Facebook's Virtual Reality Division Lost $13.72 Billion In 2022

The parent corporation of Facebook, Meta, is having a good day today after exceeding expectations for its final fiscal quarter of 2022 in terms of revenue and user engagement. But the company's VR segment isn't assisting in its financial success. In reality, the corporation is losing billions as a result. While it's true that Meta's stock is up today in after-hours trading following the company's release of somewhat encouraging fourth-quarter financial data, its VR branch, Reality Labs, didn't have such good news to announce because it continues to squander money at an alarming rate. The corporation acknowledged today that it lost more than $4 billion in the last quarter of 2022 due to VR and metaverse development. Additionally, it lost a total of far over $13 billion in 2022 while attempting (and failing) to create a popular metaverse. In contrast, Meta generated $32.1 billion in sales from all divisions and applications. According to Decrypt.co, just $727 million in income was generated by Meta's Reality Labs in the last quarter of 2022. Comparing it to the billions spent on the division in the same year, it's not terrific, but it's also worse than you might expect. In comparison to the division's revenue during the same period in 2021, this amount is down 17%. Ouch. Also read: Do Metaverse Effects On Mental Health – Know Here Also keep in mind that Facebook's flagship metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds, has essentially been a huge failure, with reports claiming that the majority of its worlds are empty and scarcely used. In addition, the company's own team hardly uses it, as seen by a leaked internal memo that reveals Meta personnel don't enjoy using Horizons Worlds due of its numerous bugs and other quality problems. The Oculus Quest 2 headset, which was viewed by many as an affordable alternative to expensive PC and console VR headsets and was also entirely standalone, is really the only great success story from Reality Labs. But in July, Meta increased the cost of the budget-friendly headset by $100, making the 128GB model $400 and the 256GB model $500. Meta fired 11,000 workers in November 2022 and cited "macroeconomic slump, greater competition, and advertisements signal loss" as the reasons. Although Zuckerberg took responsibility for the layoffs, he conveniently neglected to note in his layoff announcement how much money the firm is still investing in the development of VR and the metaverse. The corporation has invested tens of billions of dollars over the last few years in an effort to make a VR-powered metaverse a reality. And now, in February 2023, after significant layoffs and ongoing losses, all that remains of it is an unattractive and empty PlayStation Home clone.