Meta – Page 9

Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ Social VR Platform to Kids Ages 13+

horizon worlds, Meta, meta horizon worlds, News, Social Virtual Reality, Social VR / DJ Henderson / April 22, 2023

Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform for Quest, is only open to 18+ users for now, however the company says it’s expanding to include teens aged 13 to 17 in the US and Canada.

Meta says the new policy will go into effect in “the coming weeks,” effectively opening the company’s first-party social platform to its entire user base in those countries; Meta only allows users 13+ to actually use Quest devices.

To prepare for the wave of younger users, the company is also releasing some age-appropriate protections and safety defaults.

Safety features will include the ability for teens to control who they follow and who can follow them back. Profiles are also set to private by default, which obscures active status and location. Worlds and events will have content ratings, so younger teens can’t get in.

A new voice mode feature is also rolling out to everyone, which garbles voices of both unknown people and teen’s voices by default. Raising your hand to your ear temporarily lets you hear other users when voice mode is switched on, Meta says.

“We’re rolling out to teens slowly, so that we can carefully examine usage and are taking a phased approach before expanding more broadly,” the company says in a blogpost. “We can’t wait to see everything these new members of the community bring to Worlds.”

Parents and guardians can use the parental supervision tools to manage their teen’s experience and “support healthy conversations about safety in VR,” Meta says. To learn more, check out the new Family Center.

The company also released a safety tutorial to see the new features in action:

While Meta only just released official word of those changes to Horizon Worlds, the news was actually first reported by The Wall Street Journal in February, which was based on an internal memo that alleged the social VR platform was under performing and needed to increase user retention to keep up with the competition. According to the memo seen by WSJ, Horizon Worlds’ weekly retention rate was 11% in January 2023, which the company aimed to increase to 20%.

A goal outlined in the memo maintained Worlds needed to reach 500,000 monthly active users (MAU) in the first half of 2023, ultimately reaching the one million mark by year’s end. At the time, it was reported the platform was hovering around 200,000 MAUs, or just below the December peak.

There’s no telling when the flatscreen version of Horizon Worlds is due to arrive, however Meta maintained it would be opening the Quest-only social platform to Web and mobile devices “soon.”

Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ Social VR Platform to Kids Ages 13+ Read More »

Meta Shows New Progress on Key Tech for Making AR Genuinely Useful

ar, Artificial Intelligence, augmented reality, Meta, meta sam, News, object segmentation, sa-1b / DJ Henderson / April 11, 2023

Meta has introduced the Segment Anything Model, which aims to set a new bar for computer-vision-based ‘object segmentation’—the ability for computers to understand the difference between individual objects in an image or video. Segmentation will be key for making AR genuinely useful by enabling a comprehensive understanding of the world around the user.

Object segmentation is the process of identifying and separating objects in an image or video. With the help of AI, this process can be automated, making it possible to identify and isolate objects in real-time. This technology will be critical for creating a more useful AR experience by giving the system an awareness of various objects in the world around the user.

The Challenge

Imagine, for instance, that you’re wearing a pair of AR glasses and you’d like to have two floating virtual monitors on the left and right of your real monitor. Unless you’re going to manually tell the system where your real monitor is, it must be able to understand what a monitor looks like so that when it sees your monitor it can place the virtual monitors accordingly.

But monitors come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Sometimes reflections or occluded objects make it even harder for a computer-vision system to recognize.

Having a fast and reliable segmentation system that can identify each object in the room around you (like your monitor) will be key to unlocking tons of AR use-cases so the tech can be genuinely useful.

Computer-vision based object segmentation has been an ongoing area of research for many years now, but one of the key issues is that in order to help computers understand what they’re looking at, you need to train an AI model by giving it lots images to learn from.

Such models can be quite effective at identifying the objects they were trained on, but if they will struggle on objects they haven’t seen before. That means that one of the biggest challenges for object segmentation is simply having a large enough set of images for the systems to learn from, but collecting those images and annotating them in a way that makes them useful for training is no small task.

SAM I Am

Meta recently published work on a new project called the Segment Anything Model (SAM). It’s both a segmentation model and a massive set of training images the company is releasing for others to build upon.

The project aims to reduce the need for task-specific modeling expertise. SAM is a general segmentation model that can identify any object in any image or video, even for objects and image types that it didn’t see during training.

SAM allows for both automatic and interactive segmentation, allowing it to identify individual objects in a scene with simple inputs from the user. SAM can be ‘prompted’ with clicks, boxes, and other prompts, giving users control over what the system is attempting to identifying at any given moment.

It’s easy to see how this point-based prompting could work great if coupled with eye-tracking on an AR headset. In fact that’s exactly one of the use-cases that Meta has demonstrated with the system:

Here’s another example of SAM being used on first-person video captured by Meta’s Project Aria glasses:

You can try SAM for yourself in your browser right now.

How SAM Knows So Much

Part of SAM’s impressive abilities come from its training data which contains a massive 10 million images and 1 billion identified object shapes. It’s far more comprehensive than contemporary datasets, according to Meta, giving SAM much more experience in the learning process and enabling it to segment a broad range of objects.

Meta calls the SAM dataset SA-1B, and the company is releasing the entire set for other researchers to build upon.

Meta hopes this work on promptable segmentation, and the release of this massive training dataset, will accelerate research into image and video understanding. The company expects the SAM model can be used as a component in larger systems, enabling versatile applications in areas like AR, content creation, scientific domains, and general AI systems.

Meta Shows New Progress on Key Tech for Making AR Genuinely Useful Read More »

40 Quest Titles Report Over $10M in Revenue, Meta Says “giant correlation” Between Quality & Sales

GDC 2023, Meta, meta apps, meta game revenue, meta games, meta revenue, News Bits, quest 2 games, quest 2 games stats, quest 2 revenue / DJ Henderson / March 23, 2023

Meta today revealed at Game Developers Conference (GDC) a fresh bit of insight into Quest Store stats.

The company says in a developer blog post there are now 500+ titles available on the Meta Quest Store, 40 of which have grossed over $10 million in revenue.

At Connect 2022 in October, the company reported that 33 titles out of the 400 apps on the Quest Store at the time had tipped over the $10 million mark. Since then, the Quest Store has ostensibly added around 100 games in the time span of around five months.

And it seems those high-earning games are picking up steam too. The number of titles at the $20-million mark has doubled year over year, Meta says.

As far as today’s stats tease go, Meta is most certainly counting all Quest apps and games on the store, and not just those targeting Quest 2 or Quest Pro. Notably, the company is sunsetting the original 2019 Quest soon.

Chris Pruett, Meta Director of Content Ecosystem and Head of Third-party Games, outlined a few key metrics in what’s performing best on Quest:

Top game genres include multiplayer competitive, physics combat, horror adventure, fitness and workout, social collaborative, and shooters.

Growth categories include single-player narrative adventure, boxing/golf and sports, RPG, simulation, and survival.

Referring to game revenue, Pruett says there’s a “giant correlation between quality and sales.”

“The cohorts of Quest customers over time, the ones coming in recently, look very different than the early enthusiasts,” Pruett said to the GDC crowd. “Their expectations are like those of a modern game console.’

Pruett doesn’t think we’re “anywhere close to the upper-bound for visual quality and game complexity on Quest 2—partially because we have some awesome tech that most of you aren’t using yet.” Continuing, Pruett concludes that “increased revenue potential on the platform is what’s going to drive quality.”

Despite the blogpost announce, the company hasn’t revealed any change in gross app revenue since Connect 2022. Meta is still stating it’s generated “over $1.5 billion” in revenue from Quest games, tallied from the platform’s founding in 2019 to October 2022.

We have boots on the ground at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, so we’re sure to learn more while we’re there. Make sure to check back soon for all things VR/AR gaming from this year’s GDC,

40 Quest Titles Report Over $10M in Revenue, Meta Says “giant correlation” Between Quality & Sales Read More »

Meta Keeps the Oculus Name Alive as Third-party VR Publisher Becomes ‘Oculus Publishing’

Meta, meta vr, meta vr games, News, oculus, oculus publishing, oculus studios / Mike M. / March 23, 2023

Meta has nearly scrubbed all of its products of the Oculus name, however the company today announced its third-party publishing wing is getting a sort of rebrand that will see the Oculus name live on.

Meta announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that it’s naming its third-party publishing arm Oculus Publishing. The company tells us Oculus Studios, its first-party studio, will continue to exist.

To date, Meta’s growing fleet of acquired first-party studios includes Beat Games (Beat Saber), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo & Echo VR), Downpour Interactive (Onward), BigBox VR (Population: One), and Within (Supernatural).

Third-party titles under Oculus Publishing include Among Us VR (Innersloth, Schell Games), Bonelab (Stress Level Zero), The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (Skydance Interactive), and Blade & Sorcery: Nomad (Warpfrog).

Notably, there’s little left that sports the Oculus brand since the company made its big metaverse pivot in October 2021. Besides older hardware, the only things most people see with the ‘Oculus’ moniker is the Oculus PC app and Meta’s Oculus web portal, where the company still lists game libraries for Quest, Rift, Go, and Gear VR.

“This year marks a full decade since the inception of the original Oculus Content Team,” the company says in a developer blog post. “From Kickstarter to Quest, Meta has committed hundreds of millions of dollars in third-party content funding and specialized development support to help make the VR games landscape what it is today. Now, we’re excited to unveil an official name for one of the world’s largest VR games programs for developers: Oculus Publishing.”

The company says Oculus Publishing will continue to directly partner with development teams on conceptualization, funding, production, technology advancement, game engineering, promotion and merchandising.

The company says it’s contributed funding to “more than 300 titles,” and that there are another 150 titles in active development today.

Meta Keeps the Oculus Name Alive as Third-party VR Publisher Becomes ‘Oculus Publishing’ Read More »

Meta’s Second Mass Layoff Round to Affect 10,000 More Employees

Meta, meta 2022 layoffs, meta layoffs, News / Mike M. / March 14, 2023

Following a mass layoff at Meta late last year which affected 11,000 of its employees, the company announced today that it would be laying off another 10,000 workers through multiple rounds.

Update (March 14th, 2023): According to a Facebook post by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta is laying off an additional 10,000 employees across multiple rounds. It’s also set to close hiring for 5,000 open roles, and cancel more low-priority projects. Layoffs are said to begin this week, first hitting the company’s recruiting organization. A second weave in late April will affect tech roles, while a third in late May will affect business roles.

In the post, Zuckerberg calls this the “Year of Efficiency,” which the Meta chief says will optimize distributed work, increase developer productivity and tooling, and make the organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. Zuckerberg also hopes to make it leaner by prioritizing higher-priority projects.

Notably, Zuckerberg doesn’t mention specific projects, or XR in any capacity. Meanwhile, the company has lowered the price of both Quest 2 and Quest Pro before the launch of Quest 3, which has come amid reports that Meta is planning a cheaper follow-up to Quest 3 in 2024 in addition to its AR projects.

The original article detailing the first large layoff round follows below:

Original Article (November 9th, 2022): Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this in an internal memo obtained by Reuters:

“Not only has online commerce returned to [pre-covid] prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,” Zuckerberg said. “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Meta plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter, Reuters maintains. Laid off Meta employees are said to receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, as well as all remaining paid time off, as a part of the severance package.

It’s not certain what percentage of layoffs will affect those working in Reality Labs. We’ve reached out to Meta for further comment and will update this if/when we hear back.

Trouble in XR Paradise?

Meta’s most recent quarterly earnings spelled trouble when it was released last month. Close to celebrating its first year after rebranding from Facebook to become a self-described ‘metaverse’ company, Meta battled slumping revenues across multiple divisions, not least of which was its XR centerpiece Reality Labs, which took an expected hit that didn’t sit right with investors.

While Meta has been aggressively spending on its XR division over the past few years, its recent shift away from Facebook amid all-time low revenues and record inflation has made layoffs almost a guarantee to keep stock prices from plummeting further.

Back in May, Reuters reported that hiring freezes would affect Reality Labs, which has added more than 13,000 employees last year and nearly 6,000 in the first quarter this year.

Zuckerberg warned at the time that Reality Labs probably wouldn’t truly profit for at least decade. In the meantime, the Meta’s XR efforts has cost the company $10.2 billion in 2021 and another $3 billion in the first quarter this year.

Meanwhile, Meta has just released its $1,500 Meta Quest Pro mixed reality headset for prosumers and business, and plans to release a consumer-focused follow-up, likely dubbed Quest 3, sometime in 2023.

Meta’s Second Mass Layoff Round to Affect 10,000 More Employees Read More »

Meta is Planning a Cheaper VR Headset for Release in 2024, Pointing to Possible ‘Quest 3 Lite’

Meta, Meta Quest 3, meta ventura, News, quest 3, quest 3 lite, Standalone VR Headset, ventura, vr standalone / Mike M. / March 2, 2023

Meta is planning to ship a VR headset in 2024 which the company wants to make as accessible as possible to consumers.

According to a report by The Verge, Meta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabki, told thousands of employees in a memo that it plans to release a consumer VR headset in 2024, codenamed Ventura.

“The goal for this headset is very simple: pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market,” Rabki wrote in the memo.

Meta seems to be positioning Ventura as a ‘Quest 3 Lite’ of sorts. In the reported memo, the company announced its upcoming Quest 3 would be targeted at enthusiasts, which is said to be a “bit more money” than the current $400/$500 headset, while also including mixed reality capabilities similar to Quest Pro. The company has publicly confirmed Quest 3 will release at some point this year.

Additionally, the report maintains that any ‘Pro’ level headset will be “way out in the future” after Ventura is released in 2024.

This means Meta will be selling Quest 3 at the same time it releases Ventura in 2024, and likely within the life span of Quest Pro too, so the company will need to offer all of them at fitting price points as to not muddy the waters.

It’s uncertain where Meta hopes to cut corners with the ostensibly cheaper standalone. One thing the company can do is ship without motion controllers, which would cut down on overall price, although that would stymie consumer access to the back catalogue of VR games. Not all games make use of Quest hand-tracking.

With Ventura, the company could opt to essentially update Quest 2’s hardware with minor modifications, like replacing the Fresnel lenses with pancake optics to slim down the overall profile, and add a faster chipset.

Whatever the case, it seems the company is looking at capturing the low end of the VR market, which would better lock in a new generation of VR users into the Meta ecosystem—something the company needs if it hopes to increase user retention. Offering a cheaper headset could also potentially broaden Meta’s access to emerging markets, somewhere Chinese competitors like Pico Interactive may succeed given the chance.

Meta is Planning a Cheaper VR Headset for Release in 2024, Pointing to Possible ‘Quest 3 Lite’ Read More »

Meta Plans Pricier Quest 3 With Features to ‘fire up enthusiasts’

Meta, Meta Quest 3, News, oculus quest 3, quest 3, quest 3 features, quest 3 leak, quest 3 roadmap / DJ Henderson / March 2, 2023

Meta’s Quest 3 headset, which the company has confirmed will land this year, is said to be positioned as a slightly pricier headset with features designed to appeal to VR enthusiasts.

For Quest 3, due out sometime later this year, Meta may be focusing more on its existing VR customers rather than trying to reel in brand new users.

According to a report by The Verge, Meta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabki, told thousands of employees that for the company’s next consumer headset, Quest 3, “we have to get enthusiasts fired up about it […] we have to prove to people that all this power, all these new features are worth it.” The Verge cites an internal Meta presentation held today as the source of this information.

Those features, which are largely expected to be a subset of what’s on Quest Pro, would make the headset cost “a bit more,” Rabkin said, than Quest 2 which currently sells for $400.

Leaks have consistently pointed to Quest 3 having pancake lenses, a more compact form-factor, and better augmented reality capabilities. The device is reportedly codenamed ‘Stinson’.

The improved AR capabilities, Rabkin hopes, will make Quest 3 feel easier to use.

“The main north star for the team was from the moment you put on this headset, the mixed reality has to make it feel better, easier, more natural,” he told employees, according to The Verge. “You can walk effortlessly through your house knowing you can see perfectly well. You can put anchors and things on your desktop. You can take your coffee. You can stay in there much longer.”

That would be swell, but Meta hasn’t exactly demonstrated that natural feeling with Quest Pro yet, meaning there is still significant work to do on the user-experience side if Quest 3 will meet those goals.

Something else that would surely ‘fire up enthusiasts’ for Quest 3 would be a dedicated video pipeline for PC VR tethering, rather than using the compressed Oculus Link or Air Link method that’s currently available on Quest 2. However, the company has shown little appetite for appealing to PC VR users as of late.

As for leaning into existing VR customers rather than pulling in new ones, this may be an effort to address Quest’s retention issues; while the headset has certainly sold well, Meta has been disappointed with the rate at which customers continue to use their headset after buying.

With regards to Quest 3 being more expensive than Quest 2, it seems that Meta has learned its lesson; having not established a substantial ads business in VR, heavily subsidizing headsets to get them out the door probably isn’t a good idea. Meta had to very publicly reverse that strategy when it raised the price of Quest 2 last year, by as much as 33% (though this was also related to inflation and broader economic turbulence).

The report from The Verge includes more info about the company’s XR roadmap, which you can read in full here.

Meta Plans Pricier Quest 3 With Features to ‘fire up enthusiasts’ Read More »

Meta Has Sold Nearly 20 Million Quest Headsets, But Retention Struggles Remain

Data, Meta, News, quest 2 sales, quest 2 sales figures, quest 2 unit sales, VR Industry / DJ Henderson / March 2, 2023

Meta has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets, but the company continues to struggle with keeping customer using VR.

According to a report by The Verge, citing an internal Meta presentation held today, the company has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets. This likely includes Quest 1, Quest 2, and Quest Pro, though by all accounts Quest 2 appears to be the vast majority. And while the figure wasn’t publicly announced, this would be the first official confirmation of Quest unit sales from the company.

This info was shared by Mark Rabkin, Meta’s VP of VR, during an internal presentation to “thousands” of employees, according to The Verge.

And while the 20 million unit Quest sales figure is impressive—and well beyond any other single VR headset maker—Rabkin went on to stress that the company has to do a better job at keeping customers using the headsets well after their purchase.

“We need to be better at growth and retention and resurrection,” he said. “We need to be better at social and actually make those things more reliable, more intuitive so people can count on it.”

Curiously, Meta’s latest wave of headset customers are less enthusiastic than those that bought in early.

“Right now, we’re on our third year of Quest 2,” Rabkin said, according to The Verge. “And sadly, the newer cohorts that are coming in—the people who bought it this last Christmas—they’re just not as into it [or engaged as] the ones who bought it early.”

The report from The Verge includes more info about the company’s XR roadmap, which you can read in full here.

Meta Has Sold Nearly 20 Million Quest Headsets, But Retention Struggles Remain Read More »

Report: Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ to Younger Teens Amid Renewed Retention Push

horizon, horizon vr, horizon worlds, horizon worlds app, Meta, Meta Quest 2, meta quest social, meta social vr, metaverse, News, Social Virtual Reality, Social VR / Mike M. / February 9, 2023

Meta’s social VR app for Quest, Horizon Worlds, is lagging behind the competition when it comes to attracting and retaining VR users. According to a leaked memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal, the company is now ostensibly looking to boost numbers by more transparently appealing to younger teens in addition to funding a slew of new second-party content.

WSJ only posted snippets of the memo, entitled ‘Horizon 2023 Goals and Strategy’, which was allegedly written by Meta Vice President of Horizon Gabriel Aul. The memo is said to outline the team’s objectives for the first half of 2023.

Here’s some highlights we formatted into a bulleted list, which also includes additional info supplied by a source cited by WSJ:

Competitors are outperforming HW. Improving user retention is most important, especially among teens and young adults
HW to open to teens aged 13 to 17, which could come as early as March
Meta is working with outside studios to build new worlds and experiences for HW
The team is aiming to launch at least 20 new Horizon-hosted experiences built by second-party studios. Of the 20, it’s hoping for five medium hits and at least one a major hit
The flatscreen version of Horizon for mobile and desktops is set to come sometime in H1 2023

Additionally, WSJ reports the memo outlined some key performance metrics, claiming Horizon Worlds’ weekly retention rate was 11% in January, which the company aims to increase to 20%. The goal for monthly active users for the first half of 2023 is said to be 500,000, with hopes of reaching one million for the full year. Currently the platform is at 200,000, or just below the December peak, the reported memo outlines.

The previously reported flatscreen version, which is said to launch by the end of the first half of 2023, is hoping to achieve 150,000 monthly cross-screen Horizon users.

Meta’s Quest 2 headset is technically only available to users aged 13 and up. Horizon Worlds on the other hand has been limited to users 18+ since it was launched in 2021, and only to those in US, Canada, UK, France, Iceland, Ireland and Spain.

While none of this seems to have hindered children below 13 from playing all the Quest 2 has to offer, Horizon Worlds included. More transparently appealing to young teens though will likely come with a host of safety requirements that the company needs to fulfil for liability reasons.

Meta issued a response to WSJ, supporting in part its move to focus on teens:

“Teens are already spending time in a variety of VR experiences on Quest,” Meta spokesman Joe Osborne told WSJ, “and we want to ensure that we can provide them with a great experience in Horizon Worlds as well, with age-appropriate tools and protections in place.”

This comes hot on the heels of Meta reducing its workforce by 13% late last year, one of the biggest tech layoffs in recent memory, which saw 11,000 jobs cut from payroll.

Meanwhile, the company’s Reality Labs XR division has dramatically increased its operating budget in an ostensible bid to maintain market dominance over similar metaverse pushes from the likes of Apple, Google, etc. At the same time, Meta has slashed some XR projects, including first-party title Echo VR.

Provided the report is true, it appears Meta is making another important step towards competing more directly with cross-platform social gaming titans like Roblox and Rec Room.

Report: Meta to Open ‘Horizon Worlds’ to Younger Teens Amid Renewed Retention Push Read More »

Meta Affirms Plans for Quest 3 Launch This Year, Despite Layoffs and Focus on “Efficiency”

Meta, Meta Quest 3, News, quest 3, quest 3 release date, VR Industry / DJ Henderson / February 9, 2023

Despite major layoffs from Meta, the company has affirmed that its next-gen consumer headset, Quest 3, is planned for release this year. While it will adopt some of the features from Quest Pro, not all will make the leap.

In November last year, Meta announced plans to reduce its workforce by 13%—a whopping 11,000 cut jobs. And though CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently in the company’s latest earnings call that 2023 would be focused on streamlining the company, Meta continues to prioritize its VR headset lineup and plans to launch Quest 3 sometime this year.

Meta’s XR division, Reality Labs, is burning more money than ever in its pursuit of beating tech-sector rivals Apple, Google, et all to the metaverse and XR. And even though the company is slashing some XR projects, it’s still full-steam ahead with its consumer headset, says Zuckerberg.

“Later this year, we’re going to launch our next generation consumer headset, which will feature Meta Reality, [like Quest Pro], and I expect that this is going to establish this technology as the baseline for all headsets going forward, and eventually of course for AR glasses as well,” Zuckerberg told investors.

“Meta Reality,” as the company calls it, is Meta’s color passthrough AR solution which was first included with Quest Pron—meaning Quest 3 will include similar color passthrough AR capabilities.

While Quest 3 is likely to adopt the passthrough AR system of Quest Pro, it sounds like it won’t get the eye and face-tracking features of that headset. Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said as much during a Q&A session on Instagram last week.

Replying to a question about when face-tracking would come to consumer-priced headsets, Boz noted, “it’s gonna be a little while… it’s gonna be years. The reason is simple: all those extra cameras and the compute power required to actually do the face-geometry and recognition has a lot of tradeoffs with it, and one of the main tradeoffs is cost.”

This lines up with leaks from last year that also pointed to a Quest 3 with color passthrough AR and no face-tracking; however the lauded ‘pancake’ lenses from Quest Pro may flip to the consumer side.

While the Quest headset line continues, not all of Meta’s hardware projects have been spared the axe. Last year Meta discontinued its Portal video-calling smart speakers, and reportedly cancelled two unreleased smartwatch projects, according to The Verge. That Meta is charging ahead with more headsets shows the company’s priorities remain focused on immersive devices.

Along with those cancellations, Zuckerberg during the earnings call told investors that he was marking 2023 as the “year of efficiency”; an effort to streamline the hulking company to be more nimble and get more done.

“We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end. Since then, we’ve taken some additional steps like working with our infrastructure team on how to deliver our roadmap while spending less on capex. Next, we’re working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive. As part of this, we’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial, but my main focus is on increasing the efficiency of how we execute our top priorities.”

Meta Affirms Plans for Quest 3 Launch This Year, Despite Layoffs and Focus on “Efficiency” Read More »

Report: Meta Wins Bid to Acquire VR Fitness Studio Behind ‘Supernatural’, Awaiting FTC Appeal

antitrust, ftc, Meta, meta antitrust, meta ftc, News, VR Fitness / DJ Henderson / February 2, 2023

In 2021 Meta announced it was set to acquire Within, the studio behind popular VR fitness app Supernatural, however the reportedly $400 million deal became subject to investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in respect to Meta’s supposed monopolization of the VR fitness space. Now, according to a Bloomberg report, it appears the FTC has lost an important suit to block Meta’s acquisition of Within.

Unreleased documents from the closed court proceedings appear to vindicate Meta’s acquisition of Within, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the ruling. The sealed decision was made Wednesday morning by US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, which effectively denies the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction to block the acquisition.

The final outcome of the trial isn’t entirely official just yet though. It’s said Judge Davila also issued a temporary restraining order with the aim of pausing Meta from closing the transaction for a further week, allowing time for the FTC to make an appeal. Provided the reports are accurate, the chances of the FTC potentially clawing back from the loss seem fairly slim at this point.

Last July, the FTC under sitting Chair Lina Khan revealed it had filed a motion aimed at blocking the deal with a federal court in a 3–2 decision, which aimed at reigning in Meta’s ability to “buy market position instead of earning it on the merits,” FTC Bureau of Competition Deputy Director John Newman said at the time.

Neither Meta nor the FTC has commented on the report regarding Meta’s win. In a statement to the New York Times about the matter in July, Meta called the FTC’s position “based on ideology and speculation, not evidence. The idea that this acquisition would lead to anticompetitive outcomes in a dynamic space with as much entry and growth as online and connected fitness is simply not credible.” Adding that the lawsuit would send “a chilling message to anyone who wishes to innovate in VR.”

Over the past four years, Meta has gone unchallenged in several VR studio acquisitions, including Beat Games (Beat Saber), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo & Echo Arena), Downpour Interactive (Onward), BigBox VR (Population: One), Camouflaj (Marvel’s Iron Man VR), Twisted Pixel (Wilson’s Heart, Path of the Warrior), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port for Quest 2).

In particular, the FTC used Meta’s acquisition of Beat Saber as evidence that the company already had engineers with the skill set to both expand Beat Saber into fitness and to build a VR dedicated fitness app from scratch, an FTC court filing stated, maintaining that buying Within “was not the only way Meta could have developed the production capabilities and expertise needed to create a premium VR fitness experience.”

Report: Meta Wins Bid to Acquire VR Fitness Studio Behind ‘Supernatural’, Awaiting FTC Appeal Read More »

Meta Reality Labs Earnings Reveal a Less Successful Holiday Season & Highest Operating Costs Yet

Meta, meta q4 earnings, meta q4 quest earnings, meta q4 reality labs earnings, meta revenue, News, reality labs revenue, VR Industry / Shannon Garcia / February 1, 2023

Meta today revealed its latest quarterly earnings results, showing that Reality Labs, the company’s XR and metaverse arm, had a smaller holiday season than the last, while operating costs have reached their highest levels yet.

Today during the company’s Q4 earnings call, Meta revealed the latest revenue and operating cost figures for its XR and metaverse division, Reality Labs, providing one of the clearest indicators of the success the company is seeing in this space.

The fourth quarter has consistently been the best performer for Reality Labs, no doubt thanks to the holiday season driving sales of the company’s offerings.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the company saw $727 million in revenue, which was 17% less compared to the fourth quarter of 2021 when the company pulled in $877 million in revenue.

The fourth quarter of 2021 was a good performer for Reality Labs revenue thanks to the success of Quest 2 which had launched earlier that year.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the company’s latest headset to launch was Quest Pro, it’s high-end MR headset. Unsurprisingly, the more expensive device—which has yet to find a strong value proposition at $1,500—doesn’t seem to have performed as well as Quest 2 did in its launch year. Just days ago, Meta temporarily discounted the price of the headset to $1,100, appearing to test the waters at that lower price. Granted, XR headsets aren’t the only product Reality Labs offers, which means the division’s other product lines—video calling speakers and smart glasses—may have had a role to play.

In addition to a smaller holiday season than last year, the latest earnings for Reality Labs show the division’s expenses were greater than in any previous quarter, surpassing $4 billion for the first time.

This continues a trend of Meta’s ever-growing investments in Reality Labs which the company has warned investors may not flourish until the 2030s.

In the face of operating costs far outpacing revenue, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that his management theme for 2023 was “efficiency,” saying he wants to focus the company on streamlining its structure to move faster while being more aggressive about shutting down projects that aren’t performing.

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