When Meta (née Facebook) announced that prices for the two-year-old Meta (née Oculus) Quest 2 were up £100 each, it signaled the need to constantly reinvest in the future of VR.
Well, we’ve now learned how much this investment in the social network’s broader Metaverse would cost, and how little extra £100 generated from sales would be to make an impact on that.
Meta revealed, in its quarterly earnings call on June 27, that the virtual reality division of Reality Labs has lost $2.8 billion (about £2.3 billion) in the past three months alone.
The red pen’s continued presence in the Meta books comes despite the growing popularity of the Quest 2 headphones and improvement in the quality and quantity of software available.
Last year the division lost $2.4 billion and $2.96 billion in the first three months of the year, so this is an ongoing issue that shows the company’s VR ambitions are still leading the way in massive losses right now (via Venture Beat).
On the earnings call, the company said it expects Reality Labs’ revenue to decline further in the next three months, and the £100/$100 addition to the price of the most popular product on the market is likely to play a role.
“Now, we are making a change that will help us continue investing for the long term and continue to drive the virtual reality industry forward with the best hardware, action packed games, and the latest research on the path to truly next-generation hardware,” the company said in a blog post yesterday.
Fortunately for Facebook, it has generated nearly $6.7 billion in net income over the past three months, from 1.97 billion active users across its platforms. However, whether shareholders will continue to stick with Zuckerberg’s massive bet on the future of civilization – while roughly half that number is lost every three months – remains to be seen.