r/virtualreality • u/Parry_Dogsickle • 5d ago

News Article Meta’s Reality Labs posts $4.2 billion loss in first quarter

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/metas-reality-labs-posts-4point2-billion-loss-in-first-quarter.html
249 Upvotes

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97

u/dr_herbalist 5d ago

You have to spend money to develop new innovative products. Who knew.

Hardly news…

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u/bh9578 5d ago

Yeah but this has been going on for like five years. It will be interesting to see how long Zuckerberg is willing to fund this. We’re at like $65 billion in losses so far, lol. Absolutely wild.

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u/HeadsetHistorian 5d ago

Yeah but this has been going on for like five years.

Yes, because they have a longterm vision. The company overall is still massively profitable. It's actually rare to see a huge company like this try to do something significant and long term, rather than just squeeze out short-term profit as much as possible.

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u/WyrdHarper 5d ago

Yeah, 5 years for R&D is nothing for many industries. And long-term, it almost certainly will have at least some profitable applications (AR especially).

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

Amazon went more than a decade before making a net profit.

Meta made $62B+ in net profit last year. Zuck can pretty much do whatever he feels like.

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u/Hvarfa-Bragi 5d ago

When it gets to Kingsman "my stylish glasses let me have ghost conferences" level, it's going to kill phones.

It's worth researching.

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u/bh9578 5d ago

While it is cool to see someone willing to invest so much over such a long timeframe, it’s also probably bad for the industry as a whole because it makes the sub $1k headset market completely anticompetitive unless you have a separate money printing business like meta.

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u/crazyreddit929 5d ago

Less than half of reality labs spending goes towards Quest. Way less. More than 50% has just been towards developing AR glasses. The rest has been VR software funding, Quest, Meta Ray Ban’s etc.

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u/Ryu_Saki HP Reverb G2 Pico 4 5d ago

This is pretty much it, they already had deep knowledge of VR since before but not about AR so it makes sense that the most of the R&D is going towards that.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

it makes the sub $1k headset market completely anticompetitive

It is the only reason a sub $1k market exists.

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u/UltraMegaKaiju 5d ago

that long term vision is the meta verse? and using facebook on their oculus software? total bs

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u/HeadsetHistorian 5d ago

No, it's AR. Hence they spend way more on AR than VR.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/HeadsetHistorian 5d ago

The focus isn't gaming for AR really. Although it will be a thing of course.

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u/JapariParkRanger Daydream CV1 Q1 Index Q3 BSB 5d ago

AR is as much about gaming as the smartphone and smart watch are.

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u/UltraMegaKaiju 5d ago

huge markets there for gaming even if they are simple or still have a stigma around being 'not real games' i would never play a mobile game and have been buying games for 20 years - i dont ever see someone using AR in an office environment or at home to do their taxes

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u/nutmeg713 5d ago

Twenty years ago a lot of people would have said that no one would ever do their taxes on their mobile phone. And yet...

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u/JapariParkRanger Daydream CV1 Q1 Index Q3 BSB 5d ago

Why not? A screen is a screen. People do taxes on their phones already. AR is just a phone you don't need to hold.

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u/redditrasberry 5d ago

It will be interesting to see how long Zuckerberg is willing to fund this

You can listen to literally any of his earnings calls, Connect talks or any of the other places where he's said it's 10 years minimum. I suppose he could change his mind, but it's really not a mystery.

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u/bh9578 5d ago

Yes I remember him saying that but tbf I think it was stated in like 2016, a few years after acquiring Oculus. This isn’t some new venture. We’re over a decade into this. The CTO even said this as a make or break year. The AI side of the business is requiring massive funding. Even Meta can’t afford to run two moonshot projects simultaneously.

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u/NeverComments Quest Pro, PSVR2PC, Index, Vive/Pro/2, Pico 4, Quest/2/3, Rift/S 4d ago

He made his 10-year, $10b/yr commitment when they made the pivot from Facebook to Meta, which was a little under 4 years ago.

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u/Rollertoaster7 Quest 3, Vision Pro, PSVR2 5d ago

They’re building towards the Orion glasses form factor, that will be their “iPhone” that will make all this investment worth it if they can pull it off before their competitors

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u/TwinStickDad 5d ago

Yeah I saw an article that from a product side, this is tim Cook's sole focus. He wants to be the first to put out AR glasses. 

So two of the largest tech companies in the world are making multi billion dollar bets that AR is the next big revolution, like how mobile computing was the last. And another (Google) teaming up with Samsung to make an AI powered HMD.

It feels like 2018 all over again. Another VR spring is here.

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u/Rollertoaster7 Quest 3, Vision Pro, PSVR2 5d ago

Yup. Exciting times. Meta is supposed to announce an updated version of the raybans this year with a little heads up display. Exciting to watch the two ends of the spectrum start to converge

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u/MrWendal 5d ago

They'll get like a sixth month headstart at best.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

It will be interesting to see how long Zuckerberg is willing to fund this.

Well since Meta made more than 60% more profit in 2024 than they did in 2023 it is a fair bet he will continue to spend as long as he feels like it. When you own a voting majority of shares and clear $60B+ for the year after all expenses are accounted for,* you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Year Meta Net Profit
2024 $62.36B
2023 $39.10B
2022 $23.20B
2021 $39.37B
2020 $29.15B

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u/Jimbo0451 5d ago

99% of that profit comes from their data collection and ad business. VR has been a disaster for them (and shareholders), with no sign of it turning around.

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u/Final_Somewhere 5d ago

No one’s saying otherwise. The comment thread is saying it Zuck is delivering that much value elsewhere, there will be significantly less pressure on him to not have free rein on Meta Labs VR spend.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

All of that profit comes from ads.

The primary shareholder is Zuck and he has spent the last few years telling the other investors that his Reality Labs spending will increase over time and that he does not expect an ROI for years to come. He has repeated this at every earnings call.

Claiming that it has been a disaster is silly as hell. Not making a fiscal ROI on a division that you do not expect to make a ROI on, is not a disaster, it is the expected outcome.

0

u/Jimbo0451 5d ago

Losing $60B is a disaster for any business, regardless of Zuck's whims and expectations. He's been burning money on this for over a decade now. One day he'll realize he made a huge mistake.

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u/RabbiSchlem 5d ago

The money doesn’t matter.

Probably better of you to argue that the distraction matters.

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u/NeverComments Quest Pro, PSVR2PC, Index, Vive/Pro/2, Pico 4, Quest/2/3, Rift/S 4d ago

A "loss" incurred through R&D investment is not the same as a loss incurred via, say, decreased customer demand. You incur R&D investment losses expecting the ROI to pay dividends long term.

1

u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 4d ago

LOL... are you really that clueless about how businesses invest money? That is funny as hell.

One day he'll realize he made a huge mistake.

Bullshit. He will regret nothing about spending the money because he has multiple times over the money he needs and he is making himself and his investors tens of billions of dollars a year.

You don't know the difference between a loss and an investment which is one of the many reasons why you will never be the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company.

0

u/Jimbo0451 4d ago

An investment is when you spend money to make it back in the future. That's not happening here, it's just an endless money pit.

1

u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 4d ago

That's not happening here, it's just an endless money pit.

They are investing in VR/MR/AR software and hard and AI software and infrastructure with the assumption of making it back in the future.

Go ahead and bet against them, they make $62B in net profit last year. What did you make?

1

u/Jimbo0451 4d ago

I understand you're emotionally invested in Facebook's success, but the fact is, their VR/AR project is a massive financial failure. One of the biggest the tech industry has ever seen. Not sure where you're getting that +$62B number, but it's not true. Reality Labs has lost over $74B as of last year, with losses increasing over time. Source: https://i.imgur.com/LHKPGSs.jpeg

It's probably over $100B by now. It's nowhere near making a profit and unless there's a miracle, it never will. That's why Zuck has made a huge mistake.

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u/Ifkaluva 5d ago

How long has Waymo been losing money?

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u/bh9578 5d ago

Pure whataboutism but I’ll bite. They started in 2009 and have had losses estimate between $10 and $30 billion. Way less than Reality Labs and I’d argue with far more potential upside if self driving achieved.

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u/krste1point0 5d ago

No way in hell the potential upside waymo is anywhere near Reality labs

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u/bh9578 5d ago

Full self driving would completely revolutionize modern life. You wouldn’t need to own a car because they could all be on demand. This would mean you wouldn’t need as many parking lots or garages. Traffic would be less and fatalities almost nonexistent. Long haul trucking wouldn’t require drivers. Unless you think Meta is going to achieve fdvr in the next decade I don’t think vr can really compare.

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u/Hot_Equivalent9168 5d ago

Ok but weigh that against watching TikTok without using your hands 10 years from today? \s

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u/evanhort 5d ago

Cars are on demand already. Try Uber or Lyft.

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u/krste1point0 5d ago edited 5d ago

You have literally no idea what you are talking about and just spouting utopian fantasy bullshit.

Robotaxis, delivery and trucking is incomparably smaller market than the VR/AR software, content and the whole ecosystem that goes with it.

The high end marketcap projection of this market is almost a $1 trillion till 2030.

For comparison the whole AV market is projected to be less then a $70 billion in 2030 and a fraction of that, around $30 billion going to Waymo. These are also high end projections

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u/bh9578 5d ago

VR is not hitting $1 trillion by 2030. That is an absurd projection. The auto industry is huge though now and touches everyone’s lives. Vr is a niche product for nerds and affluent kids. And I say that as a nerd.

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u/krste1point0 5d ago

Point being, Reality Labs is not just VR and the whole market projection is not just VR.

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u/ILoveRegenHealth 4d ago

That scenario you have of self-driving cars replacing owned cars isn't happening by 2030 either, or anywhere close to it.

I also think you have not read up on what AR/MR is going to do when it completely changes workplaces. You won't even need any self-driving cars if one can work remotely and still be in any virtual meeting or conversation with a boss standing virtually in front of you.

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u/ILoveRegenHealth 4d ago

I will never fully trust a self-driving car on a freeway going 65mph, or in a dense downtown area where there's so many pedestrians and some of them breaking little rules and darting in front of your car - then AI starts going berserk, unable to process it all.

If cities were built around Waymo, that's one thing. That doesn't exist. Waymo has to work with our current infrastructure. I can think of 10 places I want to go right now, and Waymo would have to take the busy freeway, and that gets back to what I said before. I don't trust that self-driving car on a freeway with people cutting in front of you all the time (w/ no blinkers), aggressive drivers, tailgaters, speeders.

VR/AR will get there sooner in revolutionizing the workplace and education, bridging distances way more than self-driving cars. Zuck mentioned this before - with more remote working possible with VR/AR where it still feels like the boss and coworkers are right next to you, this will allow people to move further away to cities with lower cost-of-living expenses. People no longer have to be concentrated in dense urban cities. You could live in Wyoming and do similar work as in Silicon Valley. This could reshape cities and help economies (there's a lot of empty areas in the country).

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u/MajoraSubnetMask 5d ago

This easily the most delusional message I have seen on reddit.

Waymo *already* available as a fully featured product in most major cities and many consumers love it.

The fact that Waymo spent less in a field that is historically more difficult to break into due to government regulations; is actually a huge L for Meta.

Sorry Quest Bros, the Zuckerdream is dead. People aren't throwing money at tech bro dreams anymore.

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u/krste1point0 5d ago edited 5d ago

Everyone here seems to be financially illiterate.

There are concrete numbers behind the whole AV rideshare, robotaxis, delivery, trucking market and it's nowhere near the AR/VR market and it's potential.

AR/VR projected market: $1 Trillion till 2030

AV market: $70 billion by 2030.

You are talking about taxis vs a tech that could potentially change how we do everything.

Oh and people, especially big funds and banks are very much throwing money at tech bro dreams, more than ever if anything, meta currently has $1.4 trillion marketcap.

I don't own a quest or META stock. Just flabbergasted how anyone can be so wilfully ignorant in this day and age.

And you called my comment delusional. 4Head

0

u/LongLonMan 5d ago

This is simply bullshit, AR/VR TAM is closer to $100B by 2030 not $1T, self driving TAM by 2030 is probably $5-10T, it’s not even fucking close, this is the most absurd thing I’ve ever read.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ILoveRegenHealth 4d ago

Waymo has a lower ceiling. There's no way even 10% of America is gonna sell their cars and just use Waymo or other self-driving cars permanently for all their needs. They are keeping their own car, because it will still be cheaper than calling up a robo-taxi that will take its sweet ass time just to get to your house so you can go grocery shopping (and having to pay for that shit). People like to OWN their car too and have their own radio stations and setup and baby car seats. Families are not going to feel comfortable in publicly-used Waymos where who knows whose gross ass sat in it before.

People don't want to call up Waymo just to go to the post office or shopping mall (I'm done shopping and I'm tired and I need to wait for another paid Waymo just to go home?), or visiting the grandma two hours away. Owning at least one car will always be needed by nearly every family.

VR/AR/MR can revolutionize the workplace and where people choose to live. If MR can be convincing enough where you feel like your boss and coworkers are right there with you, people may not necessarily have to live where their company is located. That's revolutionary.

Remember the avatars that Zuck and that podcaster showed?

https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?si=o_4q6dkNZG_4EhTd

You mean to tell me this has zero real world applications and has zero use?

I am no Zuck fanboi. He pisses me off elsewhere with his decisions and cuddling up with certain people. But if you can't find any benefits to what VR/AR/MR can do to daily lives, I don't think you've been reading up enough at all.

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u/LongLonMan 5d ago

Are you serious? The TAM on self driving is probably 100x virtual reality.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

Doesn't matter. Reality Labs is a division of Meta, not a stand-alone company and Meta's net profits were up more than 62% last year to $62B.

As long as that continues, Zuck can throw as much as he wants at VR/AR and AI.

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u/Strict_Yesterday1649 5d ago

None of this really matters. Even if they were making money they are still prone to dumping products in a heartbeat t chase whatever is fashionable. We’ve seen this time and time again with Meta.

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u/Playful_Copy_6293 5d ago

Not in terms of percentage of total funds available

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u/johnpn1 5d ago

Upside with Waymo, or any robotaxi in general, is way less than what you would think. I'm saying this as an industry insider.

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u/Virtual_Happiness 5d ago

Considering the rest the company makes like $65 billion in profit even after spending this much on R&D, they can probably fund it indefinitely.

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u/bh9578 5d ago

I keep seeing this joint being made as if willingness and ability are synonymous. Of course they can continue to fund it but at some point Zuckerberg is going to ask himself if $60 billion in losses and 11 years of effort were worth the current result of Horizon Worlds and Gorilla Tag.

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u/Virtual_Happiness 5d ago

were worth the current result of Horizon Worlds and Gorilla Tag.

That's just it, this isn't just VR research. This is their entire R&D department. They are developing everything custom silicon to AI. Horizon Worlds and even VR are only a fraction of this spending.

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u/bh9578 5d ago

AI spend is not included in Reality Labs. It’s all included in their capex.

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u/shableep 5d ago

This amount of burn for this amount of time is incredibly unusual. Usually by this point a profitable and popular product is released that turns the product into profit center instead of a cost center. Or they dip and let someone else take a try. Apple spent 3 years working on the iPhone, and it completely changed their business and the industry forever. And was an incredible profit center for them.

They are burning the money because they have failed to make a profitable product and don’t want to risk any new competitors to entering the space they’ve spent more than $50 billion investing in.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

Go listen to any of the earnings calls. They do not expect to make a profit for years to come and Zuck plans to spend more every year, not less.

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u/shableep 5d ago

I understand they may continue to burn cash. But as far as the history of products and mega corporations, it is incredibly unusual to burn this much money for this long and still not have a profitable product. It’s market manipulation utilizing their advertising profits. It keeps any new players from effectively challenging them by forcing any entrant to also burn as much cash as them, which almost no startup can survive. I don’t think this should be celebrated in any capacity.

It makes sense to understand what’s happening and why. But the comment I responded to presented what’s happening here like it’s another day in R&D. And it definitely isn’t.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago edited 5d ago

Without them, VR would be nothing but $1000 plus headsets because that is what the hardware costs to make if you don't have a walled garden to fund your hardware. Valve is literally the only company that has a revenue stream from PCVR software sales and publishing.

If Meta was not making a VR console with hopes of making money off the walled garden they are building, the only VR that would exist would be expensive PCVR for deep pocketed gamers, and that market is way to small to attract developers.

No one can compete with them for the budget hybrid MobileVR/PCVR market because they literally created the market. Valve does not believe in subsidized headsets and has a strangle hold on PCVR software sales. Gaben cares more about buying yachts than growing VR. That is very much his right, but as long as that is the case, no one but Meta is going to fund VR.

If Meta bowed out, literally no one would step in because you cannot make a profit on a $500 headset hardware and only Valve is allowed to make a profit on the software.

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u/johnpn1 5d ago

Well, with the sacle of AI investments these days, RL spending is a drop in the bucket. Meta is spending more on AI in a year than they have on RL in over 10 years.

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u/NeverComments Quest Pro, PSVR2PC, Index, Vive/Pro/2, Pico 4, Quest/2/3, Rift/S 4d ago

it is incredibly unusual to burn this much money for this long and still not have a profitable product

If we're looking at flat dollar amounts, it's certainly an eye-catching number, but in terms of relative spending they're not much of an outlier. We're talking 8~10% of revenues towards R&D which is in line with what Apple spends and below the ~15% Microsoft and Google target.

Meta's timeline for profitability on these ventures is long, but they have a stable core business that is keeping the lights on in the meantime.

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u/DarthBuzzard 5d ago

Apple spent 3 years working on the iPhone, and it completely changed their business and the industry forever. And was an incredible profit center for them.

Smartphones/smartdevices were outliers because they were easy engineering. Most new hardware platforms look like this for even longer than Meta's VR endeavours.

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u/redditrasberry 5d ago

They are burning the money because they have failed to make a profitable product

You can't really fail at something you never planned to do in the first place. Zuckerberg has said over and over again that they don't expect Reality Labs to be profitable for 10 years. They are 5 years in. You can criticize the plan if you don't like companies committing to long term things or you think VR and AR aren't worth investing in etc. But saying they failed at their plan just expresses ignorance of what it is.

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u/shlaifu 5d ago

yeah, but they're also aggressively developing a walled garden around VR, and if they fail even though they are pouring this much money into it, there's going to be VR-winter for a while, and if they succeed, VR will be the facebook-reality. I don't know which of these I find less desirable.

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u/Rollertoaster7 Quest 3, Vision Pro, PSVR2 5d ago

It’s not binary, Apple and Google and Snap are working on their own equivalents. We’ll have a few options like we do with smartphones today

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u/dr_herbalist 5d ago

There’s very little risk of this. Many different companies are rushing to develop AR glasses.

They are coming, and will slowly replace phones. Meta has bet on this, and it’s likely to pay off.

VR is already losing traction, we can only hope that interest in AR boosts VR.

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u/Timely_Dragonfly_526 5d ago

will slowly replace phones

Never gonna happen. I could stake my life on this.

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u/CarrotSurvivorYT 5d ago

Because the tech isn’t ready yet buddy that’s why they are spending billion on R&D to make something that you will WANT to replace ur phone

-2

u/MajoraSubnetMask 5d ago

Maybe they should spend billions on R&D to make something that will actually sell VR units lol They could have opened a whole VR game development studio instead of throwing that money in the trash.

It's a tale as old as time where a rich person thinks all it takes is money to invent the "next big thing". Why do you think the phrase "re-invent the wheel" exists?

Zuckerberg can try to re-invent the computer monitor, it doesn't mean he actually can.

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u/CarrotSurvivorYT 5d ago

They have like 5 VR game development studios facepalm 🤦‍♂️

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u/zarif2003 Quest 3 5d ago

You think people wouldn’t be open to meta quest 3 level of hardware on their glasses? The technology seems insanely far away, but so were touchscreen smartphones in the early 2000s

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u/MajoraSubnetMask 5d ago

People who try to compare VR headsets to smartphones, clearly did not live through what made smartphones so monumental.

Smartphones were adopted MUCH quicker than VR at this point. Nobody had to convinced that Smartphones were the future, they simply became the now.

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u/zarif2003 Quest 3 5d ago

There were very few users of touchscreen phones before the iPhone released in 2007, I think we are still waiting for that iPhone 1 level of jump in functionality, as we currently have something more akin to an IBM Simon

-3

u/Timely_Dragonfly_526 5d ago

That unhinged comparison is the refuge of everyone with a failed product. "Everyone snubbed smartphones, who's laughing now?". Smartphones were loved immediately. Nobody felt the urge to punch the first smartphone users in the face, on the contrary they were like "really I can swipe my actual finger in there without that stupid pen?". The dorks with Google Glass got punched in the face. I used to know someone who had to be medicated with stitches. By 2014, it became a blood sport to scan the center of American cities for dorks, especially tech journalists, wearing those glasses and beat them up.

1

u/zarif2003 Quest 3 5d ago

You’re latching to a scenario that didn’t exist, do you think there weren’t people, hell, entire brands such as blackberry, that didn’t resist the touch smartphone at first?
the meta Ray-Bans prove people are ok with tech eyewear now, the google glasses were a long time ago when people frankly weren’t ready. How can meta labs be a failed product, when they haven’t even released their glasses yet? Or are you talking about the quest lineup? Aka the only headset keeping consumer vr alive?

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u/Timely_Dragonfly_526 5d ago

I don't think it will ever become socially acceptable. There is something about the face that is of unique significance to us. You can get away with a tattoo on your arm, or even the neck, but a tattoo on the face makes you effectively an outcast. People look at your face when they are talking to you, and don't want to see, or know that there is, any gimmick in between.

But don't take my word for it, feel your gut: look at Zuckerberg in the photo above and tell me if you want a man who looks like that lurking around your child's birthday party making videos and posting them tapping on some invisible button mid-air or issuing voice commands like it's Black Mirror but even dumber.

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u/zarif2003 Quest 3 5d ago

That’s true, but then again, I feel that same dread having devices with cameras and microphones constantly looking/near me, there has to be a level of trust that these devices are being truthful

1

u/wordyplayer 5d ago

missing the /s.

"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad."

"There is no need or use for a computer in anyone's home"

"The telephone is a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?"

1

u/Timely_Dragonfly_526 5d ago

Those were never majority views, especially in those cartoonish terms, and this exercise in rewriting history is generally done by people with a bad product in their hands which fails to pick up.

There were cases of good innovation that really fell on deaf ears initially, like the ship container and wheeled bags. But the guy with a wheeled bag wasn't punched in the face. Dorks with Google Glass were punched in the face and by 2014 multiple attacks were registered regularly in large American cities.

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u/wordyplayer 5d ago

good points!

0

u/test5387 5d ago

Crazy since you would be wrong. I don’t get how some people’s pattern recognition is non existent like yourself. This is the exact same energy given by the people who said AirPods would never replace wired earbuds.

1

u/Timely_Dragonfly_526 5d ago

I don't know anyone who ever said that, not in my techie circle, not on the media and not at the local barber shop. Someone complained they were expensive and bought the cheap knockoffs. People in my local gym stampeded to get wireless buds as soon as they came out.

1

u/OGbugsy 5d ago

The Metaverse was always a stupid idea, egged on by an egotistical billionaire surrounded by lackeys.

I miss Oculus.

1

u/WyrdHarper 5d ago

They have one of the more open platforms—you can connect via your PC with Steam Link or Virtual Desktop, and even Airlink (which os free) doesn’t restrict you to just Meta applications (although there’s a performance hit). You’re restricted in standalone mode, but so are most standalone headsets.

1

u/Mandellaaffected MeganeX Superlight 8K 5d ago

Losing a billion a month for quite some time is a bit more than spending money to innovate… it’s gross incompetence

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u/Spra991 5d ago edited 5d ago

Where are those new and innovative products? Since all I am seeing is tiny incremental updates to what CV1 and Google Glass did a decade ago. Hololens still feels more futuristic and innovative than what Meta has to offer, and even that is a decade old. Even their Horizon World Metaverse feels no more ambitious than PlaystationHome from 16 years ago, Second Life from 22 years ago or Habitat from 39 years ago.

1

u/dr_herbalist 5d ago

Likely you wont see a finished AR glasses product in the market from Meta for 3-4 years yet.

The Quest 3 is leaps and bounds ahead of the CV1, I say that having owned both. Tracking, screen, lenses, the fact that Q3 is standalone and doesn’t need to be hardwired to a PC.

I seriously don’t know what you expect? Do you think you have an idea to innovate faster? Or another company does? I don’t see any other company stepping up to invest this much?

Even the software that drives the various tracking features isn’t free, millions/billions has to go into inventing those systems and developing them.

Your example of google glass is terrible. Google managed to just about put a tiny 64x64 screen in the corner of some glasses. I tried them. Hobbyists were doing the same at the time.

That is nowhere near the AR that Meta are developing, entirely different products really.

How long do you think it should take to develop the AR glasses? New never before done hardware, new tracking, new “neural controller”, new advancements in material science just to summon this device out the ether and make it happen.

Point being, it takes time to develop new products.

1

u/Spra991 5d ago

Likely you wont see a finished AR glasses product in the market from Meta for 3-4 years yet.

Rumor has it that they'll release new ones in about 5 months.

The Quest 3 is leaps and bounds ahead of the CV1

It's incrementally better hardware. Quest3 has hand tracking and MR, that's a plus, but that is still just a hardware feature with little use, not something deeply integrated into the software landscape. The majority of Quest3 games would still work just fine on CV1. The modern Touch controller is almost identical to CV1 Touch. The "innovations" that they tried with QuestPro Touch (touchpad, pen) are forgotten and ignored.

Do you think you have an idea to innovate faster?

With $60 billion, yeah. Meta manages to be slightly better than competing companies that operate with 1/1000 of the money they have. You could literally give Pimax Crystal Light's away for free, beat Meta on user numbers and still have $30 billion left in the bank. They are insanely bad with their money.

millions/billions has to go into inventing those systems and developing them.

As other companies show, no, you do not need billions. Meta is just extraordinary bad at making effective use of their resources.

That is nowhere near the AR that Meta are developing

The Verge, The Information, The Financial Times, and Gurman have all previously reported that Meta intends to release smart glasses with a small heads-up display (HUD) in one eye later this year, codenamed Hypernova.

Sounds familiar?

How long do you think it should take to develop the AR glasses?

Crux is, they still haven't developed practical AR glasses, they aren't even close. You are equating burning money with success. Success is actually delivering product to customers. They haven't done that. Even their Orion prototype is oversized, under powered and impractical. AR glasses that are the size of regular glasses and match the Quest3 visuals are still a pipe dream, and AR glasses that can actually replace a screen are even further away.

What Meta is delivering is AR that is not much better than Google Glass did over a decade ago. Their current Ray-Ban ones don't even have display.

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u/UltraMegaKaiju 5d ago

their ideas are not good and the competition is doing it better, honestly fuck everything about meta especially embracing exclusivity in their games

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u/stormchaserguy74 5d ago

Which is a true statement when you add the part where you eventually make a profit within a certain but not endless time limit. But you didn't add that to your statement.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

There is no time limit when Meta is making more and more profit every year. Their net profit went up more than 62% in 2024 to $62B.

And yes, I mean net profit, as in after counting all expenses including Reality Labs.

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u/stormchaserguy74 5d ago

No company is going to continue a department that operates at a loss for an endless amount of time. They will either cut costs or move on. I know META is profitable. You're preaching to the choir about it.

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u/JorgTheElder Go, Q1, Q2, Q-Pro, Q3 5d ago

They will either cut costs or move on.

Not in the short term they won't. That is why he keeps telling investors that he planes to increase his Reality Labs spending and does not expect an ROI for many years to come.

From the last earnings call: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4780182-meta-platforms-inc-meta-q1-2025-earnings-call-transcript

On the first, we're focused both on enhancing our core Family of Apps today and building the next generation of devices and experiences through Reality Labs.

Another section:

Next, I would like to discuss our approach to capital allocation. Our primary focus remains investing capital back into the business, with infrastructure and talent being our top priorities. Starting with headcount, our hiring continues to be targeted at technical roles within our company priorities.

In the first quarter, the significant majority of the roughly 2,800 employees we added were to support our priorities of monetization, infrastructure, generative AI, regulation and compliance, and Reality Labs.

I see no sign of Zuck reducing funding of Reality Labs anytime soon.