They also renamed the entire corporation from "Facebook" to "Meta" to prove how serious they were about it.

The usage numbers probably reflect what happened in this house: since the pestering to confirm age and the horizon worlds update the Meta VR devices have literally not been recharged.

They had the foundation of something half reasonable at one point, but their product management clearly got in the way.

Billions. Facebook has spent billions and billions over the past decade in VR. Starting with the Oculus merger and then in 2021 with the rebrand.

10 billion a year supposedly for the past 5 years now.

> After all of those millions of dollars spent trying to make virtual events happen?

Billions. $70 billion since 2021 to be exact.

Not millions. Many many billions. (not on virtual events, but on the platform itself--that's the crazy part)

> Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for.

It was clearly the wrong bet. He pumped something like $100B into the endeavour (Meta Quest / VR / Horizons) and it is just slowly dying as we speak. He has to give up on it, although I am sure it will be called a "pivot" into AR glasses.

I was at Intel for a while and there was one glaring problem - they have one product that spins off a huge amount of cash. This means a few things: First, that one product is really where the things that matter happen. But second, they have all this money and they don't know what to do with it, they can't spend it all on their core product because that looks terrible - they're already throwing off money, investing more probably just makes your company look bad (you're spending more to get the same revenue). SO instead you have to take that money and make bets. But not just any bets. You need a bet that (a) matters if it pays off, and (b) looks favourable compared to the core business. So you buy Mcafee and Altera and MobilEye, 5G was the future once...

So to take the Meta example, they need something that is going to have revenue upside similar to Meta advertising revenue (one of the most profitable things in the universe), and that has better margins that the advertising business (basically impossible).So the only logical thing to do is to make grotesquely large bets on things that are extremely speculative. You can't bet on things that are well known - because nothing known has the properties from earlier that you're looking for, and you can't bet small because you've got to convince people you're the pay off is of a similar size to your existing business.

In Intel's case they lost focus on the core business and so that died and their other bets didn't matter because the core business was dead. With Meta the core business in't dead, but it's only a matter of time before it's seriously threatened and so they're going to attack that threat with everything they've got - and they have a tonne of resources.

I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a digital morphine drip. Serving soap cutting videos and giving teen girls body dysmorphia isn't a very compelling mission.

Though I'm sure many are mercenaries and will work for whoever pays the most.

They had the money to try something, did it, didn't work. Not unheard of. Still a >$1T company.

Can we all say a big thank you to Neal Stephenson for inspiring Zuckerberg to light tens of billions of dollars on fire in this stupid quest? Imagine what kinds of anticompetitive acquisitions or further privacy-invading tech they might’ve spent that on instead.

It makes sense to rebrand anyway, because I'm sure they don't want people to only think of "that social media site" for all of their other ventures. Just like Google rebranding as alphabet

And those are the non virtual ones, right?

The app will still exist, but only on mobile (which is absolutely inexplicable).

At the end of the day the core business is throwing off tonnes of money and is run fine. Would it be better not to throw billions at the next cool thing? Who knows. Probably. But Google does the same thing and they've actually built some cool stuff.

In all seriousness, given component price increases etc, the Quest 3 remains an incredible deal for PC VR use. Aside from the foveated rendering, the lens/display specifications are very close to Valve's still to ship Steam Frame, which at this stage will almost certainly cost more than the Quest 3 does.

25 PPD VR headset for 499 with inside-out tracking plus controllers etc is amazing value. I've never once used any of the Meta applications, I only use it for VR games on Steam.

I think there is a case to be made one should buy one while you still can, if you want a great value PC VR headset. It's still an excellent choice for stuff like sim racing as well.

I also think the Quest line of hardware is done for. They are clearly much more interested in the glasses lineup, products like the Ray Bans etc, none of which appear to use any of the Quest software stack.

Meta has very recently had leaks of an upcoming lightweight headset. So maybe not a Quest 4 as a direct successor to the Quest 3, but a new headset is in the works.

Zuck has become a very rich man avoiding all the obvious and expected outcomes. When Facebook stock hit its low a few years ago, HN was explaining why it was doomed. The man has founder mentality at the helm of a trillion-dollar company. It is no wonder he is what he is.

What are some alternatives?

From the article:

> By March 31, 2026, Horizon Worlds and Events will no longer appear in the Store on Quest. Also, Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay worlds will no longer be available in VR. You can still jump into your other favorite worlds in VR until June 15, 2026, after which the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Quest, and Worlds will no longer be available in VR.

That was the point of Horizon Worlds. They were trying a (very expensive) social play for VR.

The problem is that the intersection/suitability of VR and social media is rather low, while as a counterexample the intersection of mobile and social media is very large. I have no desire to chat with old classmates when I "suit up" with VR goggles, I'm there to game.

The last 10 years of the VR industry has been about trying to find users beyond the hardcore nerds who want to virtually meet up with friends every night or try out experiences/demos for more than a few days. The moment that hope goes away so do the tens of billions of investment as it was never really about finding out what that group of users wanted.

They just wanted a platform they control instead of apple or Google

VRChat also seems to be used only by niche perverts. Perhaps only niche perverts are currently interested in the Metaverse, and Horizon Worlds failed because it didn't cater to niche perverts.

I have to agree. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is it an insane value for the $250 I paid for my Quest 3s last year at Target? Hell yes.

My kids and I use our two headsets a lot. Sure, it's not a daily driver for workflows, but the uniqueness of many of the game experiences just can't be replicated on desktops/consoles.

It's a damn shame because Facebook bought up Oculus, poured gasoline on a fire by pumping $100B dollars in and now seems set to walk away because it didn't make a $100B + 1 dollars.

In its current state, it was never going to be a replacement for PCs or phone experiences. It's just a different lane all together. But Beat Saber, or Walkabout mini golf, or the I Expect You to Die series are insanely fun and unique. I'll be sad if they fold the quest down entirely, but I hope that Valve or others take up the banner. VR doesn't have to be a $100B industry to be viable, especially in its infancy.

Meanwhile, Apple tosses a $3,500 headset onto the market and then is surprised that it's treated as a novelty. Why is it so hard for these companies to get their strategies right? Maybe it's because it's not a product suited (today, at least) for two of the largest companies on earth to focus on. These are moonshot companies who make products that half of the globe uses on a daily basis.

I just want a solid VR platform with a healthy pipeline or quirky, interesting games.

> VR is so good and still in it's infancy.

I believe 30% of the population cannot use VR in any way shape or form because your inner ear has decided the floor is the only place you can be.

I also worry that the whole idea will die before it had a chance to truly blossom. It's really amazing as is and with higher resolution and better field of view it could be on another level altogether. I hope that Valve will keep the tocrch and I plan to get their VR glasses to support the industry.

I do not think historians will write about the metaverse at all.

Maybe it'll be a case study in business schools for a while, but I think that'll be the extent of its legacy

If they mention it at all, it'll be in the context of the C-suite envy about the money being made with Fortnite skins and "virtual assets", resulting in galaxy brain ideas like "buy land in the metaverse" or "own rare art with NFTs".

It can always have a second life.

And the blockchain.

It probably distracts from the AI race. With the newly bought political power it makes far more sense for Meta to align with whatever this administration seeks. And it’s not gaming or VR.

There might be expensive non-technical maintenance required, such as checks for illegal user content.

As a thought experiment, they probably helped the world global happiness more by burning $100B rather than just sitting on a massive cash hoard as so many tech companies enjoy doing. Sitting in their coffers it was doing nothing. At least this way, it went to a whole bunch of individuals, manufacturing startups, etc. And theoretically many of those recipients spent some of it.

I'm not saying it wasn't wasted spend, but velocity of money is a thing and maybe it's better off in the hands of the people who it was spent on instead of sitting in Zuck's war chest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

40 nuclear power plants.

Almost nothing. That is a few weeks of global medical R&D spend, spread over more than a decade.