Meta bad, metaverse bad

After my usual Sunday tour of Twitter and Linkedin feed to gather news for my weekly newsletter, I feel the need of writing a rant about a trend I’m seeing online after the Meta Connect about Meta and its involvement in the “metaverse” field.

Many journalists of important tech magazines (TechCrunch, Business Insider, etc…) are all playing a common sport now: targeting Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. They are all writing posts about how Meta has failed, the metaverse has failed, the Meta Quest Pro failed, and also Zuck has failed. Everything is a huge failure. I admit that this news has caught me by surprise, because I have many projects in XR that are doing pretty well, and actually this has been one of the best moments to be in the ecosystem for me. I’m sorry that I hadn’t received the memo that everything failed: I’ll stop doing what I’m doing now and immediately go looking for a job to make fries at McDonald’s.

The reasons for this post

I’m not a huge fan of Zuck, and I‘ve always criticized Meta when needed. I totally want them to care more about our privacy, and I’m all in with Avi Bar-Zeev in having better management of eye tracking data on the Quest Pro. As an indie developer, I totally hate the fact we are relegated to the B-store App Lab, with limited features and monetization possibilities. I hated the forced Facebook login for Quest 2. I think they are only doing social VR worlds that suck (Facebook spaces, Facebook Horizon, etc…). And I could go on saying other things like that for hours.

But I’ve also appreciated Meta when it was necessary. Meta has done great hardware like Quest 2 and has done a lot (truly A LOT) to accelerate the consumer adoption of XR. It is also promoting the metaverse everywhere, also on mainstream media: yesterday a friend of mine who doesn’t work in tech told me to have seen a TV spot here in Italy about the metaverse. It has also funded a lot of interesting content, and I have friends that now can live out of immersive content thanks to the money that the Quest Store can give them.

This is how I think the right attitude should be: criticizing what is wrong, and appreciating what is good. But actually, I’m seeing that lately there is only interest in criticizing Meta and Zuckerberg to have easy likes. Zuck is one of the most hated CEO ever, so bashing him is an easy way to make people happy. The problem is that, apart from the fact that these posts are misleading, they are also hurting our ecosystem. I’ve learned in these 8 years in XR that the market is very “emotional”. It’s like there is not a rational way of thinking, but more one driven by sentiment. Think about what happened after Mark rebranded his company to “Meta”: everyone became immediately interested in the metaverse, all marketers were writing posts like “34 ways in which the metaverse will revolutionize the way you cook potatoes”, and VCs were pouring money into whatever “metaverse company”. There was no rational reason for this to happen, but it happened, and this hype, even if I hated it, lead to a lot of benefits for us in the field. I know of some entrepreneurs in XR that managed to close investment deals because investors were interested in XR again because of Zuck.

Now we are seeing the opposite trend: after Zuck hasn’t managed to deliver the “metaverse” in 12 months, everyone got crazy and started screaming at failure. Meta is for sure in a hard moment, and because of the quasi-recession and the new iOS policy, the company has troubles. So journalists are these days all flagging the metaverse as dead, Mark Zuckerberg as an idiot, and Meta as a company on the brick of failing. And like the hype brought lots of good things to us, this “Winter of the Metaverse” is going to bring us problems: less investments in the field, many companies abandoning XR, and a general negative sentiment for the technology.

I mean, it’s good if the hype deflates, but it shouldn’t be transformed into negativity. So I wanted to write this post to rant about the nonsense I’m reading these days about Meta that risks ruining the field I’m in. This can also be useful to clarify a few points and let everyone understand that there is no reason to panic.

Meta bad, metaverse bad

Let’s see some of the fantastic concepts about Meta I’m reading in these articles, and why they are total nonsense.

The metaverse has failed because Meta has failed

The concept of “metaverse” was there much before the arrival of Meta and will exist after Meta. The two things are not related at all, even if Zuck tried to bundle them together (and this was a move I totally hated). Meta is just a company that tries to become one of the dominant platforms in the metaverse, to dominate it, but it is not the metaverse itself.

The advantages of having widespread immersive realities and persistent digital ecosystems where people can connect is so big that for sure in the long run the “metaverse” will succeed. It’s the natural evolution of technology. We don’t know when, but it will happen. Whether Meta is on the market or not.

Meta has failed in delivering the Metaverse

Yeah, it’s so disappointing that a single company hasn’t been able to deliver a huge technological revolution in just 12 months. #sarcasm

Zuck announced Meta in 2021 and people were already expecting the metaverse in 2022.

This story reminds me of that year when a VR market analysis company forecasted that PSVR could sell 1-2 million headsets during Black Friday (as a matter of comparison: they sold 6 millions during the whole lifetime of the headset). Then of course Sony didn’t match this prediction, and the day after the analysts were shouting that PSVR had been a disappointing failure… where actually they should have said that they sucked at market analysis and they should have gone hoeing the soil.

I mean, Zuck always said that his vision was at 2030 and beyond. I wonder why people were expecting the metaverse to happen now. I would say that it can happen even later, in 2030-2040. It’s a long journey, a very long journey. If you are here for the cash grab, go hoeing the soil too, and maybe you earn more money than doing the metaverse.

Meta wants all of us closed in a VR prison, but Apple/Snap/Niantic instead are the good guys doing AR

Meta never said that the metaverse is a VR game. NEVER. See this promotional image that Meta shared during Facebook Connect 2021 (the one where it changed its name to Meta).

https://gfycat.com/illegalsoftamericangoldfinch

Do you see it? Someone in A REAL STREET playing with someone else in AUGMENTED REALITY. Outside, having fun in the real world.

The metaverse is something that encompasses all devices, not only virtual reality, and Meta knows that well. That’s why its greatest bet is AR glasses that are coming from 2024 or 2026. VR is where they started, not the end goal, and in fact, the Quest Pro is already a hybrid headset.

Tim Cook says that Apple is not interested in the metaverse to distinguish itself from Meta. Niantic talks about the “real world Metaverse” to show they are better than Meta. But they forget that Meta has one of the biggest AR platforms around (Spark AR), and it is currently making VR headsets because it is how it is going towards its goal. I never heard Zuck saying “Oh, close yourself in VR all day inside Meta Horizon”. On the opposite, his Horizon Worlds application is so bad that it is a good spot to make sure people don’t stay in VR the whole day!

Horizon is just a way Meta is exploring now to transform Facebook into a VR world. It is not the big vision of the metaverse.

Meta is bad, Apple is our savior!

Yes, I can’t wait for our savior Apple.

Apple is such a closed platform that I will surely need to buy not only its headset but also a Mac computer to be able to develop for it. Apple invented all the closed rules of current app stores that don’t even let developers have external revenues. Apple has killed all the ads business of its competitors to then duplicate its own ad ecosystem. It is such a good company.

Apple is a talented company that I’m sure will deliver an amazing device. But please don’t depict it as a “good company”. No one of these big corporates is good.

Meta has spent $10B/year for Horizon, and it sucks

Meta never spent $10B/year for Horizon. It is spending a shitload of money to:

• Create its own hardware pipeline. Remember that Apple and Microsoft were already hardware companies, Meta was not when it bought Oculus
• Do R&D to reach the goal of having lightweight XR glasses in the next 10 years, something that is an incredibly difficult task
• Create a whole ecosystem with SDK, developers, stores, etc…
• Fund content
• Do marketing outreach (ads, TV commercials, etc…) to create awareness for XR and the metaverse

Horizon sucks, but that is a different story.

Meta is spending too much money for the metaverse

Is it? Well, maybe yes… I personally think that 10B/year is a bit too much. But it needs to spend billions for sure because this is the money that is needed for technological advancements.

Do you remember when everyone was criticizing Magic leap because it got $2.5B in investments and then it was able to deliver something that was “just” like the Hololens? Well, people don’t know that, according to some sources, the money that Microsoft had to spend to reach the technology to build the HoloLens over the years was something like $5-7B. So, Magic Leap was even cheap in comparison. The difference with Magic Leap was that no one was caring about how much money was Microsoft spending on its R&D for Kinect and similar projects.

So… do you know how much money is Apple spending on the metaverse? I bet they are many billions, too… it’s just that we don’t know… and that Apple is not calling it “metaverse”.

Mark Zuckerberg is a robot or an alien

No, wait, this one may be true.

Zuck should stop investing in the metaverse and focus on Facebook

This one literally makes me angry. For once, we have a major company that is not playing the usual game of doing safe things not to scare investors, but it is performing a massive pivot to bet on the future. This is a very bold move and we should all appreciate that is happening. This is one of the biggest revolutions that I’ve seen happening in such a big company, and I have to say that I esteem Zuck for the balls he’s having in doing this. He may fail, but at least he’s doing a massive thing.

Instead, magazines have already depicted the metaverse as failed, so they say that Zuck should get back to focusing on Facebook. Yeah, I think that we all want just more glittered “good morning” GIFs on Facebook instead of a future disruptive technological platform. #sarcasmagain

I really hope this doesn’t happen, I don’t care at all about Facebook, but I want to see new tech advancements in immersive realities, so I’m happy Meta keeps investing in it.

The Meta Quest Pro is the proof that Meta has failed

The Meta Quest Pro is what Meta promised it to be. An expensive device for prosumers with some innovative features. Meta never said it was going to be cheap (it anticipated a price much higher than $800) and never promised it to be perfect. But after the launch, everyone started getting mad about the price saying that at that price it couldn’t become successful in the mainstream market. But NO ONE AT META never said it was for the mainstream market. Yes, Meta created confusion talking about consumer content available on Quest Pro, but it always talked about a more “premium device”.

And regarding the fact that it is not perfect… well, not even $6500 Varjo XR-3 is perfect, how can you expect that from a $1500 Quest Pro?

Again, people setting themselves false expectations and then being disappointed by these expectations not being met.

Meta wants to profile us and bring its ad business to the metaverse

Wait, this one is true, too…

Closing line

As I’ve said, I’ve not written this post because I’m a fan of Meta and I’m not trying to convince you that Meta is good (again, it is not, no big corporate is good). I’m just saying to stop believing hype, and that instead of writing “sensationalistic content”, some journalists should care more about informing the community. The right information would be “Meta is working on its metaverse vision, but the road is still long in front of it, so currently there are still lots of things to improve”. And in that long road, I totally hope that as a company it will care more about openness, privacy, and safety than it did in the past and that there will be many competitors that will prevent it from having the monopoly of the metaverse. But I guess that this doesn’t bring enough likes.

In any case, even if this bad sentiment will make us enter some winter of the metaverse, I will keep staying in the field, because I’m a believer in this technology and I want to stay here for the next 10 years. And I hope you will stay here together with me… with or without Meta.

(Header image from Business Insider)