There is no denying that Meta, formally Facebook, has lost a copious amount of money trying to bring VR to the mainstream. They are failing horribly, and their Horizons World VR space is so bad that employees are not using it. The company announced an operating loss of $7 billion in its Reality Labs segment during the first six months of 2023. If you are unfamiliar, Reality Labs includes virtual reality hardware sales, software and gaming.
Meta recently dropped the price of its Quest 2 VR headset- the most popular VR headset on the market- to $299, and last year, it also launched a business-focused version, the $1,500 Meta Quest Pro VR headset.
But Meta still expects to lose more in this segment. “For Reality Labs, we expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to scale our ecosystem further,” Meta said in its CFO outlook commentary Wednesday.
Meta is in for some hard times ahead. They will soon complete with Apple with their Vision Pro headset. Apple’s Vision Pro will cost $3,499 and be launched next year. Samsung is also working on a mixed-reality platform with Qualcomm and Google.
Michael Kozlowski has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past twelve years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.