Last year Facebook changed its name to Meta, signaling it is going all in on the concept of the Metaverse. It was the future, and Meta was going to devote massive resources to bringing it about. There was lots of excitement that a once in a generation computing paradigm was coming soon.
Lots of companies capitalized on the buzz by describing themselves as Metaverse companies.
A year later, the mood is decidedly darker. Virtually every recent article has dark overtones, stock prices have plummeted, the NFT market (which is seen as a key Metaverse enabling technology) has collapsed.
I’ve captured some of the articles here to mark this point in time. I will revisit this post next year to see if the mood has change.
(Update: added 2 Bloomberg articles on Oct 18, 2022)
Company Documents Show Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Falling Short -WSJ
Meta initially set a goal of reaching 500,000 monthly active users for Horizon Worlds by the end of this year, but in recent weeks revised that figure to 280,000. The current tally is less than 200,000, the documents show.
Most visitors to Horizon generally don’t return to the app after the first month, and the user base has steadily declined since the spring, …
More than half of Quest headsets—the entry model costs about $400—aren’t in use six months after they are purchased
Meta’s Virtual Reality Meets Facebook’s Harsh Real World -WSJ
And while Meta now dominates VR with about 88% share of the global hardware market for the first half of this year, according to IDC, the Reality Labs business segment that includes VR made up just 2% of the company’s total revenue in that time.
Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Struggles -NY Times
In a May poll of 1,000 Meta employees conducted by Blind, an anonymous professional social network, only 58 percent said they understood the company’s metaverse strategy.
Zuckerberg’s $1,499 Headsets Won’t Help Meta -Bloomberg
New users were finding his main Horizon platform buggy, and employees were getting antsy about the radical shift to virtual reality that Zuckerberg announced at this event one year ago. They needed a good reason to believe in his vision, but the Facebook co-founder didn’t give them one.
The Once-Hot Market for Metaverse Land Is Attracting Risky Bets -Bloomberg
Average prices in Decentraland and The Sandbox, two popular blockchain-based online worlds, declined roughly 80% between early November 2021 and the beginning of this month
Meta’s flagship metaverse app is too buggy and employees are barely using it, says exec in charge -The Verge
"Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”
Meta Is Still Betting on a VR Revolution That May Never Come -WIRED
It’s an expensive hunk of face hardware meant to entice users into the metaverse—an ambitious virtual realm that Mark Zuckerberg so desperately wants to make A Thing. But the supposed VR revolution still feels like it’s a long way off.
The metaverse revolution may yet devour Meta -Financial Times
Meta’s conception remains “ambiguous and hypothetical”, says Snap’s founder Evan Spiegel. … Meta’s investors are growing restless too: the company’s share price has dropped 62 per cent this year.
It’s painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing -TechCrunch
what it [Meta Connect 2022 conference] communicated more effectively than anything else was just how incredibly thirsty — one might even say desperate — Mark Zuckerberg is for his metaverse bet to pay off.
Carmack: “There’s a bunch that I’m grumpy about” in virtual reality -Ars Technica
Carmack seemed generally frustrated with the direction Meta as a whole is taking its VR efforts.
Meta Quest Pro: A $1,500 Virtual-Reality Headset for Working in the Metaverse -WSJ
So, is the Quest Pro the gadget that convinces us all to migrate to the metaverse? Nope.
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None of those apps would get me back to the metaverse daily. Which raises the same question I have about my corner-sitting, dust-gathering Quest 2: What will I want to do in this headset that I can’t on my laptop or my smartphone?
The Bizarre Duality of Meta’s New Quest Pro VR Headset -WIRED
two truths can be held at once: that something could be mind-numbingly cool and still not have a place in real life
Meta Avatar Legs Demo ‘Created By Motion Capture’, Not Live VR -Upload
“Personally I think this type of approach erodes credibility in the industry,” Hrafn Thorisson, CEO and Founder of VR development studio Aldin wrote to UploadVR.
The Metaverse Has Had a Very Bad Week -IGN
Mark Zuckerberg and the company are facing serious doubts from the public, media, and some of their own employees about the future of their focus on the Metaverse.
Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went -Business Insider
Some experts are getting worried the company is spending good money after bad.
Microsoft’s Army Goggles Left US Soldiers With Nausea, Headaches in Test -Bloomberg
US soldiers using Microsoft Corp.’s new goggles in their latest field test suffered “mission-affecting physical impairments” including headaches, eyestrain and nausea
The NFT market is down by almost every metric -Quartz
In the NFT gaming industry, known for online game titles such as Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained, sales are down 93% year-over-year. NFTs are used in games to confer ownership of different playable characters or usable items.
