the metaverse is exciting (opens in new tab)this is Mysterious (opens in new tab), but most of all, it’s kind of a mess. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was brutally dragged out in August because of his horrific dead eyes. meta selfie (opens in new tab)the beatdown resumed when Zack announced earlier this month that his meta avatar would be acquired leg (opens in new tab)And it’s not just Hoi Poroy online who doesn’t care about the current situation. At the WSJ Tech Live 2022 conference today, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said the Metaverse is a “poorly constructed video game.”
“When you think about video games, we’ve been gathering people in 3D space to save the world from invading aliens or conquer castles for years,” Spencer said. “We found that we were building a metaverse like a conference room and didn’t want to spend most of our time there.”
Palmer Luckey, who co-founded Oculus VR in 2012, provide the nucleus (opens in new tab) As for Meta’s Reality Labs business, Zuckerberg was more outspokenly skeptical in Meta’s assessment of Horizon Worlds compared to the “project cars” he’s been pouring disproportionate sums into pursuing his vision. “I don’t think it’s a good product,” Lucky said. “It’s not. It’s not fun, it’s not good. In fact, I think most people on the team probably agree that it’s not a good product at this point.”
Interestingly, unlikely (opens in new tab) CEO Herman Narula appeared to agree with Spencer’s assertion that the game was already a mini-metaverse, but argued that the metaverse was not more broadly game-focused.
“Video games are already working,” says Narula. “Video games are great closed systems that have value. If you enjoy Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, you will continue to enjoy them for years to come. The Metaverse, at least in my view, is where you can start It’s an idea, and tying these experiences together isn’t as interesting for a gaming company as it is for, say, a sports league or a fashion brand.”
That’s not an unfair view. The game already works pretty well as a standalone world, and most of the early efforts to create some form of metaversal experience seem to focus more broadly: walmart land (opens in new tab)for example, or that of Adam Savage made imogen cry (opens in new tab) (And, more importantly, convinced her that the metaverse might work one day.) Still Spencer said ( wall street journal (opens in new tab)), he believes the online world will eventually move in a more game-like direction. [virtual engagement] It would look more like a video game than the models we see from the Metaverse today,” he said.
No matter what anyone thinks, the metaverse of meta is bleeding badly right now.The company reported today 3rd Quarter Financial Results (opens in new tab) (via MSNBC (opens in new tab)) Revenue generated by the Reality Labs business fell by almost half year-on-year to just $285 million. He lost $3.67 billion in the quarter, compared with $2.63 billion in the same quarter last year. Total annual losses, he said, amounted to $9.4 billion, and Meta expects “2023 operating losses to increase significantly year-over-year.”
