[agar]

If you actually listen to how Zuck defines the metaverse, it's not Horizons or even a VR headset. That's what pundits say, most of whom love pointing out big failures more than they like thinking deeply.

He sees the metaverse as the entire shared online space that evolves into a more multi-user collaborative model with more human-centric input/output devices than a computer and phone. It includes co-presence, mixed reality, social sites like Instagram and Facebook as well as online gaming, real-world augments, multiuser communities like Roblox, and "world apps" like VRChat or Horizons.

Access methods may be via a VR headset, or smart glasses, or just sensors that alert you to nearby augmented sites that you can then access on your phone - think Pokemon Go with gyms located at historical real-world sites.

That's what $50B has been spent on, and it's definitely a work in progress. But it sure doesn't seem dead based on the fact that more Quest headsets have been sold than this gen's Xboxes; Apple released Vision Pro; Rayban Smart Glasses are selling pretty well; new devices are planned from Google, Valve, and others; and remote work is an unkillable force.

The online and "real" worlds are only getting more connected, and it seems like a smart bet to try to drive what the next generation looks like. I wouldn't say the $50B was spent efficiently, but I understand that forging a new path means making lots of missteps. You still get somewhere new though, and if it's a worthwhile destination then many people will be following right behind you.

[whywhywhywhy]

It’s really obvious the actual “metaverse” goal wasn’t a vrchat/second life style product. It was another layer on top of the real world where physical space could be monetized, augmented and eventually advertised upon.

AR glasses in a spectacles form factor was the goal, it’s just to get there a VR headset includes solving a lot of the problems you need to solve for the glasses to work at all.

Apple made the same bet.

[asadotzler]

50 billion dollars and fewer than 10 million MAU. That's a massive failure.

[dlandau]

A chunky portion of those dollars were spent on buying and pre-ordering GPUs that were used to train and serve LLaMa