In an extensive blog post, Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta and head of Reality Labs, laid out the path the company will take in 2023. Meta does not intend to reduce its expenses in the development of the metaversedespite the difficulties encountered during 2022.
The slap of 2022
At the end of 2021, Facebook now became Meta and changed course on its future: this would go through the development of the metaverse, considered by the company to be the future iteration of the Internet. The year 2022 has been much more complicated than expected for the entire tech sector, however, and Meta has been particularly affected. For the first time in its history, the firm saw its revenues fall; quickly, investors pointed the finger at his massive spending in Reality Labs, its unit dedicated to virtual and augmented reality. It must be said that the company had difficulty in convincing, in particular because its Horizon Worlds platform offered questionable graphics, causing mockery and struggling to attract new users.
The finding is worrying for Meta: its shares on the stock market have fallen by 65% this year, the company has been forced to end many projects and decided to pay thousands of its employees. ” These are the moments that have stood the test of people’s faith in the future. In times of economic boom, it is easy to make large and ambitious investments in what is to come. But when the economy turns, it’s just as easy to do the opposite: scale back your ambitions, stick to what’s safest and most worthwhile today, and make the most of it. says Andrew Bosworth.
Image: Horizon Worlds/Meta.
Promises for 2023
Despite the obstacles, Meta still wants to believeas the title of the post written by Bosworth suggests: “ Why we still believe in the future “. The IT specialist provides information on the company’s investments during 2023: ” As our Q3 results also show, approximately 80% of Meta’s overall investments include the core business, with the remaining 20% going to Reality Labs. This is a level of investment that we believe is wise for a company that is committed to staying at the forefront of one of the most competitive and innovative industries on the planet. “.
In other words : 80% of Meta spending will be dedicated to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, and the remaining 20% will be absorbed in the development of the metaversewith as many investments in augmented reality as in virtual reality.
Andrew Bosworth explains in particular this bias taken by the competition that is expected to expand in 2023 in the augmented reality and virtual reality sectors, especially with the very likely arrival of Apple on the mixed reality headset market. However, there is still a long way to go: Our vision of true augmented reality glasses will take years of progress to make our devices thinner, lighter, faster and more powerful, while consuming far less battery and generating far less heat. “.
It also promises an improvement to the Horizon Worlds platform, as well as a ” Meta Quest Game Overview in the spring, and the official reveal of the ” successor to Meta Quest 2 ”, a topic that Mark Zuckerberg also touched on during the company’s latest results.
Meta clearly does not want to give up
Andrew Bosworth responds implicitly to investors asking for Meta’s picks: The good news is that in the long term, we believe that 2022 will be remembered as the year when the fundamentals of technology to realize our vision for the future first came together between the hands of developers and users “, he writes.
He estimates that the development of virtual and augmented reality technologies will be further advanced in 2023 and that the advent of the metaverse is inevitable; Meta will therefore not give up investing in its development. It remains to be seen what investors will think of it, as John Cormack, the company’s mainstay in the field of virtual reality, decided to leave it last week, assuring that it ” self-sabotage ” and ” wastes his efforts »…