo infinite had a peak player count if 272,000. Now it sees DAU of only 3,000
It depends what the tie ratio / attach rate is for the device and whether owners maintain usage of the device or whether it’s a novelty that wears off over time and the device gathers dust.
VR is already great today, and lots of us are enjoying it. I know several people with VR systems.
I’m waiting for more Bigscreen Beyond class weight headsets. 127 grams.
But it’s tethered and the headset itself is ~1000, and you need the stations and controllers as well.
YouTube still runs at a loss
Valve index better
The index is better overall and I love mine, but I can’t help but feel jealous that someone can just grab their quest, put it on and get into VR immediately. I have to cart my PC downstairs, turn the base stations on, find the index and wire it all up, troubleshoot why Windows has decided to mess up the drivers and now nothing works, and maybe half an hour later finally get into a game or completely give up and try again another time.
The quest gains a lot in portability and ease of setup, and that does result in a lot of other features being sacrificed but to most people the downsides don’t matter as much.
Its not just YouTube. Pleant of companies lose money on their product Loss leader
I’m surprised they made 440m. However, investing in r+d is not unusual. This amount is not a huge investment for them based in overall revenue.
If you report a loss you don’t pay taxes. Or something like that I’m not an accountant.
Bezos actually was refunded tax $ one year
Write-offs are entirely misunderstood by people. Writing off losses doesn’t magically make loss profitable.
I’ll use myself as an example. I teach underwater photography at a university as a side gig. Last year I made about $3,000 teaching the class, and I also spent about $1,000 on underwater camera gear for the class. Because of that I get to reduce my taxable income by $1,000, so it’s as if I made $2,000.
At my tax bracket a write-off reduces my income taxes by 22% of the expense. So on a thousand-dollar purchase I’m still losing nearly 800 bucks.
Yeah. Come back in 10-15 years when half the world is using it or a successive product and people will be posting articles like these laughing at them like they do with the ones saying the internet or cell phones will never catch on and surprisingly no one will open up and admit they were the ones denying it would come. Meta has the money, they don’t care how much they spend, as long as they can get in and corner the market early they will make it back many times over in the years to come… assuming climate change or nukes don’t make it impossible of course.
So what? R&D expenses aren’t supposed to turn an immediate profit. Developing a new technology can take years before it’s earning money, and some never do. I’m all aboard the “hate meta” train, but that’s nothing.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but these companies need to pay more taxes. Losing $3.9 billion dollars on a stupid vanity project because they have nothing else to spend it on is ridiculous. Higher taxes would at least force them to be more efficient.
But VR is cool
Investment is good. Public policy is usually designed to encourage it that’s why investment has good tax avoidance that is exactly what the government wants.
You reckon Apple made money on it’s VR division either?
Almost nobody is making big money on VR, because nobody wants to work together to make it into a widely compatible common standard. If you could have one headset that worked on all platforms, for a reasonable price, you’d get a lot more take up, and nicer headsets costing more would make more sense.
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Meta is valued at 1.12 Trillion, which, sure, is only ~1/2 of Apples 2.6 Trillion… but Meta could invest in VR for the next 20 years without feeling the pain.
I do love my Q2 and Q3, and hope they keep pushing VR forward, which is the main (maybe only) reason i was happy to see apple join the competition.
Take a look at Meta revenue numbers, they can afford billions in R&D investment just fine. I’m not sure what market share you’re talking about but there’s plenty of money for them to afford the VR research they do.
Why that’s a 10% return on investment!
Business lesson, : never build a factory because it won’t pay for itself in the first year.
And yes I know it’s hard to hear but Meta’s vr is doing really well in the areas they targeted, industry, academia, and special use. This is likely to end up a profitable part of their business for a long time.
Yeah unfortunately I agree, as much as I dread knowing Meta’s going to be behind a lot of the VR/AR developments as it gets more common, this isn’t really an indication that they screwed up. They’re not the first company I’d want to lead the VR market but it looks like they will be regardless.
I was happy and now I am sad.
What is “really well”?
its like they have too much money and they’re burning it away on bad ideas. Imagine how much public housing that money could have built.
I mean, you do understand that this money isn’t just vanishing right? It’s being spent on people, manufacturing, materials. It doesn’t just vanish into nothing.
Its also drawing real resources away from other things. The real estate used on these luxury failures had other potential buyers and raises costs across the board as it competes for chip factory space, marketing, etc.
If the money was taxed out of circulation it actually does essentially vanish, increasing the value of every remaining dollar if the state budget remains unchanged - its the easiest way to reduce inflation.
These big corporations with lots of money do affect everyone when they make big stupid decisions - resources get misallocated and costs go up. Money doesn’t exist in a void, the things people do with it have real world effects.
They have the best VR headset in the market. The only problem is that it’s also mining all your data.
Do they? I thought it was just the cheapest.
It’s the best for normal users (price vs performance), not for VR pros or the best experience possible.
Mandatory: fuck Facebook / Meta
That’s because they’re losing billions selling it. If it cost what it actually took to produce it wouldn’t be the best on the market anymore, they’re trying to bully out players who can’t afford to lose billions for years until they’re in total control.
Is it the cheapest? I don’t follow VR much anymore.
I agree being the best is subjective, but the UX is impeccable.
Pull out the helmet, setup the guardian and you can play pretty much anywhere.
Ok, so it sounds like you put a lot of value on a standalone experience. So something like a Switch or phone for gaming instead of a gaming PC.
That seems to be the area they win at. They don’t have the best image, refresh rate, or tracking accuracy, but they are easy to get going with, and it’s inexpensive relative to other options.
To me, the biggest strength is how small the headset is and the fact that you don’t need to dedicate a room to VR with sensors.
I put a lot of value on how easy it is to setup. When VR first started, I had a dedicated 7x7 space with a pulley system so that the wires wouldn’t get in the way. My computer had to be near as well.
If I had a mansion, I would definitely use a better headset, but if we want a better VR adoption, then it needs to be accessible to as many people as possible.
Zuck read Ready Player One and wants so badly to be James Halliday. He just wants to be loved. 🤣
Well he’s missing the point then. He wants to be on the software side of things not the hardware side.
They need to actually create a decent experience and then make it accessible to everyone. That’s how you make money.
The quest probably has the best experience though, it’s really easy to setup and works both standalone or connected to PC via cable or wifi 6, there really isn’t anything as easy and accessible as it.
I know it’s apples to oranges and what not, but there’s a lot of life changing things you could do for a lot of people with that kind of money.
As a society the way we allocate resources is stupid.
Honestly love to see Meta losing money. Zuck is a parasite on this nation. A cancer.
You guys do this like every quarter lol
I thought OP wrote the headline himself but no, PCGamer “journalists” just spend way too much time on Reddit
Hahahahaha
heres hoping they fail 🤞
Imma say nah. Competition is good, and this space needs more competition.
So everyone has to succeed for it to be competition?
Would a football game be good for the fans if one side didn’t show up?
wut? How is that a response? I am asking if everyone has to succeed for it to be competition. So your analogy should be ‘would football be a good game if both sides won?’
Alright, well you’re a dipshit. Moving on.
…I see…
they aint in the game to compete, if their past is any indication they will cheat, dominate and make it awful for everyone.
