Employees are avoiding the Metaverse as well.
Meta has debuted its newest headgear, which is designed to do much more than simply play virtual reality games. The Quest Pro and Meta’s standalone gaming headset, the Quest 2, vary significantly. The most noticeable difference is the price, with the Quest 2 costing $399 and the Quest Pro costing a whopping $1,499. Meta explains the pricing by claiming that the Quest Pro will be one of the most sophisticated AR/VR headsets on the market, packed with cutting-edge technology that will eventually trickle down to its entry-level headsets.
While the Quest Pro has all of the same gaming applications as the Quest 2, VR players aren’t the intended audience. Meta is promoting the headgear to businesses as an ideal method to communicate, attend meetings, and build goods. Color passthrough and controller styluses play a role in this, but the commercial applications go well beyond the technology. According to the firm, programmes like Horizon are designed to let users to “hang out with friends, meet new people, play games, and attend fun events.” It may also be utilised for meetings, but few individuals bring their professional lives into the metaverse.
One of the largest bets in history is Zuckerberg’s metaverse.
Mark Zuckerberg is a firm believer in the notion of the metaverse. The Facebook founder appears to be betting his company’s future prosperity on the success of VR, AR, and the metaverse as a whole. If he is correct, Meta might become the dominant player in a market worth billions of dollars every year. If he’s mistaken, the financial toll he and his firm have already taken may be only the tip of the iceberg. While the majority of Meta’s divisions are performing well, the division in charge of Zuckerberg’s AR and VR initiatives is losing tens of billions of dollars.
This, along with dwindling shareholder confidence and a general decline in tech markets, has resulted in Zuckerberg losing about half of his net worth thus far. The losses might explain the price hike for the Quest 2 or the exorbitant price tag for the company’s new flagship product. The metaverse notion is a gamble, and its supporters must keep stockholders pleased if they hope to see their longer-term wagers pay off.
The game aspect of things is functioning fairly well, as stated in the early rounds of Connect 2022. During the lecture, it was revealed that one-third of Quest apps had sold for more over $1 million. Marvel comics and “The Walking Dead” are among the major intellectual properties with a stake in the VR gaming sector. Original concepts such as “Blade and Sorcery” and “BoneLabs” are also quite popular. However, the metaverse encompasses more than just gaming, and for Zuckerberg’s bet to pay off, VR and AR may need to carve itself a market in other sectors. It’s not working well as an alternative to the office.
The notion may not be well received by Meta employees.
It appears that even the company’s own workers are sceptical about the metaverse’s potential as a substitute for the traditional office. As one might assume, Mark Zuckerberg is eager for his own staff to adopt the technology on which he is betting billions of dollars. According to The New York Times, the corporation discovered some big concerns after staff were told to organise more metaverse-based meetings through the Horizon Workrooms app. According to reports, “many” of Meta’s workers did not possess one of the company’s headsets, while others did own a Quest but had not bothered to set it up.
Another statistic cited in the report might explain the supposed lack of excitement on the side of the Meta personnel. Blind, a social network, polled 1,000 workers, and found that 420 (42%) did not grasp the company’s “metaverse approach.” This all matches with claims from a few months ago, which indicated that the platform was riddled with quality concerns and that few staff loved using it. According to The Verge, Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, recognised that the platform had several bugs and stability difficulties and ordered a “quality lockdown” until the major issues were resolved.
However, Shah appears to be one of the executives that wants Meta’s employees to embrace one of the company’s primary metaverse selling features. The CEO allegedly requested weekly Horizon-based meetings and is quoted as saying, “Everyone in this business should commit to falling in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do anything unless you use it. Enter the room. Schedule times to do it with your coworkers or friends, in both internal and public builds, so you can connect with our community.”
Horizon isn’t dealing with its first issue.
Horizon has had a difficult time thus far. The platform is essentially an early version of the metaverse, with users able to create avatars, hang around, attend meetings, and participate in leisure activities. The issue is that Horizon Worlds had a disastrous debut. Spectators were eager to point out the terrible visuals, comparing them to a Nintendo Wii game from 15 years ago. In response to the criticism, Zuckerberg promised a substantial graphics overhaul that would bring the Horizon platform closer to the level expected of a futuristic social gadget (via Kotaku).
The updated graphical environment was on show during Connect 2022, as seen above. Meta even granted several of its users’ wishes by adding legs to the avatars they build. The business is also collaborating with developers to include such avatars into the platform’s third-party apps. A metaverse like the one Zuckerberg proposed to the world around this time last year is a long way off, but platforms like Horizon and how it interacts with other VR apps are an obvious starting point. Other topics under consideration include whether the public accepts it, if corporations embrace it, and whether technology supports it. For the time being, Meta must get the fundamentals right before both its employees and investors lose trust in the initiative.
