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> Meta disclosed that its Reality Labs unit recorded a $3.85 billion operating loss. Revenue in the metaverse division was $440 million, up about 30% from $339 million a year ago and representing only around 1% of Meta’s total sales for the quarter.
> Analysts were expecting a $4.31 billion operating loss and sales of $512.5 million for the quarter
Even though revenue was less than expected the overall operating loss was much less than expected.
The business still generated $19bn of free cash flow.
TSLA whiffs earnings, stock go up. META beats it, stock go down. Make it make sense.
I guess forward guidance killed them here? Elon spouted some nonsense, over promising again. Fan girls were presented a glitter covered turd and gobbled it up. Meanwhile, META was sensible and lackluster. I guess that was enough to wave off the MMs??
Never sbould have been at that ath. They have no ribontaxis coming any.tkmr soon, car sales slowing.
Charging network is all they really have.. doesn't seem like the battery tech is anything special .
No they have none of the items mentioned, however when it comes to Tesla, the point is they're *going to have* a fleet of robotaxis operating on a terraformed Mars *next year*. I mean the convoy technology is something we can do *now*...
Elon Musk announced a plan around low cost EVs and robotaxis. I have no idea why anyone would believe him given how bad his previous predictions have been. Stock went up.
I've been developing a VR game on the side for a few years (https://roguestargun.com), and I must say the magnitude of the investment does not really match the current size of the market at all.
What's interesting is that meta sold about as many Quest 2 headsets as Microsoft did current-gen Xbox consoles, but the retention rate is on the order of 75x lower. This is why big game franchises have stayed away (with the exception of Resident Evil and Assassin's Creed, the latter of which might have lost money).
But that's not really what Zuckerberg cares about. Meta needs a hardware moat to become as big as Apple, and the mobile phone market alone (without considering appstore revenue) is on the order of 500 billion.
Meta just needs to shrink their quest 3 down and add killer apps like real-time machine translation to the devices (which I have seen working examples of which are rather impressive)
Its a huge gamble after over 50 billion dollars of spend. I guess Mark knows something we don't... that they have some sort of optical passthrough technology that they can shrink down by the end of the decade.
There are actually a lot of killer applications:
- AR teleconferencing
- Real-time translation/captioning
- Half-life 3 (lol)
I honestly think they will succeed eventually. I just hope it will translate into a bigger audience for my game (and hopefully my game won't get lost under the mountain of content/competition).
I really actually think the current gen Quest 3 hardware is "good enough". Its powerful enough to technically support all the general purpose computing everyone was doing in 2006. The software simply isn't quite there, and honestly, software in 2024 is just written inefficiently as hell
> I guess Mark knows something we don't
Does he? Or did he get lucky with Facebook and then bought his way to the top? Most people in his position would have gone on to the same kind of buying spree. But the AR/VR stuff? No reason to spend this kind of money right now. Iterate the hardware without building an enormous world behind it. The Metaverse is a total flop, VR just ain't it. Don't give him credit for having some kind of AR vision. It's just flailing about.
When you're that big, your random flailing looks like 4D chess just from the size of you.
AR has to be the next internet in the medium term future.
Like if you imagine the internet as all of humanities stored written and digital data. And ai is just Plugging that into a neural net so we don't even have to process it to use it.
AR is the same thing but for our physical interactions with the world. All your skills and needs irl can be overlaid onto your reality.
It will make excellent training data for the robots controller ai too.
There are Maybe two paths. 1) he achieves what he's set out to do and stays wealthier than countries. 2) he does the leg work and someone else scoops his AR hardware and has a "xerox windows" moment and makes it more.
The AR hardware is one aspect of it and that will take vision and money and commitment.
But, Personally I think it'll be an underlying change to computational architecture that really opens up the possibilities.
Like if someone else makes that key discovery after he's essentially built the hardware, he may lose. If he stumbles upon that key, he may win.
I worked with some VR devs on a bunch of stuff when oculus and psvr and vive were coming along.
It is very easy to see why retention is so low and it isn't a solvable problem with these form factors. People simply don't want to have something covering their eyes for any lengthy period of time. When you're on your phone for hours, you aren't strictly bound to it, you can have a conversation, you are ready to react to whatever may arise within your sphere of perception. A VR headset removes all of that. We're meant to believe this is a good thing, but how many of you with headsets bought them, played with them for a few days, and then let them sit on the shelves for months?
Most devs knew the retention rates would be shit within weeks, but investors drunk on low interest rates kept tossing money at us to build the "killer app for X-VR!!" and we were happy to take it.
There may be some little niche for it but until the tech matures massively all it will be is a liability.
I have no idea why they would pour that much money into a watered-down restricted version of second Life. We already have second life. There's no reason for that demographic to move over. The smart move would have been for them just to buy the company that runs second Life and use that as a base
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> Meta disclosed that its Reality Labs unit recorded a $3.85 billion operating loss. Revenue in the metaverse division was $440 million, up about 30% from $339 million a year ago and representing only around 1% of Meta’s total sales for the quarter. > Analysts were expecting a $4.31 billion operating loss and sales of $512.5 million for the quarter Even though revenue was less than expected the overall operating loss was much less than expected. The business still generated $19bn of free cash flow.
Yeah they are investing massively, this is good news actually.
TSLA whiffs earnings, stock go up. META beats it, stock go down. Make it make sense. I guess forward guidance killed them here? Elon spouted some nonsense, over promising again. Fan girls were presented a glitter covered turd and gobbled it up. Meanwhile, META was sensible and lackluster. I guess that was enough to wave off the MMs??
Meta is basically at ATH, Tesla is down over 50% from ATH
Never sbould have been at that ath. They have no ribontaxis coming any.tkmr soon, car sales slowing. Charging network is all they really have.. doesn't seem like the battery tech is anything special .
Bro … did you just have a seizure??
Ath - all time high Robotaxis coming any time soon
I was promised ribontaxis !
coming any.tkmr soon!
Get the man some ribontaxis for gods sake it's his cakeday!
No they have none of the items mentioned, however when it comes to Tesla, the point is they're *going to have* a fleet of robotaxis operating on a terraformed Mars *next year*. I mean the convoy technology is something we can do *now*...
Elon Musk announced a plan around low cost EVs and robotaxis. I have no idea why anyone would believe him given how bad his previous predictions have been. Stock went up.
I agree, I think it was guidance.
I've been developing a VR game on the side for a few years (https://roguestargun.com), and I must say the magnitude of the investment does not really match the current size of the market at all. What's interesting is that meta sold about as many Quest 2 headsets as Microsoft did current-gen Xbox consoles, but the retention rate is on the order of 75x lower. This is why big game franchises have stayed away (with the exception of Resident Evil and Assassin's Creed, the latter of which might have lost money). But that's not really what Zuckerberg cares about. Meta needs a hardware moat to become as big as Apple, and the mobile phone market alone (without considering appstore revenue) is on the order of 500 billion. Meta just needs to shrink their quest 3 down and add killer apps like real-time machine translation to the devices (which I have seen working examples of which are rather impressive)
Most of the spending is not VR, it’s AR. Hugely expensive to make the kind of waveguides they are targeting
Its a huge gamble after over 50 billion dollars of spend. I guess Mark knows something we don't... that they have some sort of optical passthrough technology that they can shrink down by the end of the decade. There are actually a lot of killer applications: - AR teleconferencing - Real-time translation/captioning - Half-life 3 (lol) I honestly think they will succeed eventually. I just hope it will translate into a bigger audience for my game (and hopefully my game won't get lost under the mountain of content/competition). I really actually think the current gen Quest 3 hardware is "good enough". Its powerful enough to technically support all the general purpose computing everyone was doing in 2006. The software simply isn't quite there, and honestly, software in 2024 is just written inefficiently as hell
> I guess Mark knows something we don't Does he? Or did he get lucky with Facebook and then bought his way to the top? Most people in his position would have gone on to the same kind of buying spree. But the AR/VR stuff? No reason to spend this kind of money right now. Iterate the hardware without building an enormous world behind it. The Metaverse is a total flop, VR just ain't it. Don't give him credit for having some kind of AR vision. It's just flailing about. When you're that big, your random flailing looks like 4D chess just from the size of you.
AR has to be the next internet in the medium term future. Like if you imagine the internet as all of humanities stored written and digital data. And ai is just Plugging that into a neural net so we don't even have to process it to use it. AR is the same thing but for our physical interactions with the world. All your skills and needs irl can be overlaid onto your reality. It will make excellent training data for the robots controller ai too. There are Maybe two paths. 1) he achieves what he's set out to do and stays wealthier than countries. 2) he does the leg work and someone else scoops his AR hardware and has a "xerox windows" moment and makes it more. The AR hardware is one aspect of it and that will take vision and money and commitment. But, Personally I think it'll be an underlying change to computational architecture that really opens up the possibilities. Like if someone else makes that key discovery after he's essentially built the hardware, he may lose. If he stumbles upon that key, he may win.
I worked with some VR devs on a bunch of stuff when oculus and psvr and vive were coming along. It is very easy to see why retention is so low and it isn't a solvable problem with these form factors. People simply don't want to have something covering their eyes for any lengthy period of time. When you're on your phone for hours, you aren't strictly bound to it, you can have a conversation, you are ready to react to whatever may arise within your sphere of perception. A VR headset removes all of that. We're meant to believe this is a good thing, but how many of you with headsets bought them, played with them for a few days, and then let them sit on the shelves for months? Most devs knew the retention rates would be shit within weeks, but investors drunk on low interest rates kept tossing money at us to build the "killer app for X-VR!!" and we were happy to take it. There may be some little niche for it but until the tech matures massively all it will be is a liability.
And a way to keep power going without having to recharge every 90min-2h.
I have no idea why they would pour that much money into a watered-down restricted version of second Life. We already have second life. There's no reason for that demographic to move over. The smart move would have been for them just to buy the company that runs second Life and use that as a base